Why America Should Have Had the World’s Best Social Contract (Instead of Settling For the Worst)

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I worry about Americans. It seems to me that they just aren’t aware as they should be that they could and should have the world’s best working social contract (with vibrant, robust healthcare, education, income, savings, safety nets, media) instead of settling for the most dysfunctional broken one (after all, even nations like Costa Rica and Rwanda are developing basic public healthcare). Hence, it appears to me that Americans believe in a series of backward myths about themselves, the world, and society. Recited constantly, they keep them in the dark, which is why they settle for the worst.

Myth: Only small countries can have working social contracts 

One of the greatest ironies in the world to me is that the very opposite is true… big countries can have by far better ones. How? Think about insurance, the bigger a pool is, the lower the cost for each member. Now, what does that really mean?

Reality: People in bigger countries can enjoy (way) greater benefits from working social contracts than people in little ones 

A small nation like Denmark or Sweden or even a medium-sized one like France or Britain can’t realise the same economies of scale that a big one like America can… there are only 10 million people, each of whom pays more to insure one another. However, American has 300 million people. Yet, by a long way, American healthcare is the most expensive in the world and delivers the least benefits. Precisely the opposite could and should be true… as there are more Americans to insure one another, it could be the cheapest in the world, with the greatest benefits, by a very long way. However, it requires a true public healthcare institution, like an American Healthcare Service, to make that true. That same principle is true for every component of a social contract, whether education, media, or safety nets… more people share the high fixed costs, so they’re (way) cheaper for a bigger society like America than a small one like Sweden. Then, isn’t it funny that American thought doesn’t ever seem to consider that?

Myth: It’s impossible to build institutions for 300 million people, we wouldn’t know how to manage or run them

LOL. What do you think your local Apple store is? If Apple can do it for gadgets, why can’t we do it for healthcare? Wal-Mart, Google, Amazon, and the government already do it every day without breaking a sweat. We know how to do it in spades.

Reality: Building working public institutions, like an American BBC or NHS, is how to repair broken bonds, renew communities, and rebuild the economy one life and town a time 

Let’s say you’re a poor kid in West Virginia with no income, savings, mobility, opportunity, hope, life. You’ve seen your friends, in despair, with no futures, OD… you’re thinking about turning to drugs, too, but you harbour a great desire to help people like you, to be an abuse counsellor, only you have no idea or way to be one. Your only option is what capitalism can provide, insanely-expensive twelve step “rehab” programs that never address your severe trauma of living through collapse with real psychotherapy, not just “drug abuse counselling”, because that’s more costly than just putting you in a boot camp, so it goes untreated, and you cycle on and off drugs forever.

Now imagine that our AHS was there in your neighbourhood. It would need just such counsellors, right? Voila, supply and demand meet… you might get training for just the job they need… where they don’t right now because there’s a “market failure”, which is to say, a void. That broken town might come back to life. Now fast-forward five years into the future. That AHS needs managers, there you are… suddenly, and you have a career, and all it brought with it, opportunity, mobility, security, optimism, belonging, meaning purpose. How wonderful. Now multiply that by a thousand times, and ten million lives. How beautiful. That’s how a society and economy begins to heal, mature, and grow… when institutions, both public and private, allow lives to flourish.

Myth: Public institutions provide low-quality crap! It’s usually expensive! I don’t want to pay taxes for that… in fact, I don’t want to pay taxes at all! 

Look. You’re going to get taxed either way, by monopolistic corporations or a government, and if you really can’t abide that, if you don’t want, say, water and roads, be my guest and move to Somalia. The question is, which one is a better deal? Let’s consider the BBC. I pay about two hundred bucks a year. What do I get? I get three TV channels and six radio stations. I pay about two hundred bucks a month in the States for a billion channels. Now, here’s the irony that’s often impossible for American to understand… less, in this case, is infinitely more. I click around in the States and rarely find something to watch, I decline porn, cop and surgery shows, it’s all mostly catastrophe vaudeville about the victims of late capitalism. However, I can watch the BBC endlessly, and so do you, maybe you just don’t know it, because its shows are rebranded for Americans, Masterpiece Theatre and so on. For that BBC licence, I get Blue Planet, Civilisation, all those cop and detective shows, the Great Bake-Off, movies, soaps, and so on. Do you see the difference? I pay a tenth of what I do in the States, and I get infinitely higher quality. So much higher quality that most of the shows ripped off by American media come from the Beeb… The Voice, The Bake-Off, etc. The level of quality isn’t just high, it’s beyond what capitalism can give you, whole categories of shows like documentaries by famed academics and writers and artists and wildlife docs like Blue Oceans exist there that can’t in America, all those cute fun Bake-Off style shows you love watching on Netflix, films tackling tough social issues, and so on.

Reality: You’ll save (a lot of) money and have a better life by paying society way less for much higher-quality public goods, instead of trying to buy healthcare, media, education, and safety from capitalism, which it’ll never really provide well to begin with, and only give you at nosebleed high prices 

Now let’s think about it from the BBC’s side. It only needs a fixed amount to produce all that stuff, those three TV and six radio channels. Crucially, that amount doesn’t change depending on how many people are in a society, right? So again, a BBC would be way cheaper in America than it is in Britain, simply because there are more people to pay for it, a hundred bucks a year, not even two hundred. Are you telling me you wouldn’t pay a hundred bucks a year for a BBC, instead of a few thousand to Comcast, now that I’ve explained it to you? (If you want to do both, be my guest… I do.) Here’s the point, not only does a working social contract cost less, the benefits are way greater too, social institutions provide goods to a quality that capitalism is simply unable to even usually dream of.

Myth: We can’t afford a working social contract 

Have you followed me so far? If you have, we’ve learned that a working social contract is:

• cheaper for a big country
• a better deal for people than capitalism
• offers quality that capitalism alone can’t ever really provide
• the only thing that can repair a broken society, one town and one life at a time

A deficit doesn’t matter much when people are giving up on democracy because they don’t have decent lives of dignity, belonging, and purpose.

Reality: A working social contract isn’t what’s unaffordable, not having one is what’s unaffordable. That’s American decline’s fundamental lesson. 

I want to drive that home to you. Consider our poor West Virginia kid again. He gets addicted. His parents mortgage their home to pay for “rehab”… no AHS, remember? However, because there’s no AHS, too, “rehab” means a twelve-step program… all capitalism can provide … not real psychotherapy that addresses the profound trauma he’s lived through. Therefore, he cycles in and out of this subpar capitalist rehab. His parents are renting a little place now. He’s living on the streets. What was unaffordable for them… a working social contract or the lack of one? Multiply that by a million… what happens to a society? Now… people lose faith in the future, each other, and themselves. They give up and numb the pain away. Therefore, like any traumatised abused soul, they end up believing what’s backwards… what might save them is unaffordable, unattainable, and impossible, so going on this way, in this terrible suffering, is the only option that they have. Thus, democracy falls apart and people turn to authoritarianism… that’s the story of every falling empire, from Rome to the Reich.

How sad. How wrong. There are already millions of stories just like that. Imagine how different all these lives would and could be with a working social contract. America could and should have the world’s best one, as it’s one of the world’s biggest and richest societies. Nevertheless, Americans don’t quite understand that as their intellectuals, leaders, and thinkers have never explained it to them. Irony teaches us tragedy, and the tragedy of ignorance about the most fundamental lesson of all is the irony of American collapse… Americans settled for the worst social contract of all, but they could and should have had the best.

9 March 2018

Umair Haque

Eudamonia

https://eand.co/why-america-could-and-should-have-had-the-worlds-best-social-contract-instead-of-settling-for-the-17a153a39585

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How Social Darwinism Destroyed America From the Inside: Or, What Happens When the Average Person Believes in the Survival of the Fittest

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Whenever I look at the USA today versus its rich-world peers, an observation leaps out at me. America’s built a society on a kind of furious single-minded dedication to one idea… Social Darwinism (or the survival of the fittest). Let’s begin with the obvious. Its economy is modern history’s greatest machine for the survival of the fittest. The winners deserve extreme fame, fortune, and power… Elon Musks’ 55 billion USD (3.11 trillion Roubles. 348.83 billion Renminbi. 3.58 trillion INR. 71.42 billion CAD. 70.87 billion AUD. 44.58 billion Euros. 39.71 billion UK Pounds) bonus… but the losers don’t even deserve to live. Forget healthcare, savings, incomes, and so on. I step over them on my way to the café. Now, if you’re an average American, perhaps you don’t see the problem with all this. “So what?”

The problem is that Social Darwinism can’t build a healthy economy for the very people who believe in it, ever, period, full stop… even though I’d bet most Americans probably still think “survival of the fittest” is the best form of social organisation in history. Once you see how I also bet you’ll think it’s both funny and sad. What does “survival of the fittest” mean? It means an erosion or elimination of the average, doesn’t it? It means that only the top percentage (whether it’s 20 percent or 1 percent) of some population really makes it. However, the average person who believes in it so fiercely isn’t in there, he’s at the 45th, maybe 50th percentile, if he’s lucky. LOL. Funny and sad, no? Survival of the fittest comes back to haunt even the average person, the one who’s become, somehow, at least in America, its staunchest global advocate.

That’s precisely what’s beginning to happen in America now. The average person now has less than 1,000 USD (56,557 Roubles. 6,343 Renminbi. 65,036 INR. 1,300 CAD. 1,288 AUD. 810 Euros. 722 UK Pounds) in savings, a shrinking real income, a falling life expectancy, and no possibility of retirement, ever. They are going to live a shorter, harder, meaner, dumber, nastier life… than their peers elsewhere, or their grandparents. The survival of the fittest that Americans champion is working perfectly at destroying them. Social Darwinism is giving “survival” to the “fittest”, those at the very top (let’s say the top 10 percent), while punishing the very average, at the 50th percentile. The average person who thought, strangely, that being average wouldn’t somehow get him selected out. However, that’s what “survival of the fittest” does… select out the average. Hence, a middle class collapsing in three ways:

• becoming a smaller part of society
• a falling quantity of life
• a falling quality of life

Survival of the fittest is annihilating the average person in America, even though that very average person seems to admire and long for it… that’s Social Darwinism’s ghastly revenge. In fact, seeing all but super-rich millennials struggle to have kids and make families, one might even say that Social Darwinism is working perfectly in taking away the reproductive chances of the weakest. However, I don’t think we need to be quite so reductive to say it’s a failed way to think about organising a society.

How is American Social Darwinism annihilating the chances of the average person? Well, American society is an arena for the survival of the fittest… it doesn’t protect the vulnerable. By design, there are no real safety nets, social systems, or public goods, while all America’s peers enjoy these things. For example, it ties healthcare to a “job”, and only then to a dwindling number, because if you aren’t productive, you don’t deserve to live. However, even if you’re productive, your income is stagnant. That’s Social Darwinism tuned perfectly… being productive or efficient is barely enough to hang on, it’s having just enough “fitness” to live at the edge of “survival”. Therefore, the survival of the fittest has kept America from building the basic systems and goods that the rest of the world’s rising quality of life depends on… healthcare, education, transportation, public media, welfare, and so on.

Why should the average person enjoy any kind of investment in him? Why should the poor? They aren’t fit. Therefore, they beg corporations and hedge funds to provide the basics of life, as they laugh at him. Meanwhile, the average person in America doesn’t really cry out for these things, because he still believes in the survival of the fittest, yet all the while, the problem is that he isn’t the fittest. Maybe, he’s at the 50th percentile of fitness… shouting that only those at the very top are fit enough to survive. How funny. How sad. How’s one to prosper, then? Well, who defines “the fittest”, anyway? The fittest do. Therefore, our socio-economic problem soon becomes a cultural problem. Let me put that more clearly. Is “fittest” the top 30 percent? The top 10 percent? Who decides? If it’s the top .01 percent, they’d keep “fittest” as small as possible, won’t they? That’s what happened in America… once, “survival of the fittest” might have meant the top 40 percent of society; now, it’s barely the top 10 percent. How does that kind of erosion even within Social Darwinism happen?

Everywhere in America, the élite tell the average that they must bow down to this terrible god of Social Darwinism. It’s the only god. It’s the best god, who’ll one day reward them with… what? Flying cars? Immortality? They dangle all manner of things before them. However, the reality is simpler… by definition, the average person can’t win these things, ever, for that’s what “survival of the fittest means”. Still, every single day, the American élite tell average Americans the same thing, in newspaper columns, cable news segments, books, films. Self-help, the prosperity gospel, stock tips, home flips, Reality TV shows about the rich and powerful, bootstraps, fame, money, glory… “Live your best life!” … “You don’t owe anyone anything!” What’s the common thread? What’s it all really saying? It just recapitulates Social Darwinism, isn’t it? Until people are more or less indoctrinated, American culture really says something like this:

Social Darwinism is the greatest ideology the world has ever known! Have faith! Your reward is coming, too… you too can be one of the fittest!

Therefore, the élite parade celebrities and tycoons before Americans, exhorting them:

Be more like this!

The first problem, obviously, is that 90 percent of people in society aren’t ever going to be the fittest. Nevertheless, here’s the problem inside that one. The élite are themselves winners of a contest of survival of the fittest. They tell people what worked for them, but that’s all. They have no incentive whatsoever to look past their own biases and say, “Social Darwinism isn’t working for anyone but us!” Why would they? Do you see the cultural issue? There is a contest in which the “fitness” one needs to “survive” rises and keeps rising. Once, it was maybe 30 percent of Americans; now, it’s maybe 10 percent. Now, you can hardly blame the poor average person for succumbing to this furious onslaught of propaganda, but he’s a fool… an average person believing in an ideology that says he himself shouldn’t survive. Therefore, he doesn’t. How funny all this is. How ironic. How tragic, too.

America is discovering the hard way what happens when the average person supports his own self-destruction, economically, socially, and culturally. Social Darwinism has resulted in America becoming something like the modern world’s grimmest dystopia… a place where kids massacre each other every few days and no one cares enough to lift a finger to help them. Why is that? You see, the endpoint of Social Darwinism brings us to the darkest place of all. Being a more savage predator than the next person is the only guarantee of “fitness”. However, a predatory society isn’t a very nice place to be, is it? That’s why the countries in which it was born, and then used… Britain, Germany, Italy… rejected it and consider Social Darwinism now a stain upon history. Will America ever outgrow Social Darwinism? I doubt it. The forces above are difficult to change. When the average person believes he himself is nothing but a ritual sacrifice to the gods, dark ages fall upon us.

17 February 2018

Umar Haque

Eudaimonia

https://eand.co/how-social-darwinism-destroyed-america-from-the-inside-7909acc6e099

The Next Crash: Or, Why a Stock Market Booming While Life Craters is a Social Ponzi Scheme, Not an Economy

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Oh, no, friends… the Dow crashed… cue hysteria over everything from gold to retirement accounts to Bitcoin to Trump. Hold on a minute. What does it really mean? Here’s something to bear in mind. Investing in a collapsed society, where people have little left to be preyed upon for (and even those meagre morsels of returns an authoritarian could snatch away in a heartbeat) is a foolhardy bet. If it’s opaque, we’ll get to what that means.

Let’s start with what you probably know. The stock market isn’t the economy. The market boomed… but real incomes stagnated for decades. However, even that’s not really “the economy”. The economy is how well people’s lives are doing, and on that score, America’s in uniquely bad shape among rich nations… falling life expectancy, rising mortality, mass killings, stress, rage, misery, loneliness, and distrust. Therefore, ironically, it appears to me that Americans speak of The Market like the Soviets spoke of The Party. Just as Soviets said, “The Party’s in fine shape!”, so, today, Americans say, “Comrades! The stock market’s booming!” Both are myths that deflect from reality, protecting us from the harder work of seeing things as they are. Just as the Party wasn’t Soviet society… just a twisted caricature of it… so the stock market isn’t the American economy… it’s a bizarre upside-down mirror image.

While I’m sure you’ve had similar thoughts, here’s what you might not have gotten to yet. This shell game… a stock market booming while an economy and the lives in it crater… can’t go on forever. An economy based on such is a Ponzi Scheme of prosperity conducted on a massive social scale. One day, the bill must come due. Perhaps, you think… what could be better for capitalists than a nation of neo-peasants? However, the truth is a little more subtle. The stock market booming while life falls apart reflects a real economic transfer… the average person’s quality of life, stability, security, opportunity, and (of course) his income and savings dissolve into the future profits of predatory entities, whether they’re banks, corporations, hedge funds, etc. Where a truer capitalism… if such a thing exists… might focus on providing value, these self-evidently don’t… hence, life falling apart.

How long can all that go on? There must be something to prey on. However, the average American doesn’t have much left to give. His income is shrinking. He has less than 1,000 USD (58,366 Roubles. 6,290 Renminbi. 64,220 INR. 1,258 CAD. 1,280 AUD. 817 Euros. 723 UK Pounds) in savings. He has no real vacation or leisure time, working longer and harder hours than his peers anywhere else. He’ll never retire, be able to educate his kids, or afford decent healthcare. He’s even given his life… to the point where his longevity is now declining. Is there anything left for monopolistic predatory capitalism to take? Not much. This game can’t just go on forever… it can’t go on much longer at all. What happens when markets understand all that? They fall hard and fast. The market isn’t the economy… at least until there’s nothing left to syphon off, and, then, suddenly, kaboom. Markets must ultimately reflect the economic, social, and political reality of a failing nation, too… just as they had to before the Depression, reflecting inequality, stagnation, and predation.

What does that all mean, at the root? Markets must price in risks. However, the greatest risk of all for America is one that we haven’t yet priced in… one not considered, valued, and accounted for. That’s political risk. For example, markets discount perpetually chaotic Latin American or Eastern European economies; now, they’ll have to do the same for America. You see, not only is American life falling apart… American democracy is too. A (literal) Nazi is running unopposed for Congress in Illinois. That’s a tiny example of the trends that daily headlines reveal all too well… America is imploding from an imperfect democracy to an authoritarian kleptostate. The nearest parallel is probably Russia. Nevertheless, one doesn’t put one’s money into Russian investments without carefully considering political risk.

What does “political risk” of “autocracy” really mean? Why do markets care? Think of it as a country run by and for mafias. Mafias run protection and extortion rackets for small enterprises… the same is true for kleptocrats on a national scale. They grant favours to whoever will pay them off the most. They give shares in privatised industries to their cronies. They use every trick in the book to make already-tilted playing fields ones that players can’t enter at all unless there’s money paid out, whether in soft or hard bribery. They’ll mercilessly extort whoever isn’t part of the organisation or the family. Let’s say you’re an investor, looking at America. How far away is it from such a scenario? Already, nationalist sentiments have gone all the way to the top. They’re ripping up trade deals. They’re choosing favourites. Instead of doing business, CEOs try to curry favour… although they hold their noses at the stench. Going forward, you’d be very foolish not to begin pricing in all this risk… that one day, at the whim of a single authoritarian leader, all your money might simply disappear, be expropriated, be seized… the first step in most such situations is that you must give a portion of it to his family, friends, allies, just to do business at all.

There’s a steep political risk now for money flowing into America, just as there is and has been for other fallen states. However, the difference is that markets haven’t priced in this risk yet. They’ve coasted on two comfortable illusions:

• American democracy will magically fix itself
• The gains from preying on its imploded middle class outweigh the rising costs of autocratic politics

Nonetheless, those gains are drying up… all that’s left now are the costs… strongmen, extremism, and authoritarianism. That points to a very simple conclusion. The American stock market is in for a historic crash. It can’t go on being a perverse mirror image of economic reality forever. It goes up; it goes down. However, at some point, it’ll fall and fall mightily, as investing in a collapsed society where people have little left to even be exploited for (even those dwindling returns an authoritarian could snatch away from you in the blink of an eye) is a foolhardy bet. Of course, that isn’t a “prediction”. Markets always suffer crashes. It’s only a way of understanding the next crash. Perversely, the market boom of the 2000s was due to riches gained from the implosion of American life. However, the crash to follow will be about what happens after a society implodes… the loss of American democracy, prosperity, confidence, and growth, replaced by despair, cruelty, authoritarianism, and collapse.

5 February 2018

Umair Haque

Eudaimonia

https://eand.co/the-next-crash-254816fbbeb7

Kiev Provokes War to Try to Avoid Revolution

Winter 2015: Those Moskali aren’t Freezing!

Aleksandr Shabunov

2014

Literally: “They’re not freezing, those Moskali!”

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In recent days, despite its peace “announcement”, official Kiev gradually moved from violence against civilians and bombardments of Donbass cities to direct provocations on the Russian border and attacks on the Russian Federation’s diplomatic missions. In international affairs, such actions constitute provocation to war. Yet, Kiev doesn’t have the slightest chance of winning a military conflict with Russia. What pushes P A Poroshenko to such adventuring?

Whilst the Kiev junta wages war against its own people in the Southeast, protests swell across the country due to a catastrophic drop in living standards. From 1 July, all utility services will see an increase in rates. In particular, the price of gas for consumers will rise 55-70 percent, hot water and heating will rise 40 percent, electricity will rise 10-40 percent depending on the volume of usage, and central water and sewerage will rise 78-96 percent. The greatest increases will come in Kiev. On 1 July, hot water will rise by nearly 70 percent and for central heating will go up almost 60 percent.  This is only the first stage of price increases for utilities, which will gradually go up until 2017. According to O N Kaletnik, the First Deputy Head of the Verkhovnaya Rada Budget Committee, in 2015 utility rates will go up 40 percent, and 20 percent per year in 2016 and 2017. However, these figures may be bogus, because as of 1 May 2014, consumers paid, for example, only 24 percent of the real cost of electricity.

At the same time, the IMF requires an increase in residential utility rates “to economic levels”, that is, the total elimination of state subsidies for public utilities. If the total debt of Kiev’s population, the Ukraine’s richest city, is now close to 80 million USD (2.7 billion Roubles. 85.8 million CAD. 85.1 million AUD. 58.7 million Euros. 47.1 million UK Pounds), the new rates would be completely impossible for Ukrainians to pay. This is a real disaster as it threatens all life support systems. You can estimate its size by the fact that, even now, before the rate increase, “Kievenergo” shut off hot water in 754 apartment buildings due to arrears in bills, and it started to switch off lighting in the Pechersky, Goloseyevsky, and Shevchenko Raions of the city.

Meanwhile, winter approaches. Because of threatened termination of Russian gas deliveries, the junta introduced emergency energy policies, which may in fact lead to frozen apartment buildings and hospitals. However, that’s not all. Due to the grivnya’s depreciation and the domestic agricultural crisis, some products have more than doubled in price, and drugs are up by 60-70 percent. Minister of Finance A V Shlapak officially admits that these figures are true. In fact, consumers are seeing some imported drugs rise in price by 200-300 percent. Along with this, “Prime Minister” A P Yatsenyuk‘s  “government” froze the minimum wage and cut cost-of-living indexing. The Razumkov Research Centre concluded, “The freeze in wage increases, pensions, and social benefits due to the fact that the Ukrainian economy has crashed. We observed a decline in industry and in other areas … In such a situation, neither the Ukrainian economy nor the state budget has the resources to raise salaries to a level to support minimal living standards. This year, we see a decline in real income and real wages, which creates additional social problems in the country”.

Moreover, the junta doesn’t deny persistent rumours about the removal of all salary increments to government employees and civil servants. Although the corresponding bill appears to have dropped off the Rada’s agenda, in some areas, state employees have already lost them under the law on surcharges. For example, teachers and librarians in Novo Kakhovka (Kherson Oblast) lost their allowances, which were 50 percent of their base salary. Teachers in Berdyansk (Zaporozhe Oblast) avoided wage cuts only by threatening a strike. On 1 March 2014, civil servants lost their allowances for long service and exemplary performance of duty, which were about 40 percent of their base salary. If the removal of allowances does occur, the salary of librarians, for example, would be slightly more than 1,000 grivnya (2,840 Roubles. 85 USD. 90.50 CAD. 89.50 AUD. 62 Euros. 50 UK Pounds), doctors, 1,200 grivnya (3,400 Roubles. 101 USD. 108 CAD. 107.50 AUD. 74 Euros. 60 UK Pounds), state municipal officials, 1,500 grivnya (4,260 Roubles. 126 USD. 135.50 CAD. 134.50 AUD. 93 Euros. 75 UK Pounds). Compare this to the coming average cost for utilities of 1,100 grivnya (3,120 Roubles. 92.50 USD. 99.50 CAD. 98.50 AUD. 68 Euros. 55 UK Pounds) per month.

In the manufacturing sector, the situation isn’t much better. The Accounting Department of Dneprospetsstal in Zaporozhe said, “They told us that from 1 June, the work week would go to a four-day schedule, that is, the average worker would lose 1,000 grivnya in wages”. Workers at Azovmash in Mariupol lost their holiday pay. According to Rada People’s Deputy Yuri Shapoval, enterprises in Kremenchug almost completely stopped production because they lost Russian customers, which were the main consumers of Kremenchug products. Tourism, real estate, and the wholesale market trade are at a standstill. People simply don’t have any means to survive. According to the poll run by the website HeadHunter, 54 percent of men and 58 percent of women regularly can’t “last to payday”. In addition, another 20 percent feels financial difficulties at least once every 3 months. Only 20 percent of men and 11 percent of women say admit that they don’t have any problems from payday to payday.

Yatsenyuk’s “government” doesn’t deny that they carried out this “price genocide” in the Ukraine due to IMF demands and that it exactly mirrors “austerity” measures in the EU. By the way, the Ukraine plans to sign a so-called “Association Agreement” with the EU on 27 June {it won’t give them real membership… they get to be Germany’s nigger slaves at wetback peon wages, that’s all: editor}. Yatsenyuk said in the Rada that the Ukraine would need to reduce social benefits and public sector wages, as did Greece and Italy. How it ended in Greece and Italy, I don’t think that it’s necessary to tell you.

Depriving citizens of their last piece of bread, the junta has no difficulty in finding funds for its war against its own people. Experts estimate that the junta spends 3 million USD (102 million Roubles. 3.22 million CAD. 3.2 million AUD. 2.2 million Euros. 1.8 million UK Pounds) per day on its so-called “anti-terrorist operation”. Increasing the intensity of hostilities will just up this amount. You must factor in the fact that men slotted into the armed forces and into the oligarch’s private armies aren’t in the productive economy, which is clearly not conducive to helping the Ukraine’s budget woes. In addition, massive casualties in the junta forces and the terrible living conditions in the service have already caused mass protests in the western Ukraine, the region most loyal to the Kiev junta. Mothers and wives of junta soldiers blocked international motorways in Rovno, Ternopol, Lvov, and Khmelnitsky Oblasts. There’s a high probability that the angry women will march on Kiev shortly, without waiting for their relatives to come home from the army.

We can’t but welcome the beginning of negotiations for a peaceful settlement, which took place in Donetsk under the auspices of the Russian Federation and the OSCE. However, we can’t overlook the fact that time is working against Kiev junta, as the Ukraine faces an imminent economic catastrophe. Therefore, a war with Russia is vital for the junta, allowing it to throw the blame for the complete failure of the current government on “Muscovite aggression”. This explains the border provocations and false ceasefire announcements, when the junta only increases the intensity of the fighting. However, Kiev has a dilemma… its tactic of provoking a war will show its true position on the Donetsk talks.

26 June 2014

Olga Shchedrova

TsIA Novorossiya

http://novorus.info/news/vlast/24233-kiev-provociruet-voynu-chtoby-izbezhat-revolyucii.html

Editor:

This explains much. VVP is waiting for the “fruit to ripen on the tree”. The LNR and DNR leadership was at the Centre last week. No doubt, Vova told them of his plans (and how they should react to them for public consumption). There be some accomplished “belly-talkers” at the Centre and in Novorossiya. “Belly-talk?” Oh, that’s a Japanese concept (haragei), which means that one makes a convincing implication one way, but that one actually intends to do the exact opposite (it also means that one makes vague non-specific statements that give one “deniability”). Note well that the fascist junta is so stupid that they’re falling for it. Actually, they have no option… if Russia doesn’t send a soldier into the Ukraine, the junta can’t put its draconian “emergency” plans into effect. In short, VVP screwed them to the wall… and the Russians and Novorossiyans know it.

BMD