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Showing posts with the label rent
"In recent weeks, some people have optimistically predicted that the Covid-19 outbreak will force governments to build  fairer economic systems." I have a problem with the language in the title and in the sentence above. "Fairer economic society" means a society that is already fair should become fairer. That is what the comparative form means.  "What history can teach us about building a fairer society after coronavirus"

Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador, Haiti

"Impossible to anticipate the spur for rebellion. In Lebanon, it was a tax on the use of WhatsApp; in Chile, it was the rise in subway fares; in Ecuador and in Haiti, it was the cut in fuel subsidies. Each of these conjunctures brought people to the streets and then, as these people flooded the streets, more and more joined them. They did not come for WhatsApp or for subway tokens. They came because they are frustrated, angry that history seems to disregard them as it consistently favours the ruling class." There is something that's ours on the streets and we're going to take it back

Exploitation

iPhone workers today are 25 times more exploited than textile workers of 19th century England I do not agree with the authors, who are using a Marxist analysis, on calling Eeastern European countries before 1990 'socialist'. Their labbelling throws dust in readers' eyes.  If those countries were socialist, what do today's socialists are fighting for then? And if those countries were socialist, it is more of an argument for the defenders of capitalism: "if that was socialism, we don't want it." The Rate of Exploitation (The Case of the iPhone) Related: "Sucking up"  (Apple's app and Hong Kong protests)
Exploitation and robbery "London was the least affordable region in England and Wales, with city-dwellers spending 41.1% of their annual salaries on rent in 2017."