Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Crime, starvation and incarceration in America (2 charts)

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, November 7, 2016

Crime, starvation and incarceration in America (2 charts)

Click here to access article from Real-World Economics Review Blog. (Note: This is an extract from a longer paper by Gary Flomenhoft.)

The author uses the charts to illustrate how US application of neoliberalism has used "the threat of starvation [to] motivate people to seek employment", and I may add, to create a more docile workforce. Also I think these policies were a ruling class form of revenge or reaction to all the anti-war militants during the Vietnam War and the Black nationalist movement during the same period. For example, "war on drugs", which resulted in a disproportionate number of African-Americans and poor people being incarcerated, was facilitated by the CIA. This was revealed years later first by journalist Gary Webb who investigated and found that the CIA was importing drugs from South America which ended up in the Black ghettos of US cities.