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Crise Sociale

Crise Sociale
4.octobre.2018 // Les Crises
En route vers le servage. Par Chris Hedges
crise sociale, USA
Merci 23
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J’envoie

Source : Truthdig, Chris Hedges, 26-08-2018

Une manifestation en 2016 dans le Zuccotti Park de Manhattan, où le mouvement d’occupation de Wall Street a commencé cinq ans auparavant. (Corinne Segal / pbs.org)

Vous connaissez les statistiques. L’inégalité du revenu aux États-Unis n’a pas été aussi prononcée depuis plus d’un siècle. Dix pour cent des plus riches détiennent 50 % des revenus du pays, et 1 % détient 20 % des revenus du pays. Un quart des travailleurs américains ont des salaires inférieurs à 10 $ de l’heure, ce qui les place sous le seuil de pauvreté, alors que le revenu du PDG moyen d’une grande entreprise est plus de 300 fois supérieur au salaire de son employé moyen, une augmentation massive étant donné que dans les années 1950, le PDG moyen gagnait 20 fois plus que son employé. Cette inégalité des revenus est mondiale ; 1 % de la population mondiale contrôle 40 % de la richesse mondiale. Et la situation s’aggrave.

Quelles seront les conséquences économiques et politiques de cette inégalité ? Jusqu’à quel point la situation va-t-elle empirer avec l’imposition de programmes d’austérité et d’un nouveau code fiscal qui réduit les taux d’imposition des sociétés, permettant aux entreprises de thésauriser ou de racheter leurs propres actions au lieu d’investir dans l’économie ? Comment allons-nous survivre alors que les primes d’assurance-maladie augmentent constamment et que les programmes sociaux et d’aide sociale tels que Medicaid, les subventions Pell et les coupons alimentaires sont réduits ? De plus en vertu de la révision du code des impôts signée par le président Trump en décembre, les taux vont augmenter à long terme pour la classe ouvrière. Au cours de la prochaine décennie, la révision coûtera environ 1 500 milliards de dollars au pays. Où cela va-t-il s’arrêter ?

Nous vivons dans un nouveau féodalisme. Nous avons été dépossédés du pouvoir politique. Les travailleurs sont piégés dans des emplois subalternes, contraints de s’endetter lourdement et de recevoir des salaires stagnants ou en baisse. La pauvreté chronique et les conditions d’exploitation au travail dans de nombreuses régions du monde, et de plus en plus aux États-Unis, reproduisent l’enfer enduré par les ouvriers à la fin du XIXe siècle. La capture complète des institutions dirigeantes par les entreprises et leurs élites oligarchiques, y compris les deux partis politiques dominants, les tribunaux et la presse, signifie qu’il n’existe plus aucun mécanisme par lequel nous pouvons réformer le système ou nous protéger contre les abus croissants. Nous nous révolterons ou deviendrons des esclaves du XXIe siècle, forcés de vivre dans la misère et brutalement opprimés par la police militarisée et le système de sécurité et de surveillance le plus sophistiqué de l’histoire humaine tandis que les oligarques au pouvoir continuent à se vautrer dans une richesse et une opulence inimaginables.

« Le nouveau code fiscal est d’un excès explosif », m’a déclaré l’économiste Richard Wolff lors de notre entretien à New York. « Pendant 30 ou 40 ans, les sociétés ont payé moins d’impôts que jamais. Elles ont gagné plus d’argent que jamais. Elles ont pu faire stagner les salaires alors que la productivité du travail augmentait. D’un point de vue historique, c’est le pire moment pour leur accorder un autre gros cadeau, encore plus aux dépens des personnes même dont les salaires ont stagné. Leur accorder une telle réduction d’impôt, qui passe essentiellement de 35 % à 20 %, revient à une réduction de 40 %. Ce genre d’excès fou rappelle les [rois] de France avant la Révolution française, lorsque le niveau d’excès atteignit une dimension sociale explosive. Nous en sommes là. »

En fait, je vais mettre en commentaire de ce TEDx des suggestions de #vidéo et #films sur l’#économie et l’#économie_alternative que je tire de cette liste :
Films and related materials for teaching #Take_Back_the_Economy (TBTE)
▻http://takebackeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Films-for-teaching-TBTE.pdf
Liste tirée elle-même de ce matériel de cours : ▻http://takebackeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Course-Overview.pdf

Capitalism hits the fan

With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today’s economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government “bailouts,” stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis - in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics and charts, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis.

http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/images/index_11.jpg

Wealth Inequality in America

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

The Story of Solutions

The Story of Solutions, released in October 2013, explores how we can move our economy in a more sustainable and just direction, starting with orienting ourselves toward a new goal. In the current ‘Game of More’, we’re told to cheer a growing economy – #more roads, more malls, more Stuff! – even though our health indicators are worsening, income inequality is growing and polar icecaps are melting. But what if we changed the point of the game? What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better – better health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet? Shouldn’t that be what winning means?

▻http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions

Living without money

Is it possible to feel rich without possessions? Can you live happily without money? In the documentary Living Without Money, we meet the German woman #Heidemarie_Schwermer who made a deliberate choice to live without money 14 years ago.

▻http://livingwithoutmoney.org
#argent

#Happy

From the filmmakers who brought you Long Night’s Journey Into Day, Beyond the Call, and the Oscar nominated Genghis Blues, comes a global journey across countries and continents in a search for humanity’s most elusive emotion.

HAPPY seeks to share the wisdom of traditional cultures and the cutting edge science that is now, for the first time, exploring human happiness. Through powerful interviews, we explore what makes people happy across the world.

▻https://vimeo.com/11335940

#Off_the_Map

Somewhere in the back of nowhere, in an adobe house with no lights or running water, a family lives in what could be called freedom or could be called poverty. We’re not sure if they got there because they were 1960s hippies making a lifestyle experiment or were simply deposited there by indifference to conventional life. They grow vegetables and plunder the city dump and get $320 a month in veterans’ benefits, but they are not in need and are apparently content with their lot.

Now there is a problem. “That was the summer of my father’s depression” the narrator tells us. She is Bo Groden, played in the movie by Valentina de Angelis at about age 12, and heard on the sound track as an adult (Amy Brenneman). “I’m a damn crying machine,” says her dad, Charley (Sam Elliott). He sits at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and his wife and daughter have learned to live their lives around him.

http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/off-the-map-2005/large_9KRRL4o8XX6cJt9BvEFIdamodgT.jpg

The Paradox of Choice

In this new RSA Animate, Professor Renata Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo

#The_take

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. In the wake of Argentina’s dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The #Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They’re part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system. But Freddy, the president of the new worker’s co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory. The story of the workers’ struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they’ll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada’s most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers’ lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DSu8RPJt8

#Shift_change

With the long decline in US manufacturing and today’s economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box, to reinvent our failing economy in order to restore long term community stability and a more egalitarian way of life.

There is growing interest in firms that are owned and managed by their workers. Such firms tend to be more profitable and innovative, and more committed to the communities where they are based. Yet the public has little knowledge of their success, and the promise they offer for a better life.

▻http://shiftchange.org/about

Bon, j’avoue ne pas avoir le temps de tout recensé les films qui semblent bien intéressants sur la liste, je continuerai peut-être plus tard dans l’année...