Reading

The majority of price increases, of inflation, right now, are driven by price increases that are higher than increases in costs. Numbers I see tend to range from the mid sixties to the seventies.

They aren’t, then, driven primarily by wage increases.

The obvious way to solve this is to put in a surplus profit tax based on 2019 profit levels and forbid other ways of withdrawing excess profits like stock buy backs and option grants. Only after doing this would you consider trying to crush wages or cut pensions or other benefits.

That is, if your primary aim was to reduce inflation.

But it is undeniable that crushing wages will will reduce inflation somewhat, even if it is far from the best way to do so and it has a great advantage.

It makes the rich even richer by reducing their wage costs!

Down and out with the Young Republicans and the man they call the “queen of New York City.”

The post One Night in Washington, D.C., With George Santos appeared first on The Intercept.

Activists in Wollongong are organising against plans for nearby Port Kembla to host the East Coast base for the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Solidarity spoke to Alexander Brown from Wollongong Against War and Nukes about local opposition and how unions have dedicated this year’s May Day march to opposing the plan.

The post Port Kembla no place for a nuclear subs base, say local campaigners appeared first on Solidarity Online.

Peter Dutton is leading the Liberals into disaster. His decision to campaign for a No vote against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is a further sign he wants to keep the party well to the right.

The post Dutton marginalises the Liberals—but Labor refuses to bury him appeared first on Solidarity Online.

On 25 March, in a shocking case of racist brutality, police shot dead Aubrey Donahue, a 27-year-old Muluridji man from Mareeba, Far North Queensland, while he was experiencing a mental health crisis.

The post Black Lives Matter—How a militarised police squad shot Aubrey Donahue appeared first on Solidarity Online.

When Labor turned on them in 1990, Melbourne tram workers fought job cuts through occupying their depots and taking control of the transport system, writes David Glanz.

The post ‘A festival of defiance’—how tram workers took on a Labor government appeared first on Solidarity Online.

Source - Patreon

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Wednesday that President Joe Biden, 80, will likely die within five years and that his supporters would have to count on Vice President Kamala Harris if he were to win re-election next year. “He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” Haley, 51, said in an interview on Fox News. It’s even less like that Nikki Haley will be in politics in five years so …

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Luke Ottavi looks at how the Communist Party launched the 1930s Movement against War and Fascism, continuing our series on war and workers’ resistance.

The post Egon Kisch’s great leap and the Movement against War and Fascism appeared first on Solidarity Online.

Angus Dermody looks back at how the Jewish population of the Warsaw Ghetto staged a heroic uprising against the Nazi Holocaust—and the leading role of Jewish socialists in it

The post The Warsaw Ghetto uprising 80 years on appeared first on Solidarity Online.

This piece by Tim Miller made me laugh. He’s so right: Brokeback Party The Republican party has barely tried anything in their effort to move on and they are already out of ideas. After a few bad weeks in the polls for Tiny D, the party poohbahs are throwing in the towel and getting back aboard the Trump Train.  Whether it’s a pheremonal attraction to his rakish, devil-may-care persona, an addiction to the small donors and the retweets, an unquenchable desire to be invited to a disgusting dinner in a gaudy dining room, a cowardly fear of being shouted down at the airport by obese hillbillies, a boner for making the libs squirm—or a little from columns A, B, C, D, and E—the GOP grownups are signing up to Do It all over again. Like the besotted Jack Twist staring at their mountain man, these Republicans just don’t know how to quit Trump.  In just the past week, the former guy has received endorsements from both the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Steve Daines, and Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor in New York in 2022.

The Chief Justice questioned Congress’ ethics rules a decade ago; now he’s punted the Clarence Thomas corruption review to a secret committee.

At a time when more people are renting for longer, the rental market is facing a series of challenges. Rental affordability and availability is decreasing for those most in need, while the rental experience...

Jack Texeira was a ticking time bomb He appears to be one of those heavily armed, racist, incels with a propensity for grandiosity and violence. How in the hell did he get that top security clearance?  Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting classified documents online, repeatedly tried to obstruct federal investigators and has a “troubling” history of making racist and violent remarks, Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing late Wednesday. In an 18-page memo, released before a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday in a Massachusetts federal court, the department’s lawyers argued that Airman Teixeira needed to be detained indefinitely because he posed a “serious flight risk” and might still have information that would be of “tremendous value to hostile nation states.” Airman Teixeira tapped into vast reservoirs of sensitive information, an amount that “far exceeds what has been publicly disclosed” so far, they wrote.

What are the responsibilities of the Catholic Church when considering the historical realities of settler...

BANANAFEST is here. A big family event of live music, big name bands, entertainment for all and great fun events for the kids, BananaFest at The Big Banana on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 May has come together as a ‘not-to-be-missed’ launch spectacular that’s projected to be an iconic annual event. Advertise with News of...

The post Not to be missed: BananaFest at Coffs Harbour’s Big Banana is on appeared first on News Of The Area.

Almost exactly six months after Twitter got taken over by a petulant edge lord, people seem to be done with grieving the communities this disrupted and connections they lost, and are ready, eager even, to jump head-first into another toxic relationship. This time with BlueSky.

BlueSky’s faux-decentralization

BlueSky differentiates itself from Hive, Post, and other centralized social media newcommers by being ostensibly decentralized. It differentiates itself from the Fediverse by not being the Fediverse, and by being funded by *checks notes* Twitter. Oh, and by being built by Silicon Valley techbros, instead of weirdos who understand consent and how important moderation is.

Over the unprecedented pleas of the attorney general and state lawmakers to spare Glossip’s life, board members voted to deny clemency.

The post Shocking Vote by Oklahoma Parole Board Clears the Way for Richard Glossip’s Execution appeared first on The Intercept.

Jonathan Martin, Politico’s answer to Maureen Dowd (when she was a snotty reporter) says that the GOP is starting to come to terms with the fact that they are stuck with Trump for another round. I have always thought so (barring some intervening event like Trump dropping dead on the golf course.) He addresses the biggest problem they face — the fact that Trump will never concede gracefully if he loses: Just as progressives privately worried that Hillary Clinton and her party’s moderates would never truly embrace Bernie Sanders if he prevailed, many pessimistic Republicans wonder the same about Trump next year. That ridiculous. The test was in 2008 when the delegate count in the primary was super, super close and yet Clinton endorsed Obama at the convention (saying “were you in it for me or were you in it for the country” to her disappointed followers) worked to get him elected and was then brought into the cabinet as Secretary of State. Both of the primaries in 2008 and 2016 were very tough (I hope to never relive them) but to assume that Clinton would never have “truly embraced” Sanders is typical.

The Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review is marred from the outset by its bald assertion that China’s military build-up is the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War. China’s military spending is dwarfed by that of the US. According to the authoritative Peterson Institute, US military spending Continue reading »

Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China. In an article titled “Retired US admirals charging Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars per day Continue reading »

This is a historic watershed that the world is living through right now. What China is after is true multilateralism. What’s very important to understand is that most of the world also does not want the U.S. as the global preeminent power. Most of the world wants a truly multipolar world, and is, therefore, not Continue reading »