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That's Capitalism

Date: Fri, 2010-04-30 09:50
  • In 2009, “11% of employers visited by welfare officials were not compliant with their PRSI commitments”, according to the Department of Social and Family Affairs.  In plain English this means that they never paid PRSI to the government, as they are obliged to do. When workers steal, it’s ‘theft’, when bosses do the same, it’s ‘non-compliance’.

  • The new Marks and Spencer boss, Marc Bolland, got €8.5 million just for signing his contract. It would take the average M&S worker 595 years to earn that amount.  Bolland also pockets €1.1m a year, 77 times his workers’ average pay.
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Supermac’s saw its pre-tax profits quadruple last year, so how is it thanking its workers who made this possible?  It has joined other fast food bosses to call for a €1 per hour cut in the national minimum wage, a weakening of the minimal legal standards laid out by the Joint Labour Committee and a challenge to the right of the JLC to determine working conditions.
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There are 306,000 empty houses in the 26 counties right now, many built by speculators during the boom years.  Meanwhile 56,000 families wait on local authority housing lists.
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Rolls Royce, makers of the world’s most luxurious cars for the super-rich, announced profits of €1.05 billion for 2009.  That’s 4% up on 2008.
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The archdiocese of the head of Irish Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady, has spent more on legal fees than on compensating victims of sex abuse by priests. More than €600,000 has been paid to lawyers defending the Archdiocese of Armagh in 10 civil actions while victims shared compensation payouts totalling €562,000.
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Cowen’s government has spent €4.8m on converting the residence of the Irish ambassador to Canada into “an abode of unbridled luxury, a sprawling mansion, financed by a country on the economic skids,” according to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.
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The super-rich in the USA have so much loot that if you confiscated the income of the top 13,000 households and distributed it to the bottom 40 million, it would double their incomes.
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The gap between rich and poor in the UK is wider today than 40 years ago, according to the latest report from the government’s own National Equality Panel.  The richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest 10%.
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One out of every 100 Americans is now in prison, which makes the USA the most jailed society on the planet. With 5% of the world's population, they have 15% of known prisoners.  Either the most dangerous people on earth live in the USA or pressure from the privatised prison industry to increase their profits is paying off.