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	How The Rich Rule US Democracy by Dani Rodrik Project Syndicate, agencies   It is hardly news that the rich have more political power than the poor, even in democratic countries where everyone gets a single vote in elections.   But two political scientists, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, have recently produced some stark findings for the United States that have dramatic implications for the functioning of democracy – in the US and elsewhere.   The authors’ research builds on prior work by Gilens, who painstakingly collected public-opinion polls on nearly 2,000 policy questions from 1981 to 2002. The pair then examined whether America’s federal government adopted the policy in question within four years of the survey, and tracked how closely the outcome matched the preferences of voters at different points of the income distribution.   When viewed in isolation, the preferences of the “average” voter – that is, a voter in the middle of the income distribution – seem to have a strongly positive influence on the government’s ultimate response. A policy that the average voter would like is significantly more likely to be enacted.   But, as Gilens and Page note, this gives a misleadingly upbeat impression of the representativeness of government decisions. The preferences of the average voter and of economic elites are not very different on most policy matters. For example, both groups of voters would like to see a strong national defense and a healthy economy. A better test would be to examine what the government does when the two groups have divergent views.   To carry out that test, Gilens and Page ran a horse race between the preferences of average voters and those of economic elites – defined as individuals at the top tenth percentile of the income distribution – to see which voters exert greater influence. They found that the effect of the average voter drops to insignificant levels, while that of economic elites remains substantial.   The implication is clear: when the elites’ interests differ from those of the rest of society, it is their views that count – almost exclusively. (As Gilens and Page explain, we should think of the preferences of the top 10% as a proxy for the views of the truly wealthy, say, the top 1% – the genuine elite.)   Gilens and Page report similar results for organized interest groups, which wield a powerful influence on policy formation. As they point out, “it makes very little difference what the general public thinks” once interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans are taken into account.   These disheartening results raise an important question: How do politicians who are unresponsive to the interests of the vast majority of their constituents get elected and, more important, re-elected, while doing the bidding mostly of the wealthiest individuals?   Part of the explanation may be that most voters have a poor understanding of how the political system works and how it is tilted in favor of the economic elite. As Gilens and Page emphasize, their evidence does not imply that government policy makes the average citizen worse off. Ordinary citizens often do get what they want, by virtue of the fact that their preferences frequently are similar to those of the elite. This correlation of the two groups’ preferences may make it difficult for voters to discern politicians’ bias.   But another, more pernicious, part of the answer may lie in the strategies to which political leaders resort in order to get elected. A politician who represents the interests primarily of economic elites has to find other means of appealing to the masses. Such an alternative is provided by the politics of nationalism, sectarianism, and identity – a politics based on cultural values and symbolism rather than bread-and-butter interests. When politics is waged on these grounds, elections are won by those who are most successful at “priming” our latent cultural and psychological markers, not those who best represent our interests.   Karl Marx famously said that religion is “the opium of the people.” What he meant is that religious sentiment could obscure the material deprivations that workers and other exploited people experience in their daily lives.   In much of the same way, the rise of the religious right and, with it, culture wars over “family values” and other highly polarizing issues (for example, immigration) have served to insulate American politics from the sharp rise in economic inequality since the late 1970s. As a result, conservatives have been able to retain power despite their pursuit of economic and social policies that are inimical to the interests of the middle and lower classes.   Identity politics is malignant because it tends to draw boundaries around a privileged in-group and requires the exclusion of outsiders – those of other countries, values, religions, or ethnicities. This can be seen most clearly in illiberal democracies such as Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. In order to solidify their electoral base, leaders in these countries appeal heavily to national, cultural, and religious symbols.   In doing so, they typically inflame passions against religious and ethnic minorities. For regimes that represent economic elites (and are often corrupt to the core), it is a ploy that pays off handsomely at the polls.   Widening inequality in the world’s advanced and developing countries thus inflicts two blows against democratic politics. Not only does it lead to greater disenfranchisement of the middle and lower classes; it also fosters among the elite a poisonous politics of sectarianism.   * Dani Rodrik is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.   http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/09/us-democracy-2/ http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/10/vulnerability/ http://ourfuture.org/20141015/new-study-finds-big-government-makes-people-happy-free-markets-dont http://www.rightingfinance.org/?p=1011 Visit the related web page
	Labor Rights Are Human Rights by ITUC, Education International, agencies USA   Dec 2014 (International Trade Union Confederation)   Today, 64 years since the United Nations declared December 10 a Human Rights Day, the world is witnessing an unprecedented attack on one of the most fundamental human rights of all, the right to strike.   Virtually every country in the world recognises that workers have the right to take strike action. Some 90 countries have it enshrined in their national constitution.   From the first struggles for the 8-hour day and for fair wages, for safety and health at work, for weekly rest days and freedom from discrimination and exploitation at work, the fundamental right of working people to withdraw their labour has provided a crucial foundation for social and economic progress. And when people rise up against dictatorship and political oppression, their right to strike has always been, and always will be, a non-negotiable bedrock of democracy.   Only in the most totalitarian of dictatorships is the right to strike denied.   Employer organisations are now seeking to take away that right in international law. They intend to change the balance of power in the workplace and in society for the worse, and forever.   When democracy is expanding, workers and their unions have more space to work for economic and social justice and equality. When democratic space is being closed, as is happening in so many countries today, workers and their unions find themselves under attack.   For more than 100 years, when employers and governments have refused dialogue and negotiation and instead imposed their will, workers have still taken the step and faced the risks of withdrawing their labour. That will not change.   Taking away the right to strike removes the final bulwark against oppression. The international trade union movement is firm in its resolve to resist the assault on this most basic right. We are the force of opposition, and we are the force of progress.   Taking away the right to strike would turn us all into slaves. We will not allow that to happen.   OECD report: education the answer to boosting economic growth and addressing Inequality (Education International)   The statistics don’t lie in the OECD’s latest research, which points to a lacking investment in education as the major culprit behind rising inequality that is costing economies and slowing growth around the world.   According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a growing social economic divide is having a “statistically significant impact” on economic growth. The OECD is urging governments to increase investments in education for low income groups to curb the problem.   “This compelling evidence proves that addressing high and growing inequality is critical to promote strong and sustained growth and needs to be at the centre of the policy debate,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Countries that promote equal opportunity for all from an early age are those that will grow and prosper.”   Between 1990 and 2010, the report shows that rising inequality has cost New Zealand and Mexico 10 percentage points of GDP, the UK nine points, and has robbed the US of nearly seven points over the same period.   The report makes it clear that education is the key to turning the inequality table.   The OECD cites lagging investments in education as a major cause behind the rise of inequality. The report says that those coming from a lower-income background suffer from “average education” and fewer educational opportunities, which helps drive increased inequality.   The research also reveals that children of parents with low levels of education “see their educational outcomes deteriorate as income inequality rises,” which in turn leads to lower social mobility and reduced skill development. However, the same does not apply to those whose parents achieved higher levels of education.   The gap between rich and poor OECD countries is at its highest in 30 years. The top 10 percent of individual earners make an average of 9.5 times more than the poorest. Thirty years ago it was only seven times as much.   http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/news_details/3366   December, 2014   Stand for democracy at work on Human Rights Day!   “Everyone must enjoy full access to decent work, education, health, safety and peace,” says Rosa Pavanelli, Public Services International (PSI) General Secretary. On International Human Rights Day, PSI calls on its affiliates and activists to unite and stand firm against the attack on core labour rights and freedoms.   Over the last few years, an unprecedented attempt to limit freedom of association and the right to strike has unfolded within the International Labour Organization (ILO). Since 2012, the employers’ organizations have tried to rule out the right to strike.   As a result, the very essence of democracy at work is at risk, with additional pressure for trade unions at the national level.   Not surprisingly, precarious work is on the increase almost everywhere while social protest tends to be criminalised, seriously threatening the achievements of social dialogue.   With the support of international financial institutions and lobbied by corporate interests, governments continue to pursue an ultra-liberal agenda, along with failing austerity measures. Yet, the trade union movement keeps fighting.   Workers’ organisations are at the forefront in opposing a new wave of trade agreements that might commodify public services and question national sovereignty, while benefiting multinationals, instead of the workers and taxpayers.   Trade unions keep mobilising for tax justice, calling for an end to tax havens, tax competition and to tax breaks for international companies that do not create jobs, but rather destroy them.   The trade union movement continues to build bridges across borders, striving to ensure living wages and decent working conditions for millions of migrant workers.   “From the attack on democracy at work to the dismantlement of public services, there seems to be a coordinated strategy eroding some fundamental human rights,” says Rosa Pavanelli, General Secretary of PSI.   “Amongst the many challenges ahead, millions of people are also deprived of their rights because of natural disasters, the impact of climate change and endless conflicts.”   “PSI remains strongly committed to ensure that the international community pursues real sustainable development goals and that everyone enjoys full human rights, such as decent work, education, health, safety and peace.”   http://www.world-psi.org/en/stand-democracy-work-human-rights-day   Sept 2014   Labor Rights Are Human Rights, by John Nichols.   U.S. Congressmen Keith Ellison and John Lewis have proposed legislation to protect union organizing as a civil right. “As go unions, so go middle-class jobs,” says Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat who serves as a Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair. “That’s why I’m proud to introduce the Employee Empowerment Act with civil rights icon John Lewis. This ground-breaking legislation will give workers the same legal options for union organizing discrimination as for other forms of discrimination—stopping anti-union forces in their tracks”   Amending the National Labor Relations Act to allow workers who face discrimination for engaging in union organizing to sue for justice in the civil courts—and to collect compensatory and punitive damages—is a sound and necessary initiative.   But it is certainly not a radical initiative—at least by American standards.   Indeed, the best way to understand what Ellison, Lewis and the cosponsors of their legislation are proposing is as a reconnection with a very American idea.   Despite the battering that unions have taken in recent years—in Wisconsin, Michigan and states across the country—Americans once encouraged countries around the world to embrace, extend and respect labor rights.   There was a time, within the living memory of millions of Americans, when this country championed democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to organize in the same breath.   When the United States occupied Japan after World War II, General Douglas MacArthur and his aides encouraged the country to adopt a constitution designed to assure that Hideki Tojo’s militarized autocracy would be replaced with democracy. Fully aware that workers and their unions had a role to play in shaping the new Japan, they included language that explicitly recognized that “the right of workers to organize and to bargain and act collectively is guaranteed.”   When the United States occupied Germany after World War II, General Dwight David Eisenhower and his aides urged the Germans to write a constitution that would assure that Adolf Hitler’s fascism was replaced with muscular democracy. Recognizing that workers would need to organize and make their voices heard in the new nation, the Germans included a provision that explicitly declared: “The right to form associations to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions shall be guaranteed to every individual and to every occupation or profession. Agreements that restrict or seek to impair this right shall be null and void; measures directed to this end shall be unlawful.”   When former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the International Commission on Human Rights, which drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that would in 1948 be adopted by the United Nations as a global covenant, Roosevelt and the drafters included a guarantee that “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”   For generations, Americans accepted the basic premise that labor rights are human rights. When this country counseled other countries on how to forge civil and democratic societies, Americans explained that the right to organize a trade union—and to have that trade union engage in collective bargaining as an equal partner with corporations and government agencies—had to be protected.   Now, with those rights under assault in America, it is wise, indeed, to recommit to the American ideal that working people must have a right to organize and to make their voices heard in a free and open society. As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said fifty years ago:   History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.   History remembers, as should we. The formal recognition of labor rights as human rights—and the extension of civil rights protections to prevent discrimination against labor organizing—is long overdue. Keith Ellison and John Lewis are renewing ideals that have historically enlarged America and made real the promise of democracy.   http://www.thenation.com/blog/181430/reconnecting-very-american-ideal-labor-rights-are-human-rights# Visit the related web page
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