THE FRUITS OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM.

     It is difficult to know where to start when looking at the effects of global capitalism but I suppose we could start with the fact that almost 1/5 of the world’s population lives in squalid unhealthy areas without water, sanitation or public services, and in one of the richest countries in the world, USA, its literacy ranks 10th out of 17 industrialised nations.

       When it comes to distribution of wealth the Guardian Weekly’s figures (2003) tell their own story. In 1970 the average American CEO made 40 times the average worker’s salary. By 1998 that had changed to 1,000 times the average worker’s salary. Another display of capitalism’s glaring inequalities could be the fact that in 1999 and 2000 the Carnival Cruise Line created profits of approximately $1 billion but paid virtually no corporate income tax while at the same time in 2000, a janitor employed by Carnival Cruise Lines maked less than $1:55 an hour. Another example of the system’s exploitation, if we really needed one could be the fact that in 2000 Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney maked $9,783 an hour compared with a Haitian worker who stitches Disney products for 28 cents an hour. Where is all this wealth that capitalism claims to be creating? An interesting fact tells us, 52 of the world’s largest economies are corporate economies. What do they do with some of this great wealth? In 1993 tobacco maker Phillip Morris decided to create a grassroots citizens group called “The Advancement of Sound Science” to fight regulation of the tobacco industry and to portray the dangers of smoking as unfounded. Another use the corporate world puts some its wealth to would be the example of ExxonMobil, one of the world’s most profitable corporations with sales of more than $1 billion a day. ExxonMobil used some of its money to fund some 124 organisations that deny climate change. In 2002, the US granted Poland, one of the poorer nations in Europe, an interest-free loan of $4 billion, what for, to purchase fighter jets.

      This reads like an indictment, when will the people come to a guilty verdict and pass sentence of banishment from the planet, on this vicious exploitive system.

 

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