In the News (from MintPress News): “The day after two major developments in the U.S. saw worker pensions put on the chopping block in order to bail out state and local governments, an analysis in the New York Times shows that across the Atlantic, European nations are now stripping their worker protections and dismantling pensions as they follow the established American model of putting corporate elites first in a race to the bottom for cheap labor and deregulated capitalism.

“On Tuesday in Detroit, a bankruptcy judge ruled that city pensioners can have their earned benefits cut as he approved the largest municipal bankruptcy in the state’s history.

“Also on Tuesday, the state of Illinois passed a measure that dramatically alters the pension formula for retired workers and diminishes those benefit programs for current and future public employees. …

“Meanwhile, in an expansive piece in the New York Times on Wednesday, titled ‘Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe,’ Eduardo Porter explains how European governments and policy makers—by following the U.S. example of cancelling collective bargaining protections, attacking pensions, and slashing wages—are not only expanding income and wealth inequality but are ‘radically changing the nature of Europe’s society.’ …

“Andrew Watt, an economist who heads the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Germany, worries that the push for labor market deregulation will cascade from one weak country to the next, as all engage in a futile race to create jobs by gaining market share from one another in a world of insufficient demand. ‘Whichever country is weakest at the time is forced into major cutbacks. First Germany, now Spain, next France,’ he said.”

My Comment: Thus they come to war. The solution to the world conflict is in a conscious concerted transition to rational sustainable production and living standards. But it is not possible to even dream about it with human egoism. That is why it is necessary to first implement the course of integral education at least for the part of humanity that is freed from work as a condition for providing them with welfare. Otherwise, sliding to the bottom cannot be stopped.
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