{"id":40965,"date":"2018-11-27T07:23:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T12:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40965"},"modified":"2018-11-27T07:23:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T12:23:22","slug":"the-politics-of-debt-serfs-and-tax-donkeys-our-only-choice-is-the-least-bad-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40965","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Debt-Serfs and Tax Donkeys: Our Only Choice Is the Least Bad Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Politics of Debt-Serfs and Tax Donkeys: Our Only Choice Is the Least Bad Option<\/a><\/h3>\n

The reality is there is no avenue left for advocacy, grievances or redress in a system dominated by global corporations and self-serving political insiders.<\/i><\/p>\n

What’s striking about the protests in Paris against higher fuel taxes is the universality of the protesters’ expressions of being fed up with a status quo that no longer listens to them.<\/b> Their commentaries of frustration are echoed around the world, from the U.S. to China: \u2018People are in the red. They can\u2019t afford to eat\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The basic problem is obvious: wages have stagnated while taxes, interest on debt and costs of essentials have soared.<\/b> When officialdom claims the higher fuel taxes are an expression of concern for the environment, it’s difficult not to gag at the hypocrisy: where are the higher taxes on the corporate and private jets, and the bunker-fuel burning freighters that ply the seas in service of globalization?<\/p>\n

People are frustrated because debt-serfs and tax donkeys don’t have any real political options:<\/b> with all the political parties mere variations of a sclerotic, self-serving elite, our only choice is to either not vote at all or vote for the least bad option.<\/i><\/p>\n

In the original version of feudalism, peasants armed with pitchforks knew where to go for redress or regime change: the feudal lord’s castle on the hill. Though you won’t find this in conventional narratives of the Middle Ages, peasant revolts were a common occurrence; serfs weren’t always delighted to toil for their noble masters.<\/p>\n

In the present era of corporate dominance, where can serfs go to demand redress and financial freedom from the neofeudal system? Nowhere.<\/b> The global corporations that own the land and the productive assets have no castle that can be stormed; they exist in an abstract financial world of stock shares, buybacks, bonds, lobbyists and political influence.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Politics of Debt-Serfs and Tax Donkeys: Our Only Choice Is the Least Bad Option The reality is there is no avenue left for advocacy, grievances or redress in a system dominated by global corporations and self-serving political insiders. What’s striking about the protests in Paris against higher fuel taxes is the universality of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[127,195,23225,4093,23227,2994,7081,587,4345,1343,23226,783,1808],"class_list":["post-40965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-debt","tag-debt-serfs","tag-feudalism","tag-global-corporations","tag-interest","tag-neofeudalism","tag-of-two-minds","tag-political-system","tag-regime-change","tag-tax-donkeys","tag-taxes","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40966,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40965\/revisions\/40966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}