The Sordid Underbelly of Capitalism

The leaders of the capitalist countries tend to show a studied oblivion towards the sordid underbelly of Capitalism. One of the sad but usually iqnored side effects of this system is how the weaker segments of society are left behind in this rat race.

Children and widows - call them single parents - are the ones who suffer the most.

A government-sponsored study conducted by London University's Institute of Education called Millennium Cohort Study shows 20% of British seven-year-olds live in "severe poverty" because their both parents together earn, including benefits, less than half the average national income. The numbers of poverty stricken children are even higher in families of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Almost 75% of children of these immigrant parents live in poverty. (51%) of black seven-year-olds and just over a quarter of white seven-year-olds live in poverty, with three-fifths from these groups in single-parent families.

The study tracked 14,000 children to understand how family circumstances determine a youngester's prospects for education, health and happiness in Britain. This is largely because of high unemployment rates for mothers and fathers.

About 7% of all seven-year-olds living in poverty do not have two pairs of all-weather shoes. About 50% do not get pocket money.

The number of children living in poverty is likely to be rising.

Scottish seven-year-olds are slightly more likely to be living in affluence. Welsh children are slightly more likely to be in poverty.

Another foul aspect of British society is the prevalent racial profiling and discrimination. Black are 26.6 times and Asians are 6.3 times more likely than whites to face stop and search by police which uses Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was originally introduced to deal with football hooligans and the threat of serious violence.

Analysis was done by the London School of Economics and the Open Society Justice Initiative and it was based on Ministry of Justice figures for 2008-09.

The data reveal a marked escalation. Last year blacks were 10.7 times more likely to be stopped than whites, and Asians 2.2 times more likely. Ben Bowling, professor of criminal justice at King's College London, said this "stereotyping" by police "is likely to alienate those communities which are most affected".

This discrimination and stereotyping will certainly increase by new draft Home Office guidance which will allow police to stop and search on the basis of ethnic origin under Section 60. Use of Section 60 has already risen more than 300% between 2005 and last year.

The problem of racial profiling is not confined to Britain only but the British figures provide the widest "race gap" in stop-and-search found internationally. The previous highest stop-and-search record holder was Russian police which used these powers against non-Slavs on the Moscow Metro. Non-Slavs are 21.8 times more likely to be stopped and searched by Russian police than Slavs.

A study on the Paris Metro found passengers of Arab appearance were more than 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched. The practice is also exercised by the New York police. In New York blacks and Hispanics are 9 times more likely to be stopped than white New Yorkers.

You want to see another aspect of unregulated capitalism in action?

Remember the media circus and the twenty-four hour live coverage of the rescue of Chilean miners that were trapped in the collapsed mine for seventy days?

Here is some of what William K. Black, who was a federal regulator during the Savings and Loan crisis and appears in Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story', says about this incident.

The Chilean mine was privately owned. It had a bad safety record. It had been ordered to shut down permanently. The Chilean President Pinera had promised the people of Chile that: "never again in Chile would people be allowed to work in such inhumane conditions."

The mine owners had violated the law in failing to have a second entrance to the mine as an alternative escape route which would have greatly reduced the risk of the miners being trapped by the collapse of a portion of the shaft. The only way the mine owners could have gotten away with such an obvious violation of the safety rules was through bribery of the regulatory officials.

The mine did not have the required ladder that would have allowed the workers to escape the mine in the immediate aftermath of the collapse through a ventilation shaft that subsequently became inaccessible. A $25 ladder apparently would have prevented the tragedy, but the private owners' profit motive led them to avoid that expense.

The focus of the mine owners on profit and disregard for human life and limb explains why the second entrance and ladder were not there. Once the mine shaft collapsed, the private mining company declared that it not only could not pay to rescue the miners -- it could not even pay their wages. It threatened to file for bankruptcy.

The rescue was paid for by the State-owned mine (i.e., the Chilean government had to bail out the private mine owner to the tune of an estimated rescue cost of $10 to $20million in order to rescue the miners). The Chilean mine had gold and copper ore. Both of those minerals are selling for record prices. This makes the private mining company's failure to provide another exit and a ladder all the more outrageous. Where did the profits go?

Capitalism would have left the miners to die. The government paid to rescue the miners.