The "occupy" protests

DESEMPLEO EN ESPAÑA Y SU REALIDAD:
LA SUMA 23 + 10

Dr. Jorge Mongay © 2011.
Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona
email: jorge.mongay@uab.cat

A few days ago I was reseraching Hace unos días estaba investigando sobre las implicaciones de ciertas variables en la facilidad de hacer negocios en los países, mientras tanto, encontré un dato global de interés, era el “Ranking del desempleo a nivel global” (CIA Worldfactbook, 2011). Es un dato que contiene los valores relativos al paro expresados en % en un total de 199 naciones y estados. Lo primero que hice es consultar la posición de España, pues bien, el ranking empezaba con Naciones tales como Mónaco o Qtar en primeras posiciones y situándose en tasas de desempleo menores que el 1%, a continuación el dedo índice de mi mano derecha inició un largo descenso del cursor en busca de nuestro país y tras pasar un rato viendo pueblos y sin pararse en ninguno, finalmente se detuvo en la posición 166 de dicha clasificación mostrando un 20.10% estimado. He de clarificar que yo personalmente prefiero utilizar esta fuente independendiente a otras tales como a del Gobierno de España, la de la oposición o la de cualquier otro partido político o grupo de interés general.

Lo que llama la atención, o por lo menos yo no me lo esperaba: Por detrás nuestro se computan tan solo 33 naciones! Soy conciente de lo que la mayoría de economistas argumentrán, tales como que nuestro país tiene mecanismos de protección social relativamente sólidos, que está en un nivel de primera clase en cuanto al nivel de desarrollo humano, etc... y esto es incuestionable, aunque no es la voluntad de este artículo discutir estos temas aqui.

Lo que si se convirtió en mi objetivo era ver quién estaba detrás nuestro, ya que únicamente eran 33 naciones, es decir estamos en el 16.5% de las PEORES naciones en el mundo en este tema. Y dejenme que vuelva a reiterar que el objetivo de este pequeño documento es analizar únicamente el dato del paro objetivamente y sus cifras en una comparativa global.

Ahora la pregunta es la siguiente: ¿cuáles son estas naciones, dónde están y cuáles son sus elementos comunes?

De estas 33 naciones, 23 de ellas están el continente africano, estando la mayoría en la zona subsahariana. Se muestran en estas naciones los mayores niveles de corrupción y el mayor subdesarrollo a nivel global.

Tras estas naciones africanas quedan únicamente 10 naciones por detrás nuestro. En este caso se ha recogido información para que el lector pueda comprobar por sí mismo el nivel de desarrollo de las mismas. He aquí la lista de estos países:

1.Micronesia.
2.Macedonia.
3.Afganistan.
4.Yemen.
5.Franja de Gaza.
6.Haiti.
7.Bosnia - Herzegovina.
8.Kosovo.
9.Nepal

Aún así yo propongo que cada cuál extraiga sus propias conclusiones.

I would have included the anti-corruption protests in India on your map. They are clearly aimed against the inequalities entrenched by the corporate families' wholesale purchase of the political and judicial classes. Indian or Russian oligarchs what difference? These families are just implementing the "Don Corleone" approach on an unprecedented industrial scale.

The chart reveals the detailed information about the youth unemployment rate, GDP change and government gross debt of several countries. The GDP change is calculated the variation from the first quarter of 2008 to 2011, and the other two data are all collected in 2011.
From the chart we can see the countries with high debt and decrease of GDP usually have great unemployment rate. So the chart can be divided into two parts, the boundary is US. On the left part can be regarded as the ill sector, since the five countries have higher unemployment ratio, great decrease of GDP and a lot of government debt. On the opposite part, the situation is much better.
I must talk something about Japan, whose data is very interesting. Japan’s GDP has dropped 6.1% since 2008 and the debt is incredibly high—233.1% of its GDP. From this point of view, it, no doubt, should belong to the ill sector. However, its youth unemployment ratio is just 8.5%, lowest in this chart.
It is very obvious that Spain and Greece have the greatest number of unemployment, respectively 46.1% and 43.1%. The countries with greatest GDP change are Greece and Chile. Chile’s GDP has risen 10.2%, while Greece has fallen 9.4%.
In conclusion, generally the countries with high rate of unemployment have a great amount of debt and decrease of GDP, while Japan is the exception.

Those of us who understand that capitalism is fatally flawed as it is now and leading back into feudalism, are glad to see so many people without jobs push these issues. This IS something productive they are doing with their time and it takes courage. And if they "just went out and found a job" how would they have the time to effect this great shift in political discourse that was long overdue? If they went out and just found a job (because that's so easy to do now) then they'd end up waiting to be cut from the company a couple of decades later, have obsolete skills, be unwanted, and then join the protest anyway.

Here is an excellent book that would help the reader understand the issues we presently have with greedy Capitalism:

The Fair Society
subtitled The Science of Human Nature and The Pursuit of Social Justice

Published by the University of Chicago in 2011 and authored by Peter Corning, director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems and past Professor at Stanford University. He blogs at www.thefairsociety.blogspot.com

Highly recommended

@ GeorgeFarahat

I do not see how modern "capitalism" as "free market capitalism". Free market capitalism does not include rent-seeking, playing moral hazards. In ideal free markets, whoever made the best business decisions and makes the best products and services come up on top; whoever makes the poor decisions fail, and will be allowed to fail, and have to start over again.

I am not sure an ideal free market is attainable. The current state of economy is hardly free - it is full of moral hazards with Adam Smith's invisible hand being deliberately chopped off (please excuse the phrase). It is not only Wall Street should taking the blame, as general public abuses subsidies and inefficient welfare systems.

Whoever claim they are defending free market economy in political world is, quite frankly, doubletalk. It is time to stop dreaming about idealism and speaking rhetoric. I am not sure the fix is easy (I laughed as I type this, as I am not sure what the fix can even be). One thing I am sure, both the 1% and the other 99% must be ready to take pain. It just happened the 1% has more political capital, which is good as bad economy pain killer. The imbalance of political capital between the 1% and the 99% must be rebalanced, and other (such as wealth) imbalances will be managed as re-balancing of political capital takes its course.

i like how there are so many arseholes posting "the protesters should get a job instead".
In the end that will be the only arguement the corporate elite will have against the protest as well. (Perhaps in the later stages Cold War ideology will reoccur, demonizing people as "communists".)
My point is that: if the protesters had a job, who would push these issues around the world, spread this flame, and get The Economist to take notice??!?!!?
Explain that to me, those of you who stupidly say, "They should just get a job?"

The "occupy" protests may be difficult to argue globally, but in the United States these protests rely solely on unemployment. Therefore, the fact that people are taking time off from their jobs to go protest unemployment and sleep in a park is very arguable. Yes, the economy needs help, but that is nothing new. There is a fine line between protesting positively and shooting yourself in the foot in the process by protesting uselessly.

The history of wealth is the history of the "noble". The problem is not new, but the real consequences are. Since the government shifted from the hands of noble to the people delegate by them to do the politics, all the public's attention focused on the governs. But, as said ex-president Bill Clinton, "the problem is that there ia a government inside the goverment, and i don't rule it. No one governs it". The fixing needed is more related, in my opinion, to the way power is negociated than in the money itself. Lobbies, De-regulation, bail-outs... that sort of stuff is big dogs fight and the common doesn't even dream about the "de facto" reasons that lead these man to act like they do. What the world really need is to dismantle the MILITARY INDUSTRY COMPLEX. As Eisenhower said, the implications to the society, in the case of that people run more and more power is inimaginable. Nowadays we can see clearly that implications.

One of the reasons of the actual economic crisis could be the fact the too much machines and computers are employed and not human workers . This could sound childish , but I think if these nations will try to let work more human workers and not machines , their products could have a better quality and as these nations could have in this way more workers , they could have more people able to spend their money and to keep a certain value of their own currency . That is best first step to do for me .

Thanks for your article in the Economist. You are then part of the solution, to provide a weekly column: "New Dimensions of the Human Being in the 21st Century". Already some of your readers have volunteered some of those dimensions"

I support the right of protesters to non-violent protests. Although there will be elements that will take advantage of this global movement to create havoc for businesses and governments, the overall objective remains survival of the poor and middle class people in a descent social setting. When the corporate elite are accused to be the cause of the misery of the 99% of people, there must be an investigation of their practices by an honest third party (not the government). The dictatorship of money is behind much of our moral catastrophies. Free-market Capitalism is particularly the cause of much misery in America, Canada, Europe and all emerging economies. In spite of philanthropic ventures by some billionaires, the overall picture of the free-market strategy is ugly.
The solution I propose as a start is to increase taxes on large businesses that are found guilty of manipulating the market. This should be coupled by an incentive by government to businesses that hire more people (probably in tax reduction).

The current Occupation has been going on for 2 months in Wall Street. It is likely not being able to meet the objective of stopping the Robber Banksters to rape the land and to backward ass the 99%. Unless there is a change of strategy, it is therefore likely to die a natural death from the ultimate starvation of fundings from donors.

If the unfettered Capitalism is to cease, it will be necessary to strangulate Wall Street and prevent it from functioning normally. This is then a revolutionary war using Mao's strategem of surrounding the cities from the country-side. Rabid capitalism is not going to just roll-over and die. The reactionaries will put up a fierce fight using the array of arsenals at the disposal of the 1% because it is a life and death situation to preserve the privelege of the neo-Kelons.

Regardless of the reason for protest, it is clear that things need to be changed, primarily financially. If people all around the world are protesting for various reasons about monetar problems it should be taken very seriously by world leaders and focused on more strongly than it has been in the past. If nothing is changed, this non-violent protests could rapidly degrade to a state of emergency; instead of people protesting and asking for capitalistic changes they become violent and DEMAND change by any means necessary. Hopefully it won't come down to that but if this situation isn't taken seriously by higher officials soon, some form of riot may break out in some countries. The graph shows the amount of youth unemployment from country to country; parents of these youth will be furious if their children are not able to get a job and thus be less likely to have a prosperous future. When it comes to protecting your children and getting the best for them, parents will do just about anything. Don't get on their bad side or the latter mentioned will be even more likely to occur.

People in these countries are not capable of creating real change, they've been conditioned to follow the civil structure set by the very elites they are protesting, protesting only where they have permission, holding banners instead of storming compounds holding hunger strikes. If the elite really feel threatened, the media is more than powerful enough to turn completely on these protesters and even they themselves can be convinced they are the bad guys.

Unless there is a urgent re-distribution of the means of production from the 1% to the 99%, I guess that the Occupiers would only act as fore-runners of future Revolutions that will overthrow the Crony Capitalist system by force.

dialectics coming to life

Hard to argue against? Here's an argument: that "someone, somewhere, should do something to right the problems of global capitalism as currently constituted" is no more a "demand" than "fix the world" is.

Although lacking a common political ideology, the Occupiers are fighting for Liberty, People democracy and Livelihood. They should choose to follow one of the political thoughts from the various Revolutionary Icons like Marx, Trotsky, Mao, Deng or even Che Guevara to advance their revolutionary struggles to overthrow the rabid Capitalism represented by the neocon Banksters.

Is this the beginning of the hedge funds and mutual funds? Watch out for increase in the intensity of the protests!

Finally, the American public are getting out of the 'feel good' stupor of the last thirty years. Let them feel the pain of 'withdrawal' of this drug called 'credit and round tripping'. The Japanese are getting used to it for the last one decade and my guess is that the Americans and the Western Europeans (except Germany due to the merger of East and West) will have a lost decade in the future.

Have you pondered about the quick recovery of the world economy after World War Two? This recovery was lead to a stupendous rise in the GDP of the economies of US, Western Europe and Japan (Big 3) . All this growth, in my view, was not real. It was a deliberate indulgence in round tripping. The round tripping was a necessity felt by the political powers to avert a global economic crisis due to the ravages of world war Two. My guess is that the Jews planned this out.

Additionally, there was a credit built up – primarily based NOT on real net-worth of the Big 3 but on a fictitious (hollow) net-worth.
Unfortunately, a combination of round tripping and credit built up created a black hole like condition. It grew wider and wider and hence needed more quantitative easing. Once the QE stops, stagnation sets in - hence the slowdown – or the Japanese ‘lost decade +’ syndrome.

But the credit built-up is not sustainable and hence, if there is an attempt to reduce it, it will mean severe tightening and this will create havoc on society. I expect the governments will topple and chaos will reign in the Big 3 (Japan may escape). And not treating will bring the chaos closer and more violent.

Best wishes
Kishore Nair from Mumbai