the Banner Bright

In this month’s issue of Current Affairs, Joshua Cho writes In Defense of Laziness: “Aside from the absurdity of knowing that the phrase ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ was originally intended to prove the absurdity of succeeding without outside help (because the very act is literally impossible to perform), the continued irony of rich people who don’t work accusing the working poor of being ‘lazy’ shouldn’t be lost on us. It’s true that there are many rich people who work a lot, but they are not rich because they work hard. … Capitalists are quite literally people who receive money from owning a lot of investments, rather than working for every dollar like everyone else. … Nobody ‘earns’ a billion dollar fortune. And the bootstrapping myth only perpetuates the absurd pattern where the most victimized and hardworking people are accused of laziness by those who don’t really work. … Socialists shouldn’t shy away from the fact that a lot of the policies they champion would save people from pointless work, freeing up their time to do other things. … When people attack socialists for wanting an easy world that encourages laziness, we shouldn’t hesitate to agree. We should instead ask: ‘What’s wrong with laziness?'”

Arwa Mahdawi: “When you think about hotbeds of socialism, Texas is not the first place that comes to mind. However, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll last month, 56% of Democratic primary voters in the Lone Star state say they have a positive view of socialism while only 37% have a favourable view of capitalism. It is a similar story in California; more Democrats feel positive about socialism than about capitalism. … [T]he poll reflects a step-change in US attitudes towards capitalism. It would be inaccurate to say that the US is embracing ‘socialism’, because the word has become amorphous: boomers associate it with Stalinism, millennials associate it with Scandinavia. In many ways, the S-word is a red herring. The country has not so much warmed to socialism as it has cooled on capitalism. This is hardly surprising when you consider how the latter has failed ordinary Americans. The poorest men in the US have the same life expectancy as men in Sudan. Maternal mortality more than doubled between 1991 and 2014. The middle class has shrunk. People are desperate for an alternative to an increasingly dismal status quo. … Honestly, I don’t know if the US is ready for a socialist president, but it may be more ready than it has been before.”

An independent study conducted by three universities has confirmed that compulsory income management — which targets vulnerable Indigenous communities — is ruining lives instead of empowering them. The report found that by limiting their access to cash, people are cut off from important cash-only transactions, such as taking their kids to community events like fun-fairs, or buying second-hand textbooks. Worse, the companies profiting from the system (such as Indue) don’t pay their “clients'” bills on time, so that affected families are forced to use their limited cash to pay rent. Survey respondents “overwhelmingly indicate that IM had hindered rather than helped with management of their financial affairs, and that it had reduced their sense of autonomy, wellbeing and overall locus of control”. Dr Michelle Peterie summarised: “The overwhelming finding is that compulsory income management is having a disabling rather than enabling affect on the lives of many social security recipients. This was true across all of our research sites.”

In a victory for freedom of speech, a Fair Work Commission appeal bench has ordered the reinstatement of a worker who made a Downfall parody about his employer’s EBA negotiations. At the time of the awful initial decision upholding the sacking, I made my own meme in response, explaining that a Downfall meme “suggests the subject is under intense pressure and refuses to accept reality as their position deteriorates and the humour comes from the absurd juxtaposition of Hitler’s downfall with a mundane situation. … If it literally suggests the subject is Hitlerish, the joke falls flat.” The worker’s lawyer incorporated this analysis into his appeal submissions: “the Downfall video genre involves an absurd juxtaposition between Hitler’s downfall and a contemporary mundane, commonplace or day-to-day matter not going to plan, and is a device to make a humorous point about the contemporary matter not going to plan; there would be no humour in the video genre if it constituted depicting a person as a Nazi or likening a person to a Nazi”. The FWC Full Bench accepted this and gave BP two weeks to reinstate the worker to his job.