Abundance or scarcity?

Abundance is a new book that has been attracting attention and debate among mainstream economists and politicians.  It aims to explain to Democrat members in the US why their party lost the election to Trump (narrow as that result was).  The authors, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, writers at very liberal mainstream The New York Times and The Atlantic, respectively, argue that it was because the Democrats and supporters of ‘liberal democracy’ have lost their ability in government to carry out great projects that could deliver the things and services that working people (called the ‘middle class’ in America) need.

Abundance or scarcity?

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

The vote in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29th November, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm by the bourgeois media. Photos featuring jubilant campaigners for voluntary euthanasia were plastered across web front pages. The real promise of this Bill is far from joyful for many. The Bill, which will now go to parliamentary committee with the opportunity for amendment, if finally passed into law, would represent a major political attack at a time of huge inequality and significant shortages in access to health care, social care, support for independent living, and end of life care, including adequate, high quality palliative care. Despite all this – and the loud opposition of disabled people’s organisations in particular – this measure is still mistakenly understood by some on the left as merely a matter of personal choice: an enabler rather than a threat.

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

UK: Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As things stand, “assisted dying” is illegal in England and Wales under section two of the Suicide Act 1961 — but will this change under Keir Starmer’s government? Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords last week and has just been published.

Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As if privatizing the NHS wasn’t enough, now they want to kill off the plebs!

Related:

The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled

Craig Murray, defender of Julian Assange, detained under Britain’s anti-terror laws

The Socialist Equality Party denounces the British authorities’ menacing detention of Craig Murray under repressive anti-terror laws. The human rights activist and former British diplomat was detained and questioned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act at Glasgow Airport on Monday.

Craig Murray, defender of Julian Assange, detained under Britain’s anti-terror laws

American Paranoia: How the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson was an unlikely Democratic candidate for the presidency, a sometime law professor and president of Princeton who had only served in public office for two years, as governor of New Jersey. But then it would be an unusual election, with a three-way fight. When the incumbent, William Howard Taft, defeated Theodore Roosevelt, his predecessor in the White House, for the Republican nomination, Roosevelt ran as a “Progressive”, splitting the Republican vote and allowing Wilson to win the presidency with little more than two-fifths of the popular vote.

American Paranoia: How the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare