A Simple Prescription for a Longer Life: Economic Equality

Sam Pizzigati

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control released some welcome news recently: Americans are living a tiny bit longer. In 2018, U.S. life expectancy inched up about a month, from 78.6 to 78.7 years.

The White House credited “President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and really the entire administration” for the increase, the first since 2014.

In fact, the modest uptick owes next to nothing to the Trump administration. Americans are living slightly longer, a Washington Post analysis points out, “despite the Trump administration’s health-care policies.”

From day one in office, the Trump team has worked to undermine the federal programs expanding access to addiction treatment, even as overdoses have been the single most deadly driver of America’s recent — and unprecedented — life-expectancy declines.

Thankfully, legal challenges and regulatory changes have narrowed Big Pharma’s capacity to addict struggling Americans. Overdose deaths dropped 4.1 percent in 2018.

Can we now stop worrying?

Only at our peril. Even with the 2018 uptick, American lives last no longer on average today than they did back in 2010. In effect, we’ve gone a decade without any appreciable increase in life expectancy.

Think about that for a moment. Over recent years, we’ve seen major breakthroughs in cancer treatment. We’ve seen more and more Americans paying close attention to their daily choices. Yet Americans, on the whole, are living no longer.

The even more troubling reality: Americans live nowhere near as long as people elsewhere in the developed world. A new study from the Commonwealth Fund shows that U.S. life expectancy lags significantly behind Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland’s.

All these nations, to add insult to injury, spend significantly less on health care than us. “We live sicker and die younger than our counterparts around the world,” notes Roosa Tikkanen, a Commonwealth Fund research associate. “We can do better.”

Why aren’t we doing better?

In recent years, analysts have pointed the finger at what economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case call “deaths of despair,” everything from drug overdoses to suicides. In 2017 alone, they note, Americans experienced 158,000 deaths of despair — “the equivalent of three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling out of the sky every day for a year.”

Deaton and Case link these deals to the “falling wages and “dearth of good jobs” in an age of rising inequality. But not just struggling working families have suffered. American middle-income families overall have shorter, less healthy lives than their middle-income counterparts in other developed nations.

Inequality itself seems to be a killer.

Most of us can understand how sheer poverty can adversely affect health. But how can higher levels of economic inequality affect the health of people with middle incomes? Many epidemiologists see stress as the prime villain.

“The more unequal the society, the more people feel anxiety about status and how they are seen and judged,” British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett explain. “These effects are seen across all income groups — from the poorest to the richest tenth of the population.”

Greater inequality, greater anxiety, greater stress. That stress pounds daily on our immune systems, leaving us ever weaker and more susceptible to disease, ever more despairing and addicted to whatever may bring us momentary relief — from drugs to booze to junk food.

In the middle of the 20th century, the developed world had no huge life expectancy gap between the United States and its peer nations. Yet we’ve become the world’s most unequal major developed nation. And the more unequal we become, the further behind we fall in life expectancy.

That leaves us with a simple prescription for longer life: If we Americans want to have a healthier society, a healthier distribution of income and wealth.

Computer modeling can assist in efforts against the Covid-19 pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

Globally, the number of known Covid-19 cases is approaching 100,000, while the death rate has exceeded 3,000 cases, with more than 80 countries reporting an incidence of the infection.

The majority of the new cases are occurring outside of mainland China. Europe and the US are experiencing acceleration in the number of cases with now 11 deaths in the US with 149 confirmed cases indicating, as in Iran, a larger, and as of yet, undiagnosed health care crisis.

The global lack of preparedness, despite repeated warnings by the World Health Organization and experts in pandemics, shows that the recommendations had been largely ignored. But as clusters of infections in Iran, South Korea and Italy captured attention, the worldwide reaction has turned to panic as the international magnitude of the outbreak became tangible.

A study published during the early phase of the pandemic on January 31, 2020, provided a new modeling-based estimate that placed the number of individuals infected in Wuhan city at 75,800. The authors cautioned that with the lack of accurate records and timelines to include confirmed cases and close contacts, the accuracy of the estimate and the potential for pandemic remained unclear. However, the estimate has turned out to be quite accurate and prescient.

A computer generated model predicting the spread of the coronavirus. (Credit: EpiRisk)

One recommendation that was made, whose importance became evident later, was that if “substantial public health control measures to prevent large epidemics in areas outside Wuhan” were undertaken, then “the growth rate and size of local epidemics in all cities across China could be reduced.”

China was criticized for unprecedented quarantine measures, but, as the WHO later declared, these efforts proved effective. Chinese case rates and death rates have declined below the figures when President Xi Jinping declared a national emergency.

According to Dr. Gabriel Leung, author of the study, “based on our estimates, we would strongly urge authorities worldwide that preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment, including securing supplies of test reagents, drugs, personal protective equipment, hospital supplies, and above all human resources, especially in cities with close ties with Wuhan and other major Chinese cities.”

Over the last two decades, new tools, including computer modeling of epidemics, have been employed to track Ebola epidemics, the Zika virus outbreak, H1N1 swine flu and annual seasonal flus. Mathematical and statistical modeling has aided in targeting outbreak response and allocating necessary resources and appropriate community efforts to mitigate the impact of the outbreak (school closures, social distancing, etc.).

Obtaining the data from nationally-based public health agencies to incorporate into the computer modeling, however, has been fraught with frustrations on the part of scientists. They have cited difficulties functioning in a collaborative sense with legal and ethical restrictions imposed on creating a complex communicative environment where data sharing is allowed and encouraged. Academic secrecy, fear of surveillance, and security concerns pose immense restrictions that have to be combated each time.

Several US and Canadian scientific teams who modeled the 2019-nCoV outbreak have offered multiple estimates with considerable variations that range from 500,000 to over 4 million potential cases in Hubei province. The key variables that epidemiologists use to predict the course of an epidemic are also utilized by computer modelers to provide best estimates. The forecasts are predicated on factors such as government response, population density, infectivity of the contagion, etc. The credibility of the data allows for more precise predictions.

Infectious disease modelers have quantitatively improved their approximations over the last decade. According to physicist Dr. Alessandro Vespignani of Northeastern University, best known for his work on the application of network theory to the spread of disease, specifically on the Zika virus, “year by year there have been improvements in forecasting models and the way they are combined to provide forecasts.”

Much of epidemic modeling has been used for flu forecasts in the US to better predict when each seasonal outbreak will begin, peak and grow more intense. The intent is to provide important and accurate data for policy makers to institute health alerts and initiatives for communities at risk. Prior to such computational forecasts, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relied on data from traditional influenza surveillance systems that measured outcomes of an epidemic only after it had begun.

In a recent FluSight Challenge initiated by the CDC, a probabilistic artificial intelligence computer model developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to provide the most accurate prediction of the 2018 flu season, beating out 23 other teams.

David Osthus, a statistician at Los Alamos and the developer of the computer model named Dante, said, “accurately forecasting diseases is similar to weather forecasting in that you need to feed computer models large amounts of data so they can learn trends. But it’s very different because disease spread depends on daily choices humans make in their behavior—such as travel, hand washing, riding public transportation, interactions with the healthcare system, among other things. Those are very difficult to predict.”

The premise for such modeling goes back a century to groundbreaking studies by two Scottish epidemiologists, Ross and Hudson (1915-1917). They summarized the essential components of understanding the scope of an epidemic into three components: (1) when the infected person is introduced into a community, (2) the susceptibility of those in the community to the disease, and (3) the time course of the disease within each individual.

In so far as initial modeling results are based on fixed premises, they may overestimate the possible impact of disease but function to provide health authorities a starting point for efforts to contain and mitigate the epidemic. Using the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic as an example, in the fall of 2014, the CDC, using their Ebola Response Model, had projected that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa could reach 550,000 to 1.4 million by end of January 2015 if no additional interventions were placed into controlling the outbreak.

They published their estimates in September of 2014 with a warning that public health agencies and international communities needed to act expeditiously if they were to contain the epidemic. By March 2015, based on these concerns, 10 countries had supplied approximately $2.2 billion in funds and medical supplies to the effort.

Additionally, CDC modeling analyzed the regional spread of the Ebola virus, calculating the probable location of the next area to be affected and diverting and allocating resources accordingly. Surreptitiously, an untested Ebola vaccine was quickly resurrected and placed into an emergency clinical trial on the ground, which proved very effective.

The efforts to isolate patients, follow up on contact leads, and bring to a halt unsafe burial practices limited the total number of cases to 28,600, with 11,325 deaths. Through the implementation of Ebola treatment units and community care centers, an estimated 9,100 cases were prevented by the close of October. The interventions employed drastically reduced the initial estimates, but required the concerted efforts by an international coalition to change the course of the epidemic, whose case fatality index was greater than 40 percent.

However, lessons learned from the response noted that available data frequently contained inconsistencies that impeded time-dependent efforts on the ground. Delays in reports also made it difficult to precisely model the extent of the disease. Also, with multiple teams in place, lack of data sharing agreements led to delays in modeling projection. The predictions generated also needed to be shared with all stakeholders to include, most importantly, the public.

Modelers writing computer equations must know the number of new infections caused by an infected person and the length of time from the infected person showing symptoms to when those they infected show symptoms. These two numbers help define the growth rate of an epidemic, the basic reproduction number, which is dependent on the nature of the virus, route of transmission and other factors, like the heath and susceptibility of those at risk.

A value greater than 1 implies transmission of the disease is sustainable—in other words, the disease will not simply die out before it spreads to a wide population. For instance, the growth rate for Covid-19 was estimated at above 2, which is much higher than the seasonal flu, which is at 1.3. Clearly, it has been evident that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has in approximately three months spread to every continent except Antarctica.

However, as Antoine Allard of Laval University in Quebec noted in their publication, “the relation between R0 [the reproduction rate], the risk of an epidemic, its potential size becomes less straightforward, and sometimes counterintuitive in more realistic models. Bodies may react differently to an infection, which in turn can facilitate or inhibit the transmission of the pathogen to others. The behavioral component is also very important.”

The time to cause illness, also known as serial time, is critical, because it informs how quickly projected cases can be expected. Additionally, measures such as the quarantine that took effect in Wuhan on January 23, which included isolating patients, introduction of wearing masks in public, closing businesses, prohibiting public gatherings and self-quarantine, played a significant role in controlling the potential spread of the epidemic.

In developing a realistic model, it has become apparent that there is a fourth number that should be considered—how long someone can be infected and contagious, but not show symptoms. According to Dr. Vespignani, “When people are exposed but not infected, they tend to travel and can’t be detected. The more realistic you want your model to be, the more you should incorporate the exposed but not ill population.”

Using powerful computer analytics, the researchers at Los Alamos are employing what they call “agent-based-models.” Using estimates of tens of millions for population sizes, they simulate the hypothetical activities of individuals in such a scenario as those occurring in mainland China.

They can consider factors such as categorizing group dynamics where people of similar backgrounds are more likely to encounter others according to income, education, age and social categories such as religion. They also consider the number of commuters each day, route of travel, locations of commute, shopping habits, bus and train schedules, peak commute hours, social habits, all tracked from one second to another.

They also then take into account when authorities enforce school closures, lockdowns, travel restrictions on these models. Such complex modeling, however, requires enormous computing power, and it can take several days or weeks before results can be reported.

Such modeling of epidemics has tremendous potential for informing communities and nations on how to coordinate efforts to minimize the potential impact of a deadly outbreak. However, political malaise and inertia in the context of the organization of the globe in a nation-state system impedes efforts that must be initiated on an international front. The utter disarray and “improvisational character” of the response only highlights the bankruptcy of the capitalist nation-states who, addicted to the need for more profits for the ruling elite, continue to fail to respond to scientific warnings about threats to human life.

Clash between Bolsonaro and Congress deepens crisis of capitalist rule in Brazil

Tomas Castanheira

A dispute between Brazil’s Congress and the country’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro over who will control the 2020 budget has exacerbated internal divisions within the Brazilian bourgeoisie. The attempt by congressmen to expand the so-called tax budget—instituted in 2015 and which the president has no power to change—was answered by the top echelons of the Bolsonaro government with calls to disempower Congress by means of popular pressure.

This position was expressed by Gen. Augusto Heleno, one of Bolsonaro’s right-hand men and head of the Institutional Security Office. Transmitted live by the government, allegedly by “accident,” Heleno was recorded saying: “We cannot accept these guys [Congress] blackmailing us. Fuck them.” The general told Bolsonaro that he could not “be intimidated” and that he should show the population that he was being pressured.

In response to Heleno’s speech, street demonstrations that had been called for March 15 in support of Bolsonaro have shifted their focus to a protest against Congress. Material promoting the demonstrations has featured pictures of the generals brought into Bolsonaro’s cabinet along with the slogan, “The generals are waiting for the orders of the people.” Legislators directly linked to Bolsonaro have campaigned for the demonstrations, with Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, one of the founders of Bolsonaro’s new fascist Alliance for Brazil party, at their head.

Bolsonaro and Defense Minister Gen. Gen. Fernando Azevedo e Silva.

This campaign generated significant public controversy after a journalist for the daily Estado de São Paulo reported that Bolsonaro had personally shared a video calling for the demonstrations on WhatsApp. This exposure provoked widespread criticism within Brazil’s political establishment, including from congressional leaders, the Supreme Court, the major newspapers and former presidents like Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Fernando Henrique Cardoso; all of them charging that Bolsonaro’s action constituted a breach of democratic norms.

The Workers Party (PT), supported by the PSOL (Party of Socialism and Liberty) and other organizations of the pseudo-left, responded by turning a series of already scheduled protests into demonstrations against Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism. The leadership of the PT, however, rejected any possibility of impeaching the president. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, Lula, the former Workers Party president, reiterated his position that “we have to wait four years ... We cannot think that we can overthrow a president because we don’t like him.”

Folha de São Paulo reported that the PT has concluded that there are no conditions for impeachment because Bolsonaro still enjoys substantial support from the markets and big business, an evaluation that speaks volumes about the bourgeois character of the so-called Workers Party.

The PT’s cowardice is further exposed by positions taken by leading right-wing officials. The governor of Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel of the Christian Social Party (PSC), who was elected by linking his campaign to that of Bolsonaro, said “the legal answer to this [the broadcasting of the video by Bolsonaro] is impeachment.” Witzel’s ally, João Doria, São Paulo governor and a member of the right-wing Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), called Bolsonaro’s action “worrisome” and spoke out against an “escalation of authoritarianism.”

Witzel and Doria, who head an alliance of 20 governors who have criticized the president’s actions in a letter, have cast themselves as leaders of a bourgeois opposition to Bolsonaro. The dispute between Brasilia and the state governments has its origins in the profound contradictions of Brazilian society. Recent shocks have revolved around rising fuel prices, which threaten to unleash a new truckers’ strike with broad support from the population. Trying to shift the burden of the crisis onto the states, Bolsonaro has publicly challenged the governors to end taxes on the circulation of goods, which fund state budgets.

Conflicts manifested themselves again with the threat of widespread riots by state Military Police spreading all over the country, following the example of the strike that began in the northeastern state of Ceará, which ended on Sunday. Since many governors based their electoral campaigns on support for the police and the military, as was markedly the case with Witzel and Doria, and since the police feel they enjoy political backing from Bolsonaro, they are demanding substantial salary increases.

Add to this the fact that the general policy is to apply strong recessionary measures directly attacking the living conditions of the working class and the situation becomes critical. On Tuesday, Doria’s government in São Paulo approved a pension reform that attacks the retirement benefits of more than 500,000 state employees. The vote on the measure was made possible only through the brutal repression of a large teachers demonstration, with Military Police shock troops occupying the Legislative Assembly and leaving a number of workers injured. Dependence upon this repressive apparatus makes clear the reasons for Doria’s concern over a rebellion of his own state’s Military Police, to whom he has offered a much lower increase than that demanded by the rioting police in Ceará.

Bolsonaro's cabinet discusses Army intervention in Ceará. Credits [Photo: Planalto]

Despite having launched a “Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO)” and sending Army troops into Ceará, the Bolsonaro government still has a political base within the Military Police. It has repeatedly stressed that the responsibility for resolving the police mutiny rested with Ceará’s PT state governor, Camilo Santana. Bolsonaro threatened to cut short the operation, saying, “The GLO is not to last forever serving one or more governors.”

The federal intervention was used by Bolsonaro as a means to promote his proposed legislation granting federal troops engaged in domestic repression immunity from criminal prosecution, giving them an effective license to kill with impunity. Its practical effect, however, failed to meet the expectations of the state government, which expected troops to break up the strike by surrounding the mutinying barracks. Justice and Public Security Minister Sergio Moro responded that “the National Public Security Force and the Armed Forces, through the GLO, aim to replace the police and not confront them,” calling the rioting police “dedicated professionals.” This statement was celebrated by leaders of the strike.

The Bolsonaro government’s support for the police rebellion became even more explicit with the end of the strike. The next day, the son of the president and right-wing congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, declared solidarity with the Military Police who rebelled. “We are here to represent you police officers; you are not alone,” he said. Even more remarkable was the performance of the commander of the militarized National Public Security Force, Col. Aginaldo de Oliveira, who personally attended a closing assembly of the strike, where he declared: “It is very courageous to do what you are doing ... You have moved an entire commission of the state of Ceará and the Brazilian federal government. ... Believe me, you are giants, you are monsters, you are brave, you have demonstrated this throughout these 10, 11, 12 days here inside this [occupied] barracks in search of class improvements, which you will achieve.”

The political weight of this statement is even more striking as Col. Oliveira was married last month to Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, the champion of the March 15 demonstrations. To complete the picture, the best man at the wedding was Minister Sérgio Moro himself.

The Bolsonaro government is carrying out a definite break with bourgeois democratic forms of rule. This process can only be understood as part of an international political development. The turn to authoritarianism by the ruling class—manifested in the rise to power of figures like Bolsonaro in Brazil, Donald Trump in the US and Narendra Modi in India—is symptomatic of a profound crisis of the entire capitalist system.

However, the bourgeois institutions that the PT is vigorously defending in the counter-demonstrations that it has called this month offer no protection for the working class against capitalist reaction. On the contrary, it was under these institutions that the fascist danger was nurtured and within which it today shows its terrible face.

The freedom to employ the army against the population in the streets, which Bolsonaro is determined to consolidate, was prepared by PT governments that intervened with the armed forces to invade the favela slum neighborhoods and repress protests. It was also under the PT that Brazil’s Terrorism Law was enacted, profoundly threatening any manifestation of social opposition. Today, Congress is seeking to extend this law as much as possible. Bolsonaro did not fall like a lightning bolt from a blue sky; he grew freely within the Brazilian state, and in political alliance with the PT over years.

The main function of the campaign of the PT and its pseudo-left satellites in defense of bourgeois democracy and its institutions is to politically disarm the working class. This task is headed, together with the PT, by the parties and organizations of the pseudo-left. Probably none of them has exposed their ideas as nakedly as the Morenites of the Resistance/PSOL. On their website EsquerdaOnline they published a call for participation in the anti-Bolsonaro protests that summarizes their deeply reactionary politics:

“The House of Representatives, the Federal Senate, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s Office, political parties, political leaders, the Brazilian Bar Association, the Brazilian Press Association, the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, among other entities, have a duty to take concrete action against the plan set in motion to undermine the democratic regime. All democrats must be on the front line against the attacks on democratic rights and freedoms, building broad and unitary actions.”

This program, which is aimed at suppressing the struggles of the working class and subordinating them to the right-wing bourgeois parties and even the direct instruments of capitalist state repression, reflects the politics and interests of an increasingly desperate layer of Brazil’s privileged upper-middle class, which opposes and fears the growth of the class struggle.

Brazilian workers should reject such calls for “unity” with the capitalist state with the contempt that they deserve. The only answer to the threat of fascism and dictatorship lies in the independent struggle of the working class based upon the program of international socialist revolution. This makes all the more urgent the building of a new revolutionary leadership in Brazil as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

UK university strike confronts wholesale marketisation of higher education

Thomas Scripps

The national strike of university workers poses critical questions about the defence of education as a social right against its transformation into a market serving private financial interests.

These issues have been fought out in a series of strikes and protests over the past decade. The government, the employers and the University and College Union (UCU) have worked to limit these disputes to single issues, fundamentally undermining the fight that must be waged. Attacks on pensions, pay and conditions are the symptoms of a deep-going assault on the entire system of higher education and must be fought on that understanding.

Variable tuition fees, the removal of the cap on student numbers and the withdrawal of government funding for universities have created a lucrative market in higher education, ripe for private profiteering. In 2017-18, just 20 percent of the sector’s £38.2 billion income came directly from the government, down 74 percent in real terms compared with 2011-12, leaving 80 percent in private hands.

The way was prepared by the last Labour government. Tuition fees were introduced in 1998 and variable fees, paid for through loans, in 2004. A system of fees and loans was chosen over a graduate tax because this would facilitate marketisation. In 2009, head of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills Peter Mandelson published a report titled Higher Ambitions outlining a goal of “entrepreneurial universities” less reliant on central funding.

Mandelson’s report set the stage for the Browne Review, begun under the Labour government in 2010, which introduced the fundamentals of the system in place today. Its programme was escalated by the Coalition and Conservative governments, through the significant reduction of government funding, the tripling of tuition fees to £9,000 a year in 2012, the scrapping of any cap on student numbers at individual universities in 2015, and the scrapping of maintenance grants in 2016.

In 2017, the Higher Education and Research Act established the framework for the wholesale marketisation and privatisation of the sector. The Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Office for Fair Access were replaced with the Office for Students (OfS), whose mandate was to act as a “market regulator” and “competition authority.” It oversees the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) survey—which rates universities Gold, Silver or Bronze—designed to enforce market pressures. The OfS was also empowered to make “grants, loans or other payments to the governing body of an eligible higher education provider” and to grant degree-awarding powers to new education providers, opening the market to private institutions.

The result is a “winners and losers” system incentivising universities to engage in wasteful and corrosive competition for student numbers and private sources of income. Universities, which traditionally received public funding, have been thrown into the melee with purely private institutions as part of the “level playing field” established by the OfS. The body has no obligation to support universities in financial difficulties.

To compete for students, higher education institutions have increasingly turned to advertising and real estate spending, gaming the university admissions system, and private finance. This has greatly benefitted the corporate investors and education multinationals intimately involved in the formation of higher education policy for the last two decades.

In the 1990s, Labour worked with NatWest, Nationwide and Deutsche Bank to sell off student loans. David Willetts, then Conservative Minister for Universities, held 12 meetings with representatives of these interests before publishing the formative 2011 Higher Education White Paper—all organised by Hawkpoint, a corporate finance adviser specialising in mergers and acquisitions. Companies represented at these meetings included Pearson, Kaplan, Duke Street, Sovereign Capital, Warburg Pincus and A4E.

Immense efforts have been made to meet the demands of these potential investors. Universities’ advertising costs have grown rapidly. In the year 2017-18, the University of Central Lancashire spent £3.4 million on marketing, The University of West England spent £3 million, Middlesex £2.6 million, Gloucestershire £1.9 million, East London £1.3 million and Anglia Ruskin £1.19 million.

These expenditures are driven to extreme limits by the more prestigious institutions lowering their entrance offers to attract more students, leading to overcrowding on their campuses and taking students away from other universities. The biggest spenders on advertising are those considered lower or mid-tier providers.

The same concerns underlie ballooning real estate spending. Universities in England were due to spend £14.6 billion on expanding and improving their estates in 2017-2020, after already investing £40 billion over the previous 15 years. Universities are looking to use state-of-the-art facilities to attract “high-value” international students, who pay fees of at least £12,000 per year for their degrees. Students from outside the UK now make up 20 percent of the student body and university accommodation is big business. In 2017, $16 billion were invested in student housing in the US, UK and Western Europe, quadruple the value a decade ago.

The cost of these competitive efforts is increasingly being met by private investors. Between 2013 and 2018, £4.4 billion worth of bonds were issued by British universities. Pricoa, a subsidy of US asset manager Prudential, lent UK universities £750 million in 2015-18 alone. The European Investment Bank lent £300 million in 2015-17. The sector’s total borrowing stands at £12 billion, or 35 percent of annual income, up from 21.9 percent in 2010-11. Institutions are given credit scores by ratings agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s.

The higher education sector is being moved into the orbit of global finance and subjected to its demands. The intended outcome is a destructive reformation of the sector. In a recent report by the Policy Exchange think tank, thought to be close to government thinking, one chair of a university council was quoted as saying:

“Monasteries seemed inviolable before Henry VIII abolished them: even though there was some resistance, it was overcome. Universities are well interwoven into the social fabric, and less of a target than monasteries, but they remain dependent on public funding and broad-based political support.”

The same document argues that due to “all the funding and competitive pressures on the sector, higher education is a ‘sitting duck’ [for the Conservative government] unless it takes more radical action to be more financially sustainable.”

Large sections of higher education are set to be scrapped, with high-quality, rounded education made the preserve of an elite few and bare-necessity education to be delivered “efficiently” for the rest. A quarter of higher education institutions are now in deficit, with many more barely in surplus and several reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy.

Two determining pressures have been created in higher education: the need to compete for student funding and the need to meet the demands of private investors. These pressures have forced the destruction of the pay, conditions and pensions of staff, the “sweating” of university assets—for example through exorbitant rent increases for student halls—and the degradation of educational standards and provision for students.

Pensions are considered serious liabilities by potential investors. Universities are pushing to devalue these commitments to respond more effectively to market pressures. In a 2017 policy document, Universities UK (UUK) declared:

“It is evident that uniform pension solutions are no longer suitable for an increasingly divergent higher education sector. Institutions have different strategic priorities, with some wanting more flexibility in the reward package they are able to offer ...”

The recent report of the Joint Expert Panel of UCU and UUK representatives advocated consideration of a tiered pension scheme, or a “50:50” scheme where members pay half the standard level of contributions for half the accrual. Under the current arrangements, UUK insist on raising members’ contributions. The same cost-cutting, market-oriented motivations are behind the attacks on pay and conditions.

This dire situation is explained in countless articles and known to every striking academic. Yet it finds no mention in the statements of the UCU, who continue to organise a series of limited and ineffectual disputes. They cannot oppose the immense financial interests involved, because their aim is to secure for themselves the right to negotiate constant “concessions” as a well-paid industrial police force for the employers and the government.

The Socialist Equality Party has explained that university staff are not only in a struggle against the employers, but against Boris Johnson’s government—a political fight that the UCU will not wage. Neither can any trust be placed in the Labour Party, which opposed any mobilisation of the working class under the supposedly “left” leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and has now embarked on a forced march to the right.

Education workers must establish rank-and-file committees, outside of the UCU’s control, to unite workers and students based on the struggle for a new socialist political movement to defend high-quality, publicly funded education as a universal right. The Socialist Equality Party will lend every assistance possible to these efforts.

Macron to ram through French pension cuts without vote in parliament

Alex Lantier

On Saturday, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced that he would use Article 49-3 of the Constitution to impose pension reform. This allows the law to pass without a vote unless a vote of censure is passed against the government in the following 24 hours, bringing it down and leading to new elections. As the majority in the Assembly is from the party of Emmanuel Macron, who does not dare to face the voters because he would lose a general election, this would allow Macron to impose the reform without any parliamentary vote on its content.

The use of this undemocratic measure, announced at a moment where the soaring number of coronavirus cases across Europe dominates the news, shows the contempt for workers of Macron and his supporters in the international financial markets. Two-thirds of the French people are hostile to the law, which merges all pension schemes into one, eliminating many job-based advantages, increases “equilibrium age” (the minimum retirement age with a full pension) to 64 and imposes pensions on a “point” system rather than contributions. The monetary value of pensions will depend on these “points,” the value of which successive governments can reduce over the years.

This unmasks the trade union leadership and their political allies, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France (LFI), who have claimed that the reform could be stopped through trade union negotiations with Macron, or by tabling amendments to the reform in the Assembly. But there is nothing to negotiate with Macron. As the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (PES) have insisted, it is a matter of mobilizing the entire working class to bring down Macron.

Emmanuel Macron (en.kremlin.ru)

As the coronavirus spreads and Paris prepares new austerity measures and more troops for its war in Mali, Europe is in the hands of a politically criminal ruling class, which will do anything to enrich its great fortunes at the expense of the masses. The state is launching a reform that will ultimately profoundly impoverish pensioners, even as the elderly are threatened by a potentially fatal disease.

Last week, while rumors were circulating about a strategic debate within the government, unnamed members of the Macron’s party told the press that the 49-3 “branded” those who use it. A few days later, the government reversed course and “branded” itself with its own branding iron: Philippe announced to the Assembly that he would use the 49-3 clause to cut short the debate on the law, which otherwise would have lasted until March 6.

The pretext invoked by Philippe in the Assembly and on LFI was an absurd political lie. According to him, “many MPs were confronted from the very beginning of the debate with a strategy of deliberate obstruction by a minority, a strategy whose sole aim was to prevent the debates from taking place. ... It has to be said that the discussion on the essential questions never really came together. I deeply regret this. This debate should have made it possible to confront our points of view in front of the population.”

To put it plainly, it is Macron’s party, the Republic on the Move! (LRM), which is preventing the debate from taking place by closing it.

To understand the decision to shorten the debate, one can consult the agenda of the Assembly and the government. Philippe announced the use of 49-3 just after a Defense Council, a military body including the president and the prime minister, was held on the coronavirus. The invocation of 49-3 then closed the debate just before the Assembly’s discussion of Articles 9 and 10 of the reform, which increase the “equilibrium age” for retirement and impose point-based retirement.

If the debate had continued, even the opposition parties in the Assembly might have felt obliged, faced with the measure’s unpopularity, to quote the now well-known comment by the right-wing and former Prime Minister François Fillon. According to him, the points-based pension “allows for something that no politician admits. It allows the amount, the value of the points, to be lowered each year and thus the level of pensions to be reduced.”

Macron did not want a debate on a reform that is so openly hostile to the public, while the coronavirus is exposing the deep flaws of a medical system weakened by decades of austerity, two weeks before municipal elections. The ruling class prefers to work out its attacks on the income and health of the masses and impose them behind closed doors.

This decision has provoked widespread social anger against the backdrop of an international resurgence of the class struggle. The last few months have seen mass mobilizations in not only France, but throughout the world with historic mass strikes in India and the United States, and mass mobilizations from Algeria and Lebanon to Latin America. The defense of fundamental social rights requires a political reorientation of these struggles, that is: the organization of struggles by action committees independent of the unions and a new revolutionary internationalist perspective.

Across Europe, the financial aristocracy is one after the other destroying the social rights established in the 20th century during the struggles of the European working class against fascism: public pensions, the status of civil servants or railway workers, access to medical care. None of these rights can be guaranteed under a capitalist regime, but the pandemic is a reminder to us that these rights are essential to safeguard the lives of workers in all countries.

The example of France underlines the politically criminal nature of this offensive. The pretext of the state of emergency imposed in 2015, which established a police state to repress demonstrations against social breakdown, was the attacks by Islamist networks used as a cover for the war in Syria by NATO. Then hordes of paramilitary CRS beat up demonstrators against the Socialist Party’s (PS) “Labor law” and now the Macron reform, both of which were rejected by an overwhelming majority of the French and imposed by the 49-3 constitutional clause.

These are “villainous laws” with no democratic legitimacy whatsoever, imposed by a police state in the service of a financial aristocracy that poses an imminent and manifest danger to society.

There is a clear need for an alternative to the bankrupt union apparatuses. Subsidized by the state and employers, fearing that they would be overwhelmed by spontaneous strikes by railway workers in the fall, the unions felt compelled to organize a strike while negotiating closely with Macron. But when, in December-January, SNCF and RATP workers went on the longest strike in France since May 1968, the unions isolated them, without launching further unlimited strikes, and provided derisory aid. RATP strikers received $22 (£17) for six weeks on strike.

Parties like LFI or Olivier Besancenot's New Anti-Capitalist Party, which encouraged workers to rely on a common front between the unions, the PS and themselves against Macron’s attacks, are unmasked as petty-bourgeois charlatans. As with the PS labor law, their strategy of tabling hundreds of amendments to the reform was consciously impotent in the face of a government majority wanting to pass it by force.

The course of the struggle proved the analysis by the PES absolutely right. In December, as the strike against Macron’s reform began, the PES warned, based on the Trotskyist movement’s long analysis of the working-class experience with the CGT (Stalinist trade union) apparatus, that the unions would seek to strangle the movement. The PES stressed that only the independent leadership by the workers of their own struggles, together with those of their international class brothers and sisters in a struggle to bring down Macron, offered a way forward.

As anger continues to mount against the financial aristocracy and Macron, this experience will lead more and more workers to draw the same conclusions.

Sri Lankan president dissolves parliament, calls national election

K. Ratnayake

Using his executive powers, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse dissolved parliament on Monday night, six months before its term ended, and announced the next general election for April 25.

The declared aim of Rajapakse and his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) is to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority, in order to change the constitution and strengthen presidential executive powers.

Addressing selected media heads yesterday, Rajapakse claimed that the current presidential powers were “adverse to the country’s stability” and criticised the 19th Amendment to the constitution, which limits the president’s executive authority. He claimed that he could not “fulfil the people’s expectations” without expanded powers.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The previous “unity” government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minster Ranil Wickremesinghe introduced the 19th Amendment in order to curtail certain presidential powers.

These included a two-term limit; bans on the president dissolving parliament until it has served at least four-and-half years of its five-year term; the appointment of cabinet members only in consultation with the prime minister; appointment of top judges and high officials through independent commissions; and banning the president from holding a cabinet portfolio. Sirisena, however, dropped his election promise to abolish the executive presidency.

Rajapakse wants removal of these restrictions and the full restoration of president’s executive powers, and more.

Addressing an Independence Day ceremony on February 4, he said: “I do not envisage public officials, lawmakers or the judiciary, impeding my implementation of this commitment [to the people]”—i.e., parliament and the judiciary must act as pliant bodies of a presidential of dictatorship.

Rajapakse won last November’s presidential election not because of popular support but by exploiting mass opposition to the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s ruthless implementation of the International Monetary Fund’s austerity program.

During the elections, pseudo-left groups and the Tamil parties, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), promoted Sajith Premadasa, presidential candidate of the ruling right-wing United National Party (UNP), as a “lesser evil.” This ensured that Rajapakse gained mass protest votes against the previous government.

Rajapakse and his SLPP election campaign centred on anti-Muslim rhetoric, anti-Tamil propaganda and appeals to the military and extremist Sinhala and Buddhist groups. Rajapakse accused the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government of “weakening” the military and intelligence apparatus and called for the strengthening of “national security.”

Straight after the election Rajapakse demanded the resignation of Prime Minster Wickremesinghe, who readily acquiesced, and then appointed his older brother and SLPP leader Mahinda Rajapakse as prime minister of a minority regime.

The new Rajapakse regime has quickly moved to militarise the administration. It has appointed military officers to key government positions, including retired Major General Kamal Gunaratne as defence secretary. The establishment parliamentary parties have not opposed these appointments.

In the run up to the April 25 general election Rajapakse and the SLPP will step up their communalist propaganda and shore up its support from the military.

In line with these efforts, the Rajapakse government has announced that it has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council resolution that was passed in October 2015. It claims that the resolution undermines national security as it threatens the Sri Lankan military with investigations into the war crimes that were committed during the final stages of the war to suppress the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In the months since President Rajapakse came to power, his administration has been confronted with a wave of strikes and protests by the tea plantations workers, Kahatagaha mine workers and a one-day national strike by over 200,000 teachers. About 15,000 workers sacked by the new government from various departments and state-owned corporations are also maintaining protests in Colombo to demand reinstatement.

These actions are a continuation of the mass opposition that developed under the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration.

Sirisena became president after a US-orchestrated regime-change operation to oust Mahinda Rajapakse when he was president. Washington wanted Mahinda Rajapakse removed because of his government’s close relations with Beijing and to bring Sri Lanka back into line with America’s geo-strategic military buildup against China.

While the incoming Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration reoriented Sri Lankan’s foreign policy towards the US and its ally, India, the new government’s IMF-dictated austerity measures produced widespread social opposition.

The mass anger was expressed in a distorted form in the electoral victory of the SLPP in the February 2018 local elections and was followed the largest wave of strikes and protests by Sri Lankan workers since a public sector general strike in 1980. This eruption produced sharp divisions within the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration.

Sirisena responded with a political coup, removing Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replacing him with Mahinda Rajapakse. The coup failed, however, because Washington was hostile to any return of Rajapakse and the Supreme Court ruled Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament unconstitutional.

The reactionary anti-working class character of all factions of Sri Lanka’s ruling elite was revealed by its response to the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist bombings. While evidence points to the fact that the intelligence apparatus and political leaders, including President Sirisena, Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapakse, were warned in advance of the attacks, they allowed them to occur, exploiting them to strengthen the repressive state apparatus and whip up anti-Muslim chauvinism.

Yesterday, at the same meeting, Rajapakse declared that Sri Lanka’s “main problem is economic development” and his administration would focus on this issue. This is code for unleashing sharp social attacks to impose the burden of Sri Lanka’s economic decline and mounting debt crisis on workers and the poor.

Sirisena’s remaining fraction of the SLFP and its allies have established a political alliance with the SLPP to contest the election. A majority of SLFP parliamentarians and local organisers have joined the SLPP.

The opposition UNP has been split down the middle. Its leader Wickremesinghe and the party “old guard” oppose handing over the leadership to deputy leader Sajith Premadasa. A majority of former UNP MPs and local leaders, however, have sided with Premadasa. With the UNP widely discredited, these MPs calculate that Premadasa, who is close to a section of the Buddhist establishment, can effectively mount a Sinhala communalist election campaign.

Premadasa recently declared that if his party won a parliamentary majority he would work with Rajapakse, an indication that he agrees with the president’s shift toward dictatorial forms of rule.

The TNA, the main alliance of several Tamil party groups, is also discredited amongst the Tamil masses over its reactionary and unprincipled manoeuvres.

In 2015, the TNA supported the US regime-change to remove Rajapakse and functioned as a de facto partner of Colombo and the ongoing military occupation, suppression of any war crime investigations and austerity. The TELO and EPRLF, former constituent members of the TNA, have aligned themselves with former Northern Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran’s Tamil People’s Alliance, which is yet another nationalist trap to derail Tamil workers and poor.

Every faction of the ruling class and its fake-left allies are terrified by the developing social opposition in Sri Lanka as part of struggles of the international working class.

The pseudo-left Nava Sama Samaja Party has sided with the Wickremesinghe faction of the UNP whilst the political activities of the United Socialist Party and the Frontline Socialist Party are focused on demanding Rajapakse to fulfil his election promises. These formations are hostile to any independent movement of the working class on a socialist program.

The number of ultrawealthy individuals is growing dramatically on a world scale

Kevin Reed

A report published on Wednesday by the UK-based Knight Frank consulting agency shows that the number of individuals worth more than $30 million grew internationally by six percent in 2019 to 513,244 and is expected to expand by another 27 percent by 2024 to nearly 650,000 people.

Boasting about the increasing fortunes of the world’s ultrawealthiest people, Knight Frank says The Wealth Report 2020 “takes an in-depth look at the most exciting opportunities in investment and luxury lifestyle, from the move towards sustainability in property and transport to the world’s top cities, medical advances and designer handbags.”

The bumper year for the so-called ultrahigh net-worth individuals (UHNWI)—people with assets of $30 million or more—is a focus of the 108-page Knight Frank report. The country with the largest number of UHNWI is the United States with a total of 240,575, which is an increase of 13,443 from the previous year.

In the top 10 UHNWI countries of the world after the US are China (61,587), Germany (23,078), France (18,776), Japan (17,013), UK (14,367), Italy (10,701), Canada (9,325), Russia (8,924) and Switzerland (8,395).

Julia Kovaljova with part of her Hermès handbag collection [Photo credit: Knight Frank The 2020 Wealth Report]

While the total number of ultrawealthy individuals is concentrated in the imperialist centers of North America (249,900) and Europe (110,846), the Knight Frank data shows that the areas of the world with the fastest growth of UHNWI are in Asia, Africa and Australasia.

As the report states, “Asia is quickly closing the gap on Europe, and our figures predict that by

2024 it will be the world’s second largest wealth hub, with forecast five-year growth of 44 percent. However, even following this heady rise Asia’s UHNWI cohort will still only be half the size of North America’s, which is forecast to grow by 22 percent over the same period.”

Among the countries with the most rapid projected growth of the superrich over the next five years are India (77 percent), Egypt (66 percent), Vietnam (64 percent), China (58 percent), Indonesia (57 percent), Tanzania (54 percent), Sweden (47 percent), Romania (42 percent), New Zealand (37 percent) and Malaysia (35 percent).

Liam Bailey, Knight Frank’s global head of research, was giddy about the expanding number of superrich in the former colonial world. “It’s exciting to see how wealth is developing across Asia, and with the number of ultrawealthy in India, Vietnam, China and Malaysia outpacing many other markets over the next five years,” he said. “It will be interesting to see how this impacts the global property market.”

According to World Bank data, the percentage of the populations of India, Vietnam, China and Malaysia living on less than $5.50 per day is 87 percent, 29 percent, 27 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.

Although the Knight Frank report studiously avoids the question of just exactly how much wealth the global UHNWI control—as well as the skyrocketing wealth inequality on a world scale— Investopia reports that the ultrawealthy “constitute only .003 percent of the world’s total population, they hold approximately 13 percent of the world’s total wealth.”

With total global wealth in 2019 estimated at $360.6 trillion, this means that the total wealth of the UHNWI is $46.9 trillion, or an average of $91.3 million per UHNWI. In other words, the average wealth of a UHNWI is 1,289 times that of the global average net worth of $70,845 (Credit Suisse, October 2019).

The Knight Frank report points out that the wealth of the superrich has continued to climb even though the economic and political environments have been unstable. The report says, “Economically, 2019 was outwardly a tumultuous year, with the International Monetary Fund reducing its forecast for global GDP growth from 3.5 percent in January 2019 to just 2.9 percent in January 2020—a ten-year low.”

The report explains that the UHNWI have partially managed by moving their assets around, “Heightened global geopolitical uncertainty contributed to a rise in the value of ‘safe haven’ assets: gold hit a six-year high in September and, by the end of 2019, prices were some 16 percent higher than they had been 12 months previously.”

Clearly, growth in real estate and stock market values over the past year has played a significant role in the increased number of superrich. As the report says, “According to our Attitudes Survey, on average 23 percent of UHNWI investment portfolios are made up of equities [company shares], meaning that their performance makes a large contribution to rising wealth. Residential property also accounts for a large proportion of total UHNWI wealth—almost a third, according to the Attitudes Survey.

The investment allocation of the UHNWI for 2019 is spread across property investment (27 percent), equities (23 percent), bonds (17 percent), cash (11 percent), private equity (eight percent), collectibles (five percent), gold and precious metals (three percent) and cryptocurrencies (one percent), such as Bitcoin.

More than half of the Knight Frank report deals the lifestyles and attitudes of the superrich. Among these are where they like to live, through the Prime International Residential Index, where they invest in real estate, where they give money and the types of things that they collect.

The last of these sheds light on the priorities of and luxurious lifestyles of the superrich. In a section of the report called “Objects of Desire,” Knight Frank reviews that the UHNWI like to collect classic cars, wine, art, whiskey and colored diamonds. Here the report provides photos of the items purchased and for how much, although the names of the buyers are not mentioned.

In one instance, a collection of Hanyu Ichiru Malt Full Card Series whiskey was sold by Bonhams Auction Company in London for $7.2 million. In another example, a 1994 McLaren F1 LM supercar was auctioned by Sotheby’s at the Monterey sales in August 2019 for $19.8 million. And in December, a series of original drawings by John James Audubon published between 1827-1838 entitled, “The Birds of America,” was sold by Sotheby’s for $6.4 million.

A section of the report called, “It’s in the bag,” is devoted to the subject of handbag collecting by the superwealthy. The report says, “Handbags are increasingly being seen as an investment class in their own right, as well as highly desirable fashion accessories.” Among the handbags featured are Hermès styles The Kelly (auctioned for $241,000), The Constance (auctioned for $89,000) and The Birkin (auctioned for $386,000), all made of Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile with gold hardware.

US Midwest retail chain Art Van Furniture to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Kevin Reed

Suburban Detroit-based Art Van Furniture, the number one furniture and mattress retailer in the Midwest, announced on Thursday that it is shutting down its company-owned stores and beginning liquidation sales today. The company, which is expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization early next week, employs 3,100 people at locations in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Maryland and Virginia.

Unless one or more buyer steps forward to stop the liquidation, all Art Van Furniture, Art Van PureSleep and Scott Shuptrine stores will be closed permanently within 60 days.

The company’s press announcement also noted that subsidiary Levin & World Furniture, with locations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, would be sold while eight World Furniture Stores would be closed.

Art Van PureSleep retail location in Livonia, Michigan.

Diane Charles, a representative of Art Van Furniture, said, “Despite our best efforts to remain open, the company’s brands and operating performance have been hit hard by a challenging retail environment.”

A majority ownership of the mid-priced furniture retailer—founded in 1959 by Archie Van Elslander in the city of East Detroit (now Eastpointe)—was sold to the private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners in January 2017 after the death of the founder at age 87. Although the exact price was never disclosed, it has been reported that the Boston-based private equity company financed the deal worth over $550 million.

As explained by the Detroit Free Press, “Private-equity firms use debt to acquire companies, and the debt is then owed by the company. The debt loads can leave companies with little room to maneuver if business conditions deteriorate. And any problems that arise can be exacerbated by the fees that private-equity firms ordinarily charge companies in their portfolios.”

Such concerns were not expressed by the Free Press in January 2017 when then-Art Van CEO Kim Yost and the sons of the founder Gary and David Van Elslander announced the deal with great fanfare. Fears of asset stripping by the private equity vultures were waved away amid grandiose plans announced by the owners for new stores in major markets like Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

The local corporate media was also enthusiastically hailing the “commitment” made by Thomas H. Lee Partners to continue Art Van’s sponsorship of Detroit’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Representatives from the private equity company declined to comment on the size of Art Van’s debt.

The rapid expansion added more debt to the Art Van balance sheet and, when sales faltered under the impact of growing online furniture and mattress retail, the company could not maintain its repayment obligations. Private equity fees also played a role in the precarious financial position of the company. When suppliers began to refuse making deliveries for fear that they would not get paid, the handwriting was on the wall for the imminent bankruptcy.

In addition to the decline in retail foot traffic at Art Van showrooms, industry experts pointed to the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese furniture imports over the past year and a half. The ten percent import tariffs have forced furniture retailers to choose between raising prices to consumers and driving down sales or taking a hit on their operating margins.

Thomas H. Lee Partners has been in business since 1974 and specializes in buying consumer retail, health care, financial services and technology solutions companies. It operates with $26 billion in investment capital—from corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, endowments and wealthy families—and controls 150 “portfolio companies” and completed over 400 “add-on acquisitions” with a total combined “enterprise value” of $200 billion.

Apparently, Thomas H. Lee Partners considered Art Van Furniture to be a “growth business” opportunity at the time of its acquisition. According to the marketing language on its website, the private equity company invests “in growth-oriented businesses with strong free cash flow characteristics … Organically, we invest in resources to expand into new products, new markets, new geographies and new channels of distribution.” However, once the investment company had reached the limit of financial benefit from this strategy, it decided to cut Art Van Furniture loose, a pattern that has been repeated many times by private equity parasites.

Alex Calderone, of the Calderone Advisory Group based in Birmingham, Michigan, told the Detroit News, “The private equity playbook, which almost always results in aggressive use of leverage which increases the risk of failure exponentially, has not worked out for other retailers in the past and didn’t serve Art Van well either. When an investment thesis doesn’t pan out, equity sponsors tend to cut their losses quickly.”

Jim Fouts, the mayor of Warren, Michigan, where the corporate headquarters of Art Van Furniture has been located since the 1970s, said that he was going to contact Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to see what options are available to force Thomas H. Lee Partners “to honor their commitment to the workers and taxpayers.”

“The city receives $2.2 million per year in tax payments from the furniture company,” Fouts wrote in a publicly issued statement, demanding, “There has to be a national or state law that would prohibit investment companies from buying off and selling all assets at the expense of the workers and the community it is in.”

Such laws will never be enacted without a massive unified struggle by the entire working class, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, against the dictatorship of the financial elites over the whole of society. The criminal practices of investors and corporate boards alike over many decades—leading to the destruction of jobs and living standards of workers throughout Metro Detroit—have proceeded without any resistance in a region that is dominated by the treacherous alliance between the pro-corporate UAW and AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party.