Washington’s inability to subjugate Iran is an example of how it is trying to preserve a regional order that no longer exists, argues RAMZY BAROUD
Inflation is a class issue
As ministers and the mass media try to block pay rises using the threat of further inflation, STEWART McGILL looks at why prices are rising and what we should do about it
US financial instability is exposing the limits of a dollar-dominated global economy — and giving the Global South a historic chance to build an alternative, says MURAD QURESHI
DOUG NICHOLLS says the parasitic finance markets must be challenged or another British government could be toppled
The late country singer’s Imagination Library has put hundreds of millions of books into children’s hands. We should build on that legacy by defending the libraries at the heart of our communities, says BRENDA AITCHISON
Deprivation is a fundamental factor in criminal behaviour that must be addressed but, KENNY MacASKILL argues, there needs to a major rethink in sentencing to tackle overcrowding
MML director MEIRIAN JUMP outlines the recently refreshed library’s busy autumn schedule that ranges from book sales, archival exploration, community work with online education and the ever popular site tours
TONY BURKE surveys the shifting political landscape and the challenges Labour needs to address if it is to prevail in the 2028 federal elections
CAPITALIST economics maintains that cost increases, particularly wage rises, have to be passed onto the consumer as if it’s a law of physics.
They never ask why profit margins have to be maintained and real wages suppressed. Prices only have to go up to maintain the profits that go to capital. Inflation is like anything else in capitalism, a function of unequal power relations and the drive to accumulate, “profit-pull”, not “cost-push”.
The Economic Policy Institute in the United States showed that since mid-2020, 54 per cent of price rises were attributable to fatter profit margins, only 8 per cent to increased labour costs.
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