Super-rich get richer… MPs to get huge pay rise

Workers’ wages falling… More austerity cuts…

photo by Senan, photo Socialist Party

photo by Senan, photo Socialist Party   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Take the wealth off the 1%

Wyllie Hume, Sheffield Socialist Party

While working class people struggle to make ends meet, the wealthy continue to get increasingly rich. The recently published Forbes Rich List showed that the combined wealth of the world’s 1,826 billionaires has reached $7.05 trillion. That’s up from $6.4 trillion the previous year.

At the same time ordinary people have had to suffer the burden of austerity – job losses, cuts in services and wages, etc – to pay for an economic crisis caused by the super-rich and their capitalist profit system.

And while the world’s wealthy sit on unimaginable amounts of money, over one billion people globally struggle to survive on less than $1.25 a day.

The charity Oxfam estimates that if the current trend in rising inequality continues then the world’s richest 1% will own more than the 99% combined by 2016! Already, in Britain, the 100 richest people own more than 30% of all households and the richest five people own a combined wealth of £35 billion – the same amount as planned in the next round of government cuts.

Meanwhile, the representatives of the rich in parliament are set to gain a whopping 9% pay increase this year from £67,000 to £74,000 per year. This is their reward for passing through severe attacks on the living and working conditions of working class and poor people. MPs are happy to pay themselves inflated salaries while workers have experienced the longest fall in real wages since the 1870s.

The Socialist Party is part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which is standing hundreds of candidates all over the country in the general and local elections. If elected, Socialist Party representatives would only accept the average wage of a skilled worker, not the inflated wages that the capitalist MPs take.

Under capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why should we pay for a crisis caused by their rotten system?

We need socialist policies to take the wealth off the 1% and end the poverty and exploitation created by capitalism.

Vote TUSC on 7 May and help build a new workers’ party to represent the interests of the 99% not the super-rich 1%.