Specious Chart

Recently this chart has been making the rounds of the internet as the "Scariest Economic Stat...Evah!" It ranks nations by per capita national debt, and we come out worst.



The reasoning behind this is utterly specious. National debt is only meaningful in relation to national income. Find below a chart showing national debt as a percentage of GDP. This shows a very different picture, with Greece's indebtedness at about twice that of ours and Spain in a surprizingly good position.

Our Rentier Economy

Wish I'd said that ...

“When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: Colonialism, the 14 hour day, class privilege, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the opium wars, the massacre of the Paris Commune, slavery, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, starvation, apartheid, anti-union laws, the First World War, Flanders, trench warfare, mustard gas, aerial bombing, the Soviet Intervention, the Armenian Genocide, chemical weapons, fascism, the Great Depression, hunger marches, Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, militarism, Asbestosis, radiation death, the Massacre of Nanking, the Second World War, Belsen, Dresden, Hiroshima, Racism, The Mafia, nuclear weapons, the Korean War, DDT, McCarthyism, production lines, blacklists, Thalidomide, the rape of the Third World, poverty, the arms race, plastic surgery, the electric chair, environmental degradation, the Vietnam War, the military suppression of Greece, India, Malaya, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Turkey, the Gulf War, trade in human body parts, malnutrition, Exxon Valdez, deforestation, organized crime, the heroin and cocaine trade, tuberculosis, the destruction of the Ozone Layer, cancer, exploitation of labour and the deaths of 50,000,000 Communists and trade unionists in this century alone, then — and only then — will I consider apologising for the errors of socialism.”

— Communist Party of Australia.

Andy Thayer: Police Spy or Tiresome Crank?

Let's Look at the Reccord

Lighthearted Parody Department

What is Fascism (part thirteen)

"Fascism is middle-class socialism and we cannot persuade the middle classes to abandon it until we can prove to them that it only makes their condition worse."

— Karl Radek, 1923