What hapened with the Millennium Declaration and the pledge to end poverty by the year 2020?

World "leaders" met in 2000 and issued a Millennium Statement declaring their intent to end poverty.

Now we get this excuse:

"...estimates that poverty rates will continue to increase throughout the world as a result of the persisting global economic crisis."

The capitalist economic crisis with severe increases in poverty was well underway already in 2000.

Unemployment and under-employment with a huge shift to part-time employment was well underway. Prices of basic economic necessities were already on the rise.

Nothing was done, nor were any attempts made, to correct these problems--- problems which were man-made injustices; problems intentionally created by Wall Street, Bay Street, the Square Mile and the other imperialist financial centers of the world.

What did these world "leaders" expect would be the result of their intentional lack of attention to dealing with the injustices causing poverty if they did nothing while hypocritically proclaiming their intent to end poverty?

People paid poverty wages are going to be poor. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw this conclusion.

People who are unemployed without any kind of Basic Income Guarantee are going to be poor.

People working part-time jobs are going to be poor unless they receive some kind of Basic Income Guarantee.

People on pensions are going to be poor if their pensions don't meet the cost-of-living.

Do these world "leaders" not understand the relationship between "cost-of-living" and wages and that if other social programs do not include meeting "cost-of-living" requirements people are going to be poor?

Do these world "leaders" not understand that when trillions of dollars are spent on armaments, militarism and wars that every penny squandered in this way is money that can't be spent on the very human needs required to lift people out of poverty?

These so-called "world leaders" come up with all these public relation gimmicks about providing the poor with a "ladder out of poverty" and the ladders have but two rungs holding the ladder together--- one rung on the bottom, another on the top which can not be reached.

How much longer do we put up with a system that is crumbling before our very eyes as Wall Street's pundits proclaim this to be the very best system in the world as its "economists" try to drum into us that the economy is improving when our very life experiences prove these pronouncements to be nothing but lies?

Workers need rank-and-file committees to defend their rights and their livelihoods even when they are paying union dues.

Working people are really taking a beating but the way employers have found to clobber employees now is really disgusting.

Employers are looking for any reason, no matter how petty, to hand out unpaid suspensions... figure it out, send workers home for a day, a week, ten days and you don't have to pay them and you do this to hundreds and in the case of government workers--- thousands of workers--- and look at the money "saved."

But, the grief this is causing for so many people who live pay-check to pay-check can't be calculated as mortgage and rent payments are missed, credit deteriorates and son on and so forth.

Just plain mean.

Workers should fight these suspensions every way they can.

Employers are hiring consulting firms to carry out this harassment.

Make no mistake; these suspensions over petty issues constitutes harassment. This kind of harassment in the workplace is blatantly illegal.