Monthly Archives: July 2020

A Marxist critique of the theory of ‘white privilege’ – Red Flag

Posted: July 5, 2020 at 10:05 am

This article by Candace Cohn outlines the origins and problems of privilege theory. Cohn was an activist and revolutionary socialist in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and one of the first women accepted into the carpenters union.She became a labour and civil rights lawyer in the 1980s. The article was first published in Socialist Worker in 2015.

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The privilege model of oppression, often encountered in todays liberal and radical circles, has evolved since the 1960s. Many of todays well-intentioned advocates are unaware of the theorys class roots roots that continue to profoundly impact privilege politics today.

At the height of the American civil rights movement, when theories of oppression might be expected to have some resonance, privilege politics were virtually unknown. The privilege model was unable to find a foothold among the hundreds of thousands of anti-racists involved in the countrys massive and often integrated struggles for freedom. Only later, during the tragic crisis and disintegration of the New Left at the end of the 1960s, were privilege politics able to gain a hearing among white, middle-class students, most of whom had had no involvement in the civil rights movement. White-skin privilege theory would come to play amajor role in the destruction of Students for a Democratic Society(SDS) by extreme sectarians.

The roots of privilege theory extend deep into the factional political atmosphere of early American Maoism. The specific use of white-skin privilege concepts, which date back to US slavery, to analyse oppression began in one tiny section of the Stalinist left, the obscure Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist Leninist Party, a 1958 split from the Communist Party. The Provisional Organizing Committees split was based on two fundamental policies: defence against all criticism of Stalins anti-working-class oppression, and establishment of a separate Black republic in the South as the answer to American racism. These two views formed the political context in which white-skin privilege theory developed.

Two long-time members of the Provisional Organizing Committee, Noel Ignatin and Ted Allen, would become known fortheir 1967 pamphletWhite Blindspot, presenting the arguments for white-skin privilege theory:

The US ruling class has made a deal with the mis-leaders of American labor, andthrough them with the masses of white workers. The terms...are these: you white workers help us conquer the world and enslave the non-white majority of the earths laboring force, and we will repay you with...the...privileges befitting your white skin [citing various examples of greater access to jobs, health care, education,etc.]. [Note: all emphasis within all quotations in this article appear in the original sources.]

An opportunistic contract resulted, according to Ignatin, between the exploiters and a part of the exploited,at the expense of the rest of the exploited. White workers were co-conspirators with their bosses in depriving Blacks and people of the Third World of their rights. The only way possible for white workers to fight against white supremacy was byrepudiatingtheir white-skin privileges. White workers might have a world to win.But they have more to lose than their chains; they have also to lose their white-skin privileges, the perquisites that separate them from the rest of the working class, that act as the material base for the split in the ranks of labor.

The term privileges was used to describe measures, such as relatively decent schools and medical care, to which whites received greater access. The problem with this conception is that these measures, rather than representing undeserved privileges, were in fact reforms won by the working class through bitter struggle. These class gains represented the return of a small part of the great wealth held by capitalists that workers had produced. Privilege theory on the basis of unequal access to these gains under racist American capitalism converted hard-won class victories, reforms and rights into undeserved workers privileges.

The privilege model, moreover, was producing radicals who tried to convince American workers that they were getting more than their fair share, and that they should give up their already inadequate lifestyles, possessions and class gains. It was manna from heaven for the ruling class.

The Revolutionary Youth Movement and Students for a Democratic Society

In the late 1960s, a number of sectarian political groups were vying for control of Students for a Democratic Society, the largest radical organisation of the 1960s, which had grown to mass proportions during the anti-war movement, and which identified itself as socialist. The 100,000-strong, multi-tendency organisation of the New Left had played a decisive role in the national student revolt and mass radicalisation of the 1960s.White Blindspotspecifically addressed one of the sects vying for control of SDS, Progressive Labor (PL), a Stalinist-Maoist group that subordinated questions of national oppression and liberation to its narrow views of the class struggle.

The largest groups in SDS vying for control against PL were both from the Stalinist-Maoist Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM). RYMI (the Weathermen) and RYMII (Bob Avakians Revolutionary Union and other Maoists) counterposed questions of Black and Third World oppression to the American class struggle. In 1969, RYMI and RYMII banded together and, in a document co-authored by Ignatin, adopted white-skin privilege, using it to wage a highly divisive faction fight against PL. In the process,they destroyed SDS, and replaced the mass, radical, national New Left student organisation with a series of Maoist sects, each proclaiming itself to be the true revolutionary vanguard. Revolutionary party organisation was discredited within the broad left for generations.

As an ideological weapon, privilege theory reflected RYMs middle-class student composition, its isolation from the class struggle, and its Stalinist-Maoist worldview including alienation from, and elitist distrust of, the working class. RYM rejected the need for American workers to organise around their own needs and their own oppression. It viewed the primary struggle in the world, to which all other struggles must be subordinated, as that between the revolutionary Third World and US imperialism. RYM saw American workers as little more than potential cheerleaders for Third World liberation struggles, cheerleaders who must renounce their imperialist privileges that is, their wages, benefits and possessions:

It is the oppressed peoples who have created the wealth of this empire and it is to them that it belongs; the goal of the revolutionary struggle must be the control and use of this wealth in the interests of the oppressed peoples of the world ... your television set, car and wardrobe already belong, to a large degree, to the people of the rest of the world. (Joint RYM document,quoted here.)

In the midst of the great multiracial working-class revolt of the 1960s and 1970s, the Stalinist-Maoist ideas on privilege patently offered a poor guide to labour action. The theorys strategic focus was on points of division among workers, the pitting of workers against one another in competition for privileges, and the programmatic prescription for worker renunciation and self-dispossession all of which made it impossible for any of the Maoist sects, despite their relatively large numbers, to develop working-class roots in the rank-and-file labour upsurge. In addition, the opposition of privilege proponents to American workers fighting for their own class interests contributed to maintaining the countrys status quo, with its racism.

Other contradictions pervaded RYMs privilege analysis. RYM argued that the same workers who should not, in its vision, fight against their own oppression should, and would, fight against the oppression of others a utopian view of the class struggle based on moralism. Privilege theory deemed everyone privileged unless they were at the very bottom. If anyone was more oppressed than you no matter how oppressed you were you were privileged. If you were not the most oppressed, it was assumed you had a community of interest with the oppressors to oppress people more oppressed than you and therefore you could not be trusted to engage in joint struggles against oppression. The logic of white-skin privilege theory led to some whites demanding that Blacks give uptheirprivileges. Since Black workers in US auto, steel, trucking and similar industries made union scale, with wages comparable to those of whites, some privilege proponents concluded that Blacks in the US were privileged by imperialism, and must relinquish their privileges too. Faced with the enormous Black uprising of the time, most of the theorys supporters declined to go that far.

Behind these contradictions and strategic cul-de-sacs lay fundamental gaps in privilege theorys foundations. Its core conceptions of workers class interest, worker culpability, institutional racism, the union bureaucracy, the nature of capitalism, the nature of exploitation, the nature of imperialism, the class struggle were, as we shall see, totally flawed.

RYMs blindspot

In the RYM theory of imperialism, exploitation did not occur in capitalist America. As RYM put it, it is the oppressed peoples [of the rest of the world] who have created the wealth of this empire. Wealth was created offshore, in the Third World not by the American working class. This fatal blind spot pervaded the RYM theory of oppression and privilege. Unable to recognise the exploitation of all American workers, including whites and men, white-skin privilege theory remained blind to exploitation as the central dynamic of both capitalism and the class struggle against it.

Blind to exploitation, privilege analysis rested on a quartet of misconceptions: that white workers and Black workers possess directly opposed and competing material interests; that white workers share common material interests with their white bosses; that racism serves the material interests of white workers; that white workers are co-creators with the capitalist class of institutional racism, and are co-responsible for it.

These conceptions are not only false. They echo the divisive propaganda of the capitalist class. Even if sections of the working and middle class buy into them, these ideas remain bourgeois ideology that serve the ruling class. The left must be able to recognise them as such.

The divide-and-conquer soul of racism serves the material interests of one class only: the capitalists. In the words of the great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, They divided both in order to conquer each. Racisms utility to capitalism is that it enables the obscenely unjust and unequal economic system to exist. As Malcolm X put it, You cant have capitalism without racism. By serving as a block against all workers uniting together to enforce their rightful, collective claim toallthe wealth they create, including that vast portion stolen and accumulated by the ruling class, racism sabotages the one force a united working class that can destroy capitalism and racism with it.

Marxists have fought historically for the principle, and reality, that unity and solidarity in struggle mean specifically a working-class movement that champions the just demands of Black workers against racism. Unity, for Marxists, means unequivocal class solidarity with the struggles of all the oppressed. Among the many examples of this kind of unity is the 1970s rank-and-file United Action Caucus in the United Auto Workers, in which white skilled trades workers and Black assembly line workers united to fight for an anti-racist platform that demanded the opening of the skilled trades to Blacks. Building that kind of solidarity required an approach opposite to privilege theorys focus on competing privileges, interests and differences. It required focusing instead on unified goals, fighting for better conditions for both Black and white workers, and on fighting against all racism together.

In arguing, by contrast, that racismserveswhite workers material interests, privilege theory fails to grasp that in class warfare, capitals most powerful weapon (racism) against workers most powerful weapon (unity) cannot possibly serve workers material interests.

Class responsibility for racism

Not only was privilege theory wrong in arguing that racism served white workers material interests, it was equally off-base in claiming that white workers, including racist ones, had co-created systemic racism under capitalism. Although no support was offered for this verdict, it seemed to rest on three grounds.

First, privilege theory assumed, without data or discussion, that white workers were responsible for the sellouts of their union officials. Blaming rank-and-file workers for the corrupt, anti-democratic, pro-business, racist betrayals of the labour bureaucracy is similar to blaming the American people for the racist imperialist wars and foreign policies of the US ruling class.

Second, the privilege model apparently held white workers responsible because they were white on the basis of guilt-by-identity. Only white and not Black, Latino, or any other workers were held responsible for the actions of the union bureaucracy and of American imperialism.

Third, white workers were blamed for systemic racism because their privileges came, purportedly,at the expense ofBlacks: white workers got morebecauseBlacks got less, andvice versa. This assumption bought into the liberal capitalist idea that the size of the share of the economic pie available to workers is fixed and highly limited, and that different sub-groups of workers must fightagainst each otherto expand their shares. Privilege theory focused on workers battling each other for the same shares, rather than on theirfighting togetherfor a just division of the share appropriated by thebosses that fight, in the form of shop floor and union struggles for class demands, was explicitly opposed.

Furthermore, the privilege theory of causation Black workers get less because white workers get more, and its corollary flies in the face of American reality. Historically, wages, benefits and working conditions have always been significantly lower for working-class whites in the non-unionised South than for Black (and white) workers in unionised areas of the North. The higher union standard of living results not from racial privilege, but from the unity and solidarity of both Black and white workers in class struggle.

Institutional racism; strategy

The privilege model locates much of the cause of oppression in competition between workers and individuals. It holds, for example, that Black applicants, regardless of qualifications, dont get hired because white ones do. Marxism rejects the idea that Black workers are refused at the door because fellow white workers exercise the privilege of earning a living. Marxism instead maintains that the capitalists organise production and the labour market. They bosses pick and divide workers, both as a function of their own racism, and as a strategy to divide Black, white, Latino, Asian and other workers against each other. When a white applicant gets a job over Black applicants, its not because s/he exercised a privilege, but because discrimination is built into capitalist employment practices. (Note that the practice known as job trusts, in which white workers controlled admission to some skilled trades jobs, restricting them to family members and friends, discriminating against Blacks and other whites, was a relatively small exception to the general rule that the capitalists control hiring and firing.)

In holding white workers co-responsible for systemic racism, the privilege model attributed a power to white workers they manifestly do not have: control over the institutions of American capitalism schools, jobs, housing, factories, banks, police, courts, prisons, legislatures, media, elections, universities, armed services, hospitals, sports, political parties all of which function in a racist manner. These institutions are owned and controlled by the capitalist class. They engineer, manage and enforce the social, economic and political racism that serves the social relations of American capitalism. It is these institutions that make racism such a powerful and inescapable part of American daily life.

The successful operation of racism under capitalism, like capitalism itself, requires that sections of the working class be convinced of racist ideas. One function, therefore, of bourgeois institutions is to cultivate racism among workers. A crucial part of the struggle against racism is fighting the false consciousness by which many workers accept, against their own material class interests, racism and other aspects of ruling class ideology. The battle to win such workers over on a class struggle basis is directly undermined by the privilege argument that they share common material interests with their bosses.

Because the purpose of Marxism is change in the real world, and because action and strategy flow from the understanding theory brings, our theory about the cause of racism and oppression under capitalism needs to be correct. Attribution ofrootcausation to either individual or institutional sources, to workers or the ruling class, will determine strategy.

Privilege theorys focus on assumptions of worker and personal complicity leads to a strategy of combating racism and oppression throughindividualevolution: self-renunciation, engaging in consciousness-raising discussions, developing deeper understandings of our different experiences, and attempting to change the operation of privilege in interpersonal dynamics. The contrasting Marxist view that American racism, oppression and exploitation are an entrenched, institutionalised totality, which cannot be destroyed unless confronted at the root systemic level by social forces in struggle leads to building social movements and class struggles in the real world.

Ignatin, Allen, and RYM first proposed their strategy of worker self-renunciation at the height of the golden age post-war boom. Even then, it was absurd for radicals to expect to build a workers movement for a better world by telling workers they must give up their privileges their jobs, homes, pay scales and, as RYM put it, television sets, cars and wardrobes. Today, in the age of recurrent domestic and international economic crises, a left prescription for workers self-dispossession of privileges echoing neoliberal calls for working-class sacrifice and austerity is even more difficult to understand. Since the 1970s, white male workers with no more than a high school education have seen their wages drop by a third. Yet elitist, well-off, liberal academics who propagate privilege politics in the universities continue to argue that it is all whites and all men, including all white workers and all male workers, who are privileged who, compared to others, have it too good.

A similar sentiment spread among a section of the radical student movement of the early 1960s, which began rejecting the working class as an agent for social change on grounds that it had sold out, because its inadequate standard of living was deemed too high. This conservative view prepared the ground in the student New Left for the anti-working-class privilege politics that would destroy it a decade later.

For decades since, the views that workers are bought off and/or privileged have contributed to the passivity of the middle-class liberal left in the face of the neoliberal attack on workers living standards and unions.

The privilege circuit

Contemporary privilege concepts have changed since the days ofWhite Blindspotand RYM. In the decades following the 1970s demise of the left, privilege theory underwent several iterations beginning with its entry into academia in the 1980s and 1990s, and then into the new millenniums cyberspace, social media, political formations and press. But however modified todays version of privilege theory may be, and however unaware of its history its current advocates may be, contemporary privilege politics remain profoundly influenced by their Stalinist-Maoist theoretical origins. Early practices have their impact too: American and international Maoists engaged, for example, in a forerunner to privilege-checking in what were called criticism-self-criticism sessions. (At the time, these sessions were a feature of Chinese internal repressive mechanisms to control the population.)

Modern privilege theory reflects the lack of class politics that has come to characterise the country and the left, despite increased popular awareness of the role of the ultra-wealthy. Neoliberalism, since crushing the left, working-class and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, has largely succeeded in writing classes (the working class in particular), class politics and class struggle out of popular consciousness and public dialogue. In accepting and perpetuating this vacuum of class politics, the contemporary privilege model implicitly accepts the class assumptions of American capitalist society.

Some may argue that the focus onnon-materialprivileges by much of todays discussion represents a disconnect from the early demand for self-renunciation of material privileges. But the model operates much the same way in both material and non-material contexts, and reaches similar conclusions. Early privilege theory converted material reforms won through class struggle into undeserved privileges. In similar fashion, todays model also converts non-material rights, and the non-experience of a particular kind of oppression, into unearned, undeserved privileges. Contemporary analysis of non-material so-called privileges continues to hold, just as original white-skin privilege theory did, that those who are not oppressed in a particular way can be assumed to be participants in that oppression. The false presumption of guilt-by-identity today masks ignorance of, if not indifference to, the responsibility of ruling class institutions for racism and oppression.

The destructive and divisive atmosphere often found in todays privilege-checking culture reflects both the toxic sectarian factionalism of the theorys originators, and the light years we have travelled from the civil rights and Black Power movements. Then, white radicals in this country routinely participated in and helped organise demonstrations and activities in support of anti-racist causes and campaigns the victorious Free Huey [Newton] campaign (involving the Black Panthers shoot-out with the police), an internationalcause clbre, being one example. Then, Black and white militants joined forces in the interests of necessity and revolutionary unity. In todays left, by contrast, white activists may excuse themselves, or be discouraged, from joining and organising anti-racist protests, on the privilege basis that they cannot possibly understand the Black experience of oppression and should not act like they do.

Whereas in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the raised fist Black and white expressed political, anti-racist, class solidarity for a generation, todays popular symbols of anti-racist resistance (hands raised in the Dont Shoot stance, hoodies, and I am Trayvon Martin signs) are sometimes argued by privilege advocates to be inappropriate for whites. In what would have been anathema to anti-racist movements of the past, some privilege advocates call upon whites to identifyas whites as part of a community with racists instead of identifying themselves as anti-racist fighters.

In the 1960s and 1970s, to be sure, there were radicals who tried, at times successfully, to split the left on the basis of their particular oppression. With the fragmentation of the mass movement, separatist elements, in both the Black and womens movements, developed. There were also nationalist groups within the Black movement that refused to have anything to do with whites. These were a stark contrast to the Black Panther Party, which considered many of the Black nationalist currents to be bourgeois cultural nationalists. The Panthers, by contrast, identified themselves as revolutionary nationalists, came out for gay liberation, stood for Black Power and socialism, and were identified by their slogan, Power to the people a slogan with as much relevance today as then. Their alliances and joint struggles with whites included their rank-and-file autoworkers caucus in Fremont, California, the Black Panther Party Caucus, which included Hispanic, Asian, Black and white workers. Unfortunately, the political complexity of various nationalist and separatist currents of the time, and their relationship to contemporary debates about oppression, is too extensive to fall within the scope of this article.

Privilege theorys original focus on white-skin privilege has since expanded, developing views on oppression and privilege in a variety of contexts, including gender and sexual orientation, among others. The variations, however, still reflect common historical, theoretical and political roots. These shared roots include a lack of unequivocal solidarity with those whose oppression is deemed less than, or different from, ones own.

Many of todays supporters of the privilege framework are motivated by the best intentions, believing that privilege theory, by creating greater sensitivity, will produce better fighters against oppression. But the theorys track record throws a dark shadow over well-intentioned hopes for change. While privilege politics have led to interpersonal struggle, and even at times the birth of radical groups, they have proved incapable of providing or building the solidarity necessary for significant victories and social change.

The politics of privilege have come full circle. The privilege ideology circuit began among Stalinists, who brought privilege politics into the middle-class student movement, with common prejudices against workers, as part of the orgy of self-destruction of the New Left in the late 1960s. Ex-student radicals then carried privilege theory into the universities. There, it was perceived to be part of the legacy of the left, and was accepted by liberals as a way to oppose racism that required no action in the real world. Privilege theory became the dominant discourse of many departments and university administrations, evolving and moving to the right (dropping, for example, both anti-imperialism and talk of revolution), as it accommodated the rightward shift and drift in American political and intellectual life. Today, newly radicalised students, completing the circuit, have brought privilege politics back from the conservative, neoliberal universities into the radical movement again.

Class, independent self-organisation and revolution

The privilege model is often defended on the basis that we all must strive to understand the nature and experience of all oppression. That argument is more than undeniably and unconditionally true it is crucial. The question, however, cannot end there. The central premises of early privilege theory were profoundly anti-working class. It should come as no surprise that the current model continues to reflect, in updated form, divisive and anti-working-class biases of its progenitors. The left must examine, analyse and acknowledge these class biases and their impact.

Independent activity and organisation from below by oppressed groups is critical, and the Civil Rights, Black Power, Womens Liberation, and other movements of the 1960s were able to win significant gains. But they could not end racism, sexism or oppression. Much work remains. New movements, of which recent developments like Black Lives Matter, Young, Gifted and Black, and various local independent Black youth groups are hopeful signs, will rise and grow and also win significant gains. But, as in the 1960s, these new movements will remain unable to end oppression until they are able to dismantle the capitalist social system, whose institutions all function in a racist manner. The struggle to fundamentally transform class society with all the injustices, inequalities and obscenities it is built upon cannot succeed without a united, mass movement that is both revolutionary and working class, dedicated to replacing capitalism with socialism from below, capable of wresting economic and state power from the ruling class.

We have a long way to go in building such a workers movement. But a left that does not eschew all anti-working-class politics cannot get there. In recent years, popular and working-class resistance to austerity and to the long neoliberal assault has again appeared on the domestic and international stage. Resistance to oppression and to neoliberalism is creating the potential for building multiracial struggles that champion the fight against all oppression, and that form the basis for building a united working-class movement.

A left that wishes to be relevant to these openings must while aggressively fighting all forms of oppression also actively combat all forms of anti-working-class politics, under whatever guise they arise. If American radicals choose to accept or tolerate rather than actively combat the prevalent anti-working-class baggage of privilege politics, todays left will face a series of tragic, self-inflicted, defeats. The American left must recognise that the coming revolution to end all exploitation and oppression will be a working-class revolution, or there will be no revolution.

Saving workers from the hell of the fishing industry in Asia – Equal Times

Posted: at 10:05 am

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), in 2017, 40.1 million people worldwide worked on fishing vessels. These men and women are sometimes forcibly conscripted onto boats where their most basic rights are violated. Faced with this unacceptable situation, several associations and trade unions are pushing for the international community to better regulate the rapidly evolving industry.

Supreyanto was 47 years old. An Indonesian national, he worked on a Taiwanese vessel fishing tuna, a job which often requires several days of work without rest. It was a job for which Supreyanto gave his life. In 2015, after four months spent at sea, the fisher died on a boat that was employing him in what the captain and several sailors described as an accident. In reality, it was a murder.

Supreyanto suffered many abuses aboard the Taiwanese vessel, including humiliation and beatings. His story, all too common in the fishing industry, came to light thanks to the work of Allison Lee, founder of the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union. Created in 2014, it is Taiwans first union dedicated to defending the rights of foreign sailors employed in the country.

For years, she has fought to protect these often-exploited workers. Its hard to know whats going on aboard the boats, she tells Equal Times.

Most of the time we have nothing but our suspicions. The sailors who die often disappear into the ocean.

As the economic stakes of the fishing industry continue to rise, stories like Supreyantos are increasingly commonplace on the worlds seas.

The fishing industry is one of the most dangerous and violent in the world. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 20,000 to 30,000 seafarers disappear every year while at sea. I think its due to the nature of the work, Kimberly Rogovin, senior seafood campaign coordinator at the International Labour Rights Forum (ILRF), tells Equal Times. On the boats, you dont have access to the most basic medical care.

According to Rogovin, fishing vessels are also under enormous economic pressure to reduce costs, so they hire the least trained and cheapest workers. This is particularly true in the countries of Asia, which are home to 75 per cent of the worlds active fishing vessels. The fishing industry in these countries relies on migrant workers from countries where employment is scarce who are willing to work for starvation wages.

In the Taiwanese fishing industry, which specialises in tuna, its mainly Indonesian and Filipino workers who work on the boats. In Thailand its workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. They catch all types of fish, both inside and outside of exclusive economic zones (EEZ) [editors note: areas within 200 nautical miles of a countrys coast where it is allowed to explore and use marine resources]. They are the ones that suffer the worst abuses. The same goes for workers in South Korea, explains Rogovin.

Over the years, associations have documented abuses in the industry. I think there are examples of abuse on many boats throughout the world. But this phenomenon has become extreme in recent years and certain regions are more affected than others, Thailand, for example, Steve Trent, founder and president of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), tells Equal Times. According to a United Nations report, 59 per cent of migrant workers employed on Thai boats have witnessed the killing of another sailor.

The entire system is designed to keep sailors dependent on the boats they are on. They cant leave or demand that their rights be respected. In this respect, working on a boat can be similar to slavery, Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watchs Asia division, tells Equal Times. Indeed, many of the migrant workers employed on fishing vessels incur significant debt well before going out to sea.

Recruitment agencies seek out the poorest workers they can find, offering them contracts and the possibility of work abroad. Documents are signed in exchange for a large sum of money and before they know it, workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia and Cambodia find themselves working on fishing vessels in deplorable conditions where they are forced to work for years to pay off their debts. The United Nations has called this practice a form of modern slavery.

Moreover, as Robertson explains: Deep-sea fishing operations are conducted outside of all national labour laws, and in fact outside of any law at all, since regulations on work at sea are almost non-existent. While fishing activities are regulated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in reality it is little respected.

In 2007, after two years of negotiations, the ILO adopted a new convention (Convention 188) aimed at ensuring decent working conditions for fishers aboard fishing vessels, specifically with regard to conditions of service, accommodation and food, occupational safety and health protection.

But the document lacks a base of support as no Asian country except for Thailand has agreed to sign it.

Moreover, the vastness of the worlds oceans and seas makes it difficult to carry out checks, which makes it difficult to ensure that conventions are being properly applied, even more so when the vessels employing exploited workers are ghost ships engaged in illegal fishing.

International institutions refer to fishing activities that take place outside of any international monitoring as IUU fishing (illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing). This practice accounts for 20 to 30 per cent of activities in the sector, the equivalent of US$10 to US$20 million a year, according to the FAO. Many people are trying to regulate IUU fishing because they cant profit from it, says Rogovin.

However, the fight against illegal fishing and for better regulation of the oceans cannot be separated from the fight against forced labour. Climate change and overfishing are making it harder to catch fish close to the shore, says HRWs Robertson. When fishing vessels become fleets fishing on the high seas, the abuses against workers intensify and worsen significantly. Furthermore, as he explains, IUU fishing over long periods of time is really only possible if you have forcibly detained crews working indefinitely in horrible conditions.

Migrant workers are treated like disposable resources while vessel owners have only one objective: catching as many fish as possible to make the biggest profits.

This has become increasingly difficult due to the overfishing of the oceans. One in three species of fish is now overfished, Pearl Peiyu Chen, who works for Greenpeace in Asia, tells Equal Times. The boats have to travel farther and farther out into the ocean and stay at sea for longer periods of time to find the resources that they need.

Commercial fishing is part of a global chain and there is enormous pressure from buyers, whether its larger retailers like Walmart, Tesco or Carrefour, or distributors who buy seafood products, like Nestl, explains Rogovin. This enormous pressure on the industry to keep production costs low forces the boats to save money so they can continue to sell their fish.

Greenpeace points in particular to the involvement of industry giants in forced labour. Last March, the association revealed disturbing testimonies from sailors employed on two vessels linked to Fong Chong Formosa (FCF), one of the largest tuna traders in Tawain, which sells its products on Japanese, American and European markets. While Asian countries are particularly implicated in forced labour, the EJF has also documented cases of forced labour on British and Irish boats, as well as US-flagged vessels based in Hawaii.

However, solutions exist for putting an end to these degrading practices for workers around the world. Trent believes that there is a range of easily accessible and economically viable tools that could be put in place. For example, when you look out the window, wherever you are in the world, and see cars going by, they have license plates. This prevents serious problems. At sea, many fishing vessels dont have identification numbers. Were advocating for the introduction of license plates from the moment the vessels are built to the moment they are destroyed.

Another proposed solution is the installation of tracking systems and cameras on board ships. Associations are also calling for an end to transhipment at sea. The practice is simple: in order to avoid fishing vessels making too many return trips between the coast and the high sea, other vessels come to collect the fish caught and bring the goods back to port. This practice allows vessels to stay at sea without having to interrupt their fishing activities, but it is also often associated with forced labour a situation which has worsened with the coronavirus which has left tens of thousands of fishers and other seafarers stuck at sea due to containment measures. . However, the worlds countries are increasingly regulating transhipment as it is often associated with IUU fishing.

Faced with international pressure, but also with intergovernmental logistical and financial support, several countries have taken additional steps to improve working conditions on fishing vessels. Thailand, which has been particularly singled out for criticism in recent years, has been trying to better regulate its industry since 2015. Thanks in particular to improved working conditions on its vessels and an investment of more than 1.75 million bahts (US$56,700) to modernise fishing equipment, the country has successfully reduced the need for labour on Thai-flagged vessels by 37 per cent, thus lowering production costs while improving working conditions and wages for foreign workers.

The European Union also lifted the yellow card it had given to Taiwan in 2015 after significant improvements made over the last three and a half years to tracking and regulation of its fishing vessels.

International conventions appear to be bearing fruit. In 2018, the Taiwanese-flagged Fuh Sheng No.11 became the first vessel detained under the provisions of the ILOs Work in Fishing Convention (No. 188) after an inspection revealed cases of forced labour on board.

But governments are not the only actors capable of fighting against forced labour on fishing vessels. Several trade unions have been formed over the last few years to defend the rights of migrant fishers. These organisations are indispensable in the fight against these practices. In addition to the role of information and prevention they play with the workers they are able to reach, they have also played a major role in recent years in denouncing ship owners who fail to respect the most basic human rights.

One such organisation, the Fishers Rights Network (FRN), was launched in Songkhla, one of Thailands largest ports, in 2017. Since then, the union has been distributing first aid kits to fishers and has helped several of them to claim unpaid wages. Its actions have forced the government to raise the minimum wage for fishers. In January 2017, the Migrant Workers Rights Network (MWRN), also based in Thailand but working on behalf of workers from Myanmar, assisted more than 2,000 migrant workers in submitting a collective labour demand to their employer.

These worldwide struggles cannot be successful without the mobilisation of all of the actors in the channels of consumption, all the way to consumers.

Consumers need to ask questions in their supermarkets or in restaurants to ensure that seafood products are produced using sustainable practices that respect labour and human rights, explains Robertson.

For Trent, a better political vision, greater control by retailers of where their products come from and consumer mobilisation could make a difference. The challenges are immense, theres no doubt about it. But we have solutions at our disposal. The EJF founder is calling for global action to be taken: The seas and oceans cover more than 70 per cent of our planet and have no borders. These problems cannot be solved individually. If we dont work together, we will fail, he says.

This is a major challenge for the thousands of migrant workers who are abused by their captains on the worlds oceans every day. Climate change and dwindling fish resources combined with growing demand are making this issue increasingly urgent. According to the FAO, global per capita fish consumption in 2016 was more than 20 kilograms a year, double what it was 50 years ago.

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Saving workers from the hell of the fishing industry in Asia - Equal Times

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What is the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement? – Bankrate.com

Posted: at 10:04 am

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The Financial Independence Retire Early movement, or FIRE, is a group of people trying to gain financial independence by amassing enough wealth and cutting their expenses so that they can retire extremely early. Many FIRE proponents are looking to retire in their 30s or 40s.

So how do people in the FIRE movement achieve their goal, and what are the drawbacks?

The FIRE movement centers on taking control of your finances, and proponents focus less on increasing their earnings than on spending less. FIRE participants focus on two areas, which are really two sides of the same coin:

By saving and investing their money, participants grow an amount of money that can generate enough income to sustain their lifestyles. They use detailed spreadsheets and financial plans to model out how theyll be able to meet their needs based on their income and the rate of return they can expect from their savings and investments in stocks or stock funds.

To meet their goals, FIRE participants must take on extra risk by investing in stocks, and that means understanding how the stock market works and having a brokerage account. They wont be able to rely on the low returns and absolute safety of a bank account to amass their fortune.

And by spending less, they reduce the level of savings they need in order to retire early. While some FIRE critics say that FIRE participants live a too-frugal lifestyle to reach their goal, many proponents say that theyre not making extraordinary sacrifices. In fact, they say by spending on what they really love that they actually derive more enjoyment from those things. Plus, they enjoy moving toward independence, when they can do what they truly love.

But however they approach it, FIRE participants see the lifestyle as a way to spend their time doing what they really want to do rather than what society tells them they should want.

Because of their desire to retire early, many participants wont be able to take full advantage of employer-sponsored retirement plans such as a 401(k). They may or may not be able to take advantage of plans such as an IRA, depending on whether they earn income in retirement. Instead, theyll need to save in taxable accounts or in accounts such as a Roth IRA, both of which offer access to cash (at least at some level with the IRA) without any penalties.

Financial independence is not something that usually drops in your lap, and the FIRE movement works hard to achieve its dream, thinking years out instead of whether they should buy that new car this year. The movement is also really supportive of members who have started the journey, and members provide spreadsheets and other tools to help each other.

This social solidarity helps FIRE participants realize that there is a community that values what theyre trying to achieve, making it that much easier to do.

While these savers are all classified in the FIRE movement, there are many different subsets of the movement. Theyre all striving for the ultimate goal, but participants have different objectives and approaches, based on what they see as valuable and the sacrifices theyre able to make.

But they can be divided into some key groups based on their approach:

And FIRE participants can also be divided into how they want to spend their independent lifestyle:

In both cases, these new retirees now with financial independence can do what they really want without worrying about where their money comes from. Not only do they have their emergency funds stocked with cash, they know where next years income is coming from, too.

Criticisms of the FIRE movement generally fall into one of two key categories:

Some early retirees, for example, may assume that they could generate the kind of returns that investors saw in stocks in 2019, when the S&P 500 rose a whopping 29 percent. Thats well above the markets long-term average of about 10 percent annually. Or perhaps some may rely on their ability to pick stocks and have had a few lucky years.

Critics also say that FIRE participants are not factoring in the longer-term costs of major expenses such as health care and housing, which have continued to increase substantially. Plus, leaving the workforce may create an employment gap that many employers will view negatively. For sure, staying out of the workforce will ding the amount of Social Security income you can draw later in life, and thats when those on a fixed income may most need the money.

These are all relevant concerns, but many in the FIRE community say they have considered these scenarios and have planned accordingly. They may cite their financial models as proof that they have been realistic, pointing to detailed projections of their income and expenses.

In any case, a major decline in stocks, which typically occurs as part of a recession, will stress-test these plans and forecasts, and may challenge the security of many early retirees.

The FIRE movement has attracted a lot of attention in recent years some of it negative. Yet its hard to see how people consciously spending their money and time on what they truly love is anything but a net positive, even if it does have some costs along the way.

Are You Independent Yet? Financial Self-Sovereignty and the Decentralized Exchange – Cointelegraph

Posted: at 10:04 am

Helicopter parents. They never let their kids out of sight. They fret at the possibility of any potential danger, striving to protect their snowflake charges from harm, reassuring the child so they know just how special, precious and helpless they are and that they can never, ever fail.

Of course, this backfires horrendously, resulting in what we see today: leaders who are entitled silver-spoon-fed adolescents conditioned to require constant coddling not to mention the fact that their parental stimulus packages have taught them that everything in life is free. Including bailouts. Money please!

And who are they really protecting anyway? Kids are resilient. Its adults who struggle with change.

As the United States celebrates Independence Day, I ask the question: Do you feel independent?

Or is your government a helicopter parent, standing over your shoulder and second-guessing every financial decision you make?

Youre reading Cointelegraph Magazine. So Ill make an educated guess.

Its time for a change in your relationship. Its time your government allowed you to grow up.

For Americans, Independence Day is supposed to be about hot dogs, fireworks, and the celebration of the birth of a new nation founded on principles of freedom and equality.

Obviously, that was pre-COVID. Now were asking to unhuddle our masses through social distancing, and while we may still yearn to breathe free, were on physical lockdown as well as suffering increasingly draconian financial oversight from a variety of acronymed bodies.

The tools of decentralized trade, however, may yet overcome the tyranny of our financial system, enabling a reformation of economic interaction that steers us away from centralization and toward more just and equitable means of controlling our own financial futures.

The first stage of this growing up process, Barney Mannerings, co-founder and CEO of decentralized derivatives exchange Vega Protocol explains, came about through the creation of Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer network that enables the permissionless and trustless exchange of value.

This early step in the democratization of money was followed by the tokenization of assets and the decentralization of a range of financial tools. The next step, he feels, is the decentralized exchange. Such exchanges allow peer-to-peer trade without the need for any central intermediators to hold our hands and ensure our safety.

DEX (decentralized exchange) technology allows participation on equal footing with the bigwigs, Mannerings says. Users need no longer be railroaded into a prescribed batch of menu offerings from a select group of dominant companies; instead they can access a smorgasbord of investment choices to suit different appetites for risk and reward.

Mannerings explains that some centralized services allow users to take positions with low or no fees because they pick up money on the flipside for helping their clients to bet against the crowd.

Look at Robinhood, he says. They make money by selling your order flow to some hedge funds. They dont even make money off charging you a fee, they make money because the hedge funds want to know what youre doing so they can make money. That means youre not playing the same game as everyone else and youre not on an even footing.

With a DEX, everyone gets the same information, the same tools for risk, and a range of tools that are normally hidden from people in traditional markets, Mannerings says. This theoretically offers a stronger guarantee of fairness without the possibility of front-running.

Mario Blacutt (often writing as Berzeck) is the founder of the Nerve Network and the decentralized exchange NDEX. He explains that DEXs can offer unique opportunities for new projects as well as investors. Small projects with strong potential can be listed on decentralized exchanges without having to wade through a slow application process, and without paying large entry fees that can be unreasonably demanding especially in the early stages of a projects development.

There are a lot of stories of smaller, good projects that do not maximize their potential because they never get the opportunity to be listed. We wanted to break that pattern and offer smaller projects the opportunity to be listed for free on our exchange.

Its not just centralized exchanges that stand in the way of financial autonomy, either. Governments have been known to meddle in pocketbooks from time to time too. Mannerings explains that its Like what happened in Europe after the financial crisis; some governments took money off some of the wealthiest people to help pay for things. When they decide thats going to happen, or that you cant spend it a certain way, or that they want to freeze your money, you suddenly discover its not really yours. You dont really have that full control.

The individuals power over their own finances has essentially been granted (or withheld) at the whim of banks, financial institutions, and governments. Kain Warwick, founder of the Synthetix asset platform, explains that its only in the last few years that this has begun to change. The promise of decentralized self-sovereign tech is being realized, which is exciting.

If you have your funds in the bank, PayPal, Venmo or other centralized services and they decide they dont like what youre doing, they can just cut you off, Warwick says. Youre guilty until proven innocent. Censorship-resistance is a critical feature of decentralized platforms, he continues. Thats one of the huge promises of Bitcoin originally that you could make payments anywhere over the Internet and you didnt need to rely on some third party as an intermediator.

Loi Luu, co-founder and CEO of Kyber Network, seconds this message of financial independence. With Kyber, users can make connections on the blockchain that are fully transparent and permissionless. Regardless of where you are, whats your background, you can always interact with Kyber, because its fully powered by blockchain. This has the added advantage of making trading safer, easier, and more accessible, he says.

And its all about user choice for Alex Wearn, co-founder and CEO of IDEX. The teams goal is to build an exchange that has the same user experience as centralized offerings, but doesnt require you to hand over control of your private keys. Users can choose their own custody solution, whether it be hardware wallets for retail clients or large-scale custodial solutions for institutional needs. Its really all about giving users that choice and catering to their needs rather than forcing them into a one-size-fits-all option of the exchange holding funds.

Warwick explains the problem of centralized crypto custody. We see it every day. Someone puts value into a centralized service or to a custodial platform and they lose access to their coins. If you dont have the private key to your assets, then youre relying on someone else to keep them safe. In some cases thats fine, but ultimately, the ability to have control of your own assets, to make that decision for yourself to have full self-sovereignty, is where the power comes from.

Its time for governments to treat us like adults, Mannerings says. Users should be able to evaluate their risks and choose products and services that offer freedom and control.

Loi Luu advises users to be their own advocates throughout this learning process and to approach the newfound tools with caution. Controlling your own wealth is good if you know what youre doing, as in, you know what is required to be fully in control of your wealth, you know how to keep your private keys safe, you know how to do a backup, and you know which site is a phishing site, so youre not falling for scams. But if you dont have enough knowledge or technical background, controlling your own wealth on blockchain might be risky.

Berzeck explains its a pillar of the blockchain technology ethos:

You own your money, but you have to be aware of the responsibilities of owning your own money. You have to be careful with that freedom.

This transition to greater individual monetary responsibility will take time, he says probably more than we want to believe it will. He suggests it will take at least a generation to change societys ingrained mindset about how banking and money works today.

Mannerings worked in traditional finance, which he admits offers technologies that are incredibly useful but deeply inaccessible to those on the outside. In his line of work, managers would sell derivatives to small companies but were buying them from a different desk, in a chain of buyers and sellers who all skimmed profits in additional layers of transactions. The size of the difference between the market price and what these people were getting it for was huge. That was a problem but there wasnt an obvious solution until the crypto stuff came along.

Vega co-founder Tamlyn Rudolph witnessed this privilege of access during her time in traditional markets. When she was trading, she was able to register directly and trade on her own account, unlike most people. She saw the huge discrepancy between her own knowledge and access to the market compared to the paltry offerings her family and friends accessed.

A decentralized platform puts tools into the hands of the people, Rudolph says. With the Internet of Value, parcels of risk can now be swapped around, allowing users to carve out risk for themselves. Own your own financial risk, be able to understand it, carve out what you dont want, and take on other peoples risks that you want to help with.

Berzeck speaks from an entirely different experience, having lived under what he describes as a corrupt regime in Bolivia until a recent coup began to change things for the better, he says. Many bought the socialist dream, he recalls, but it followed a catastrophic path similar to the one Venezuela faces now. It works at first but long term, it always fails. Its been proven again and again in many different countries. The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, enforced the heavy centralization of markets, controlling every aspect of the financial system ostensibly for the protection and safety of the people, Berzeck says.

Cryptocurrency offers the exact opposite of overbearing governments, he suggests. Banks closed my accounts because they wanted to protect me Ive seen firsthand what total centralization and control can do to individuals. Thats why I value the kind of freedom that blockchain offers.

The future is looking very bright for the DEX movement, Loi Luu says. The Kyber Network has enjoyed an incredible eight to ten times growth year-over-year due to massive expansion in DeFi and related applications. When DeFi grows, Kyber grows, he says. The ease of use of decentralized applications has improved significantly in the last couple years, too.

Both Luu and Berzeck caution that decentralized solutions wont take over completely any time soon. Both solutions will co-exist, with centralized solutions remaining the main regulated on- and off-ramp for fiat to crypto interaction. Berzeck explains, We should be aware that centralized exchanges and DEXs will coexist and probably complement each other. We should not try to artificially accelerate the process. The technology just isnt there yet.

Synthetixs Warwick agrees. Its still very high friction to use a DEX, he admits. A user may choose to use a DEX, but its not the solution for everyone. I think thats coming. With scaling and other things were seeing, we will get to a point where the status quo moves to DEXs.

Darren Liu, lead developer of Binances DEX solution, Binance Smart Chain, says technology tends to move in waves, with DeFi currently drawing the most attention and activity. The Binance Smart Chain offers new tools for DeFi that he says will enable more users to join the trend.

For true mass adoption to happen, Berzeck says its all about what works for users. If it reduces costs to clients, they will be interested in it.

Thats what companies want. They dont care about dogmatic things. They dont even care about decentralization. The only thing they care about is to reduce costs and increase income.

So, we give them a way to reduce costs and prove that blockchain technology is able to reduce costs for them. Thats the way we should face this problem of how to increase mass adoption.

Banks and financial institutions still hold the monetary keys in the form of liquidity, Mannerings explains. Money is controlled in just a few places, giving those parties the power to run the show. That power is almost accidental. They were in the right place at the right time, they have support from regulators, but theyre fundamentally not doing anything super-special.

Its probably one of the reasons why finance has been less disrupted by the Internet than most other aspects of the modern economy, he suggests. Yes, you can go on online banking, but the actual conduits of money have not changed much as a result of the Internet, just the way you present it to users.

Its waiting for this decentralized technology where you can say, we no longer need a bank, we no longer need an exchange to sit in the middle as an organization controlling this. Theres a protocol that sits in the middle and satisfies all the different players, and now all the people who might want to trade can get together and say hey this is a thing we want to trade now and they can trade. And they dont have to trust each other, they can put up their margin on a decentralized protocol.

They can do that without asking someones permission and without enriching those guys in the middle.

Kybers Luu is excited to see this transition taking place. You really feel the freedom. The fact you can do a loan and then contribute to some asset management protocol blockchain within one or two minutes without waiting for weeks to get approval from banks or financial institutions, its just mind-blowing.

Were all familiar with the concept of helicopter money, in the wake of the massive economic stimulus packages (bailouts) of 2009 and 2020. Free markets arent free. Theyre coddled by the Fed, given sugar by tax-cutting politicians, and only one billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya seems to have the adulting skills to suggest that we should just let the failing companies and executives learn by failing.

Who cares? Let them get wiped out. Who cares? They dont get to summer in the Hamptons? Who cares?

It all traces back to those helicopter parents that end up doing their child a disservice in the name of safety. Theres a tendency to assume people need to be protected from themselves. Mannerings says. The problem is the more you go down that route, the more it looks like they needed protecting.

When everyone is told that every financial product in the world is safe and one turns out not to be safe people will lose funds, resulting in the clamor to control and regulate even more, he says. Its a well-worn road that leads to totalitarianism.

Mannerings compares a night out bowling to a day out skiing as an analogy for financial awareness. You go bowling, you dont expect it to be dangerous, he says, you just go have fun and get drunk and its fine. But if you go skiing, you know its dangerous, and so you treat it with the right respect. You might take lessons, start easy and avoid difficult runs until you are ready.

Its not that the people who go skiing are smarter than the ones who go bowling, its that they understand what the risks are and because they know they are risks, the vast majority of them properly evaluate what they can do, and dont do things they shouldnt.

The same is true, he says, of finance. Stop treating people like babies and educate users with greater access to information.

I think youll find people dont need anywhere near as much babying as some people like to make out, if you arm them with information.

Independence Day is a great time to reflect on that. Americas been founded on the very idea of freedom Youve got to trust your citizens and give people that freedom. And they wont let you down.

This single mother started with $20,000 and is now an early-retired millionaire heres one thing that helped her – MarketWatch

Posted: at 10:04 am

Jackie Cummings Koski has been a member of her local investment club for 11 years and is now on the board of directors but when she first started out, she had little money to her name and no clear path to financial freedom.

Koski joined the club so that she could improve her knowledge about investing, but it was also where she was able to openly talk about her divorce and find meaningful ways to provide security for herself and her young daughter. Each fellow member became something of a mentor to her, and the discussions were inviting. It was all very uplifting, she said.

Joining the investment club, along with following a budget and spending well under her means, has made the former saleswoman financially independent. In the last 11 years, the single mother has gone from $20,000 in her 401(k) at the time of her divorce to $1.3 million, and shes now a financial counselor to others. She reached financial independence at 46, and retired three years later.

See: This early retiree found her calling during the COVID-19 pandemic

Mentorships, whether one-on-one or in a group, can be crucial to achieving goals. Connecting on a personal level helps. When Koski works with her clients, including high-school students and those in underserved populations, she talks about growing up in rural poverty, with a single father who had a sixth-grade education and was raising six children.

All of those things play into how hard it was in the very beginning, she said. Going from poverty to financially independent thats a path that most people Im working with can get and connect with.

The FIRE movement, short for financial independence, retire early, has no shortage of inspiring stories about people who cut their spending in half, downsized their homes or took on numerous jobs to save as much as possible. But not everyone can follow that path. Some FIRE bloggers may also not be aware of the subtle advantages they had growing up, such as starting out in a middle-class family or living in an area with public transportation to get to the library or a job.

Koski has followed a few of the mainstays of the FIRE movement, however, such as slashing spending and investing much of the rest. As a sales representative at LexisNexis, her salary varied from year to year with an average of about $80,000, but she spent between $40,000 to $45,000 a year and put the rest away.

The early retiree pointed out that this wouldnt be possible everywhere she lives in Ohio, where home prices are not nearly as high as some major hubs like New York City or San Francisco so her mortgage, taxes and insurance amounted to about $1,000 a month. Still, she was careful with her money. Shed buy a luxury vehicle, but one that was three to five years old and with a price tag half of what it was when it was new. She worked only a few miles away from home, so gas wasnt a huge budget item. She didnt deprive herself of spending on food, and would go out to eat for lunch or dinner.

I didnt design my life to live off of $45,000, she said. I backed into it and discovered that my expenses were $45,000. At the same time, she was maxing out all of her investment accounts, including her 401(k), individual retirement account and a Health Savings Account.

Immersing yourself in an environment that supports the same values and goals is important. Koski was the first in her family to graduate college, and didnt have many sources for advice about finances when she was starting out so she figured it out on her own. By changing my environment, I was exposed to different things, she said.

Also see: Im a 32-year-old stay-at-home mom, and my husband earns $150,000 a year. Will I ever be able to enjoy a retirement?

The COVID-19 crisis has the potential to worsen future retirement security, and in some cases has already deteriorated Americans current well-being, but people may be able to use this time to learn more about money and their own personal finances, Koski said. People can turn to the internet, books or maybe even an investing club (socially distanced, of course) to learn more about saving, budgets, investing and personal finance topics.

Savers can also use this time to reflect on whats working financially, what isnt, what goals theyd like to achieve and dig into why they behave the way they do with their money. Breaking down what it would take to reach that goal is an eye-opener. For example, Koski tells students and aspiring investors that saving $50 a week for 40 years can get someone to $1 million.

Youre not going to be saving or investing unless in your mind you believe it will make a difference, she said. It may take a while to really get your head around things like me, but it happens, and when it does, it is very, very powerful.

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This single mother started with $20,000 and is now an early-retired millionaire heres one thing that helped her - MarketWatch

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Advising Clients Interested in FIRE – TheStreet

Posted: at 10:04 am

Part of the job of a financial adviser is focused on helping clients achieve financial independence and to accumulate a sufficient amount of resources to fund the retirement lifestyle they desire. Arising out of the 2008 financial crisis, the FIRE movement - which stands for financial independence, retire early, has caught the attention of many, from Gen Xers to millennials.

Here are some thoughts on how to advise clients who might be embracing the goals of the FIRE movement.

The FIRE movement embraces the goals of achieving financial independence at a relatively early age and then retiring early. Both the FI and RE parts mean different things to those trying to achieve FIRE as the saying goes.

The premise of FIRE is that by slashing expenses and saving and investing a very high percentage of their income, these folks can achieve financial independence and be able to retire at a much younger age. This might be as much as 70% of more of their annual income that goes toward saving for retirement. FIRE disciples hope to accumulate enough to retire early and live off of their nest egg. How early is early? Ive read about some folks pulling the plug in their 30s and 40s, and in some cases in their 20s.

As with any client, you need to help them define what financial independence means for their situation and what early retirement means. Often, early retirement doesnt mean a total cessation of work for FIRE disciples, but rather it means retiring from the 9-to-5 daily work grind. There are many FIRE folks who earn money writing about their experiences on blogs, discussing them on podcasts, providing coaching to others looking to achieve financial independence and selling courses on the topic. Others may use their exit from being an employee to pursue self-employment of other types in areas of interest to them. Others do truly retire in the traditional sense as well.

Regardless of your clients goals, it's important to work with them to define the amount needed, when it is needed and how it will be invested both before and after their retirement -- whatever that looks like.

A concern for those retiring at a more traditional age, in their 60s, is whether or not they will outlive their money. Given current life expectancies, the financial aspects 20 or 30 years of retirement funding takes planning. A retirement that might last 40 or 50 years (or even longer) takes a ton of planning.

Its important to ensure that clients looking to go the FIRE route, in whatever format they choose in terms of total or partial early retirement, understand the stress that the normal ebbs and flows of the financial markets over a long time horizon will put on their retirement savings. Asset allocation for these clients will need to focus on growth potential within their level of risk tolerance.

In advising clients looking for an exit from the corporate world at an early age as part of their FIRE goals, there are some issues that these clients need to consider. Some of these include:

Health insurance is always a consideration for anyone leaving the conventional workforce prior to Medicare eligibility. If the client is a married couple and only one spouse is going this route, they could use the other spouses employer healthcare plan if that spouse will remain employed. Otherwise it's important that the client consider what they will do to cover this necessity, a serious illness without adequate insurance can be financially devastating.

For clients who have been using tax-deferred retirement plans such as a 401(k) to accumulate funds for their early retirement, they will need to have a plan to tap these accounts early if needed. Money in a traditional 401(k) or IRA will be subject to both taxes and potentially a 10% penalty if tapped prior to age 59. Roth accounts do allow the withdrawal of contributions if certain conditions such as the five-year rule are adhered to.

Overall, the issue of where the money will come from to support their needs once they leave their job is a huge planning issue that you can help these clients with. Which accounts should they tap first? If they are going to be doing something that generates income, will this income be enough to meet their needs?

The FIRE movement is exciting and appealing for many people these days. Like anything else in the financial planning realm, successfully achieving a very early retirement takes planning. For any clients looking to go this route, your expertise and perspective can be crucial to their success.

Advising Clients Interested in FIRE - TheStreet

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Early Retirees Were Supposed to Be Able to Depend on Rental Income. What They Should Do Now. – Barron’s

Posted: at 10:03 am

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Using rental properties to generate passive income has been a popular strategy in the financial independence, retire early movement. The coronavirus pandemic is threatening it.

Many property owners have seen their rental streams dry up or slow as unemployment has surged and businesses have closed, leaving landlords with tenants unable to pay, either in part or in full. While more households paid their rent in May as unemployment benefits and stimulus payments kicked in, the level of delinquencies is still elevated and landlords are having to adjust to the disrupted income streams.

Even so, Brent Sutherland, a certified financial planner and founder at Ntellivest, believes its still a good time to be invested in rental properties. Sutherland is an adherent to financial independence and owns rental properties himself, so he offers these tips for managing real-estate investments during this economic downturn.

Be honest with your tenantsand your lenders. Whether dealing with tenants who cant pay, or your mortgage broker, Sutherland recommends opening up lines of communication early.

If you havent already, reach out to tenants and ask them if financial hardship will prevent them from paying their rent. If yes, consider working with them to create a payment plan for when they do go back to work, or offer rent forgiveness for a period of time, contingent on the tenant signing a lease extension. Vacancy is a top concern for rental property owners, Sutherland says, so confidence in having tenants in the future may be worth low cash flow now.

If reduced rental income has made mortgage payments difficult or impossible to make, talk to your lender as soon as you can. All federally backed mortgages are eligible for forbearance during the crisis. Lenders may be willing to offer forbearance or loan modification for loans that arent federally backed, as well, given the magnitude of the economic crisis.

Dont panic, but reassess. Downturns are a natural part of the economic cycle and can be a good opportunity for investors to reassess their assets. If an investor cant sleep at night knowing whats happening with their investments, its likely they were in the wrong asset mix to begin with, Sutherland says.

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Barrons brings retirement planning and advice to you in a weekly wrap-up of our articles about preparing for life after work.

He urges investors to avoid a fire sale of their properties if they can help it. However, once market volatility has stabilized you can give your investment strategy and risk tolerance an honest evaluation. At that point, he says, if you realize you no longer want to take on the risks of rental property ownership, you can pursue the sale of your properties in favor of other investments.

Sutherland believes rents will rise again as the market starts to recover and social-distancing measures allow people to start working again. In the meantime, the advisor says people may need to find ways to replace lost rental income, including taking up a freelance side gig or selling less volatile securities, such as bonds, in order to have more cash on hand.

Make the most of current conditions. One positive aspect of the current downturn is that interest rates are at historic lows, making borrowing cheaper than ever before.

For those whove already built up equity in a property, taking out a home equity line of credit, or Heloc, could help cover living expenses for a while, if necessary. That Heloc could also be used to make improvements to a rental property thats sitting vacantsprucing it up to add to its rental or resale value in the future.

For those looking to increase their holdings, desirable properties may be newly within reach for those with the extra cash to buy them. Not only are interest rates low right now, home prices in some areas could also fall. That combination can be a boon for a savvy investor, Sutherland says. I rather welcome downturns. This is where better investments can be had.

Write to us at retirement@barrons.com

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Early Retirees Were Supposed to Be Able to Depend on Rental Income. What They Should Do Now. - Barron's

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How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Are Spending Their First Fourth of July in America – MarieClaire.com

Posted: at 10:03 am

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have a whole new set of holidays to celebrate now that they're living in the United States and that, obviously, includes, the Fourth of July. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, however, most traditional Fourth of July activities, like barbecues and big, community fireworks displays, are off the table.

So how are the Sussexes planning to celebrate their first Independence Day together in America? Royal expert Katie Nicholl says the couple will be keeping things low-key and enjoying some family time with their one-year-old son, Archie Harrison.

"I think he is just about walking," Nicholl told ET Online of Archie. "He's a very happy little boy, he's loving life in L.A. and they are still staying at Tyler Perry's house. I'm told they haven't found their forever home yet, they're still looking. They really do love that family time and they've had a lot of that recently. They both feel very grateful for that time they've had at home with Archie, watching him achieve all of those milestones."

Even though Harry and Meghan are loving the quality time they've been spending with Archie, Nicholl says they're getting antsy to get back to workespecially now that they're working toward financial independence following their step back from royal work.

"They do need to make money," Nicholl explained. "They've been in L.A. since March, they left the royal family at the end of March, and as yet, they haven't actually earned anything."

For more stories like this, including celebrity news, beauty and fashion advice, savvy political commentary, and fascinating features, sign up for the Marie Claire newsletter.

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FTSE 100 crash! Here’s why I’d buy cheap shares in July to get wealthy in retirement – Yahoo Finance UK

Posted: at 10:03 am

Were halfway through the year and what a six-month period it has been for most FTSE 100 investors. The pandemic has had a significant impact on equity markets. Following the initial rapid falls in broader indexes in February and March, many shares have since come back to recover some of their losses.

I believe the current volatility is likely to be a near-term headwind. Most economies, as well as FTSE 100 shares, will improve in due course, possibly sooner than later. In the past, stock markets worldwide and in the UK have created massive wealth for long-term investors. They are likely to do so in the future, too. Lets take a closer look.

Market crashes, in general, provide an opportunity to buy FTSE 100 stocks at cheaper valuations. Therefore, investors with a long-term horizon should do their due diligence to identify stocks with strong fundamentals, growth potential in their respective markets, and robust cash flows.

For example, let us assume you had invested 1,000, 10 years ago, in July 2010, in several FTSE 100 shares. Below, Id like to show you how much your investment would be worth now, based on a buy-and-hold strategy and share price appreciation:

Put another way, a modest investment in a range of companies would have meant a sizeable capital appreciation. And these numbers hold despite the market drop since early 2020

If history were to repeat itself, we could expect many FTSE 100 shares to make new highs within the decade. And if there is another market crash in the rest of the year, or at a later date, seasoned investors realise that it means the opportunity to buy solid companies at a discount. And that would mean the road to greater wealth in later life.

Warren Buffett is one of the worlds most renowned investors. One of his famous quotes is, Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. In other words, those investors who buy shares when others are selling en masse are likely to do well in the markets.

I expect the stocks whose names and metrics I have listed above to do well in the coming years, too. Therefore Id look to buy the dips.

We mostly invest for future goals, such as saving for a deposit on a home, for retirement, or simply gaining financial independence. As part of your investment aims, are you looking for defensive names that are likely to provide stable returns coupled with dividends?

Then there are several other FTSE 100 stocks Id consider buying as well. I believe theyd help ready my portfolio for whatever comes next.I regard AstraZeneca, BAE Systems,British American Tobacco,GlaxoSmithKline, National Grid, Pennon Group,Unilever,andVodafoneas solid picks for a long-term personal portfolio.

Finally, investors who dont have the time or expertise to keep track of individual stocks can invest in FTSE 100 trackers or liquid exchange-traded funds. For example, theiShares UK Dividend UCITS ETF is a basket of the 50 highest-yielding stocks from the FTSE 350 Index. Such a dividend-oriented ETF could be appropriate for most portfolios.Another ETF to consider could be the FTSE All-World ETF, tracking the performance of a large number of stocks worldwide.

The post FTSE 100 crash! Heres why Id buy cheap shares in July to get wealthy in retirement appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

The Hope and Struggles of Bhutan’s Women Vegetable Vendors – The Diplomat

Posted: at 10:03 am

Located just below the main town in Thimphu, on the bank of Wang Chhu, Centenary Farmers Market bills itself as the biggest vegetable market in Bhutan. Outside the market, especially on weekends, taxis and private cars congest the roads, struggling to find a parking space. The two-story market is divided into two sections: the ground floor sells vegetables imported from India, while the first floor displays local organic produce. The market is just 12 years old. It was inaugurated in 2008 by Princess Ashi Dechen Yangzom Wangchuck to celebrate the monarchs centenary reign. The market site, within its small life time, has witnessed a gradual change from the previous several seasons, and so also for the vendors there. In this short essay, we offer a peek into the lives of women vendors at the Centenary Farmers Market.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), at least 2 billion people, constituting about 61.2 percent of the worlds working population, are absorbed in informal sector employment today. These workers, who enter the informal economy owing to the lack of economic opportunities and other means of livelihood in the formal economy, mostly reside in developing countries. While there are competing claims with regard to the role of informal sector employment in helping to reduce poverty and inequality in the global economy, it cannot be denied that the sector continues to be a refuge for many.

The informal sector covers a wide array of unorganized economic activities in commerce, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, transportation, and services. In Bhutan, according to the Labor Force Survey Report 2018, 73.6 percent of the labor force is currently engaged in the informal sector, mainly comprising individuals with low education, rural area migrants, and poor households. Further, within the sector, almost three-quarters are involved in agriculture-related employment.

While on one hand, the informal sector provides jobs and reduces unemployment, in many cases the jobs are low-paid and guarantee little or no security.

In Bhutans capital, Thimphu, farmers from different parts of the country come to Centenary Farmers Market to sell their produce. The market houses about 400 stalls, providing self-employment to both the farmers and vendors alike. Numbers indicate that these sellers are largely women. But why have so many women conglomerated in the market?

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There are two recurring reasons to account for this, which these women themselves cite. First, women are traditionally expected to perform care-work, provide food to the family, do household work, and other feminine tasks. And this spills over to the kind of work they do. I think Bhutanese always have had this culture of females doing these kinds of work, Tshering said. Regular office works entail fixed (and often long) work hours, and other rigid obligations, and the women who enter the market overcome a lot of barriers and have many obligations. The informal sector gives them a flexible work schedule: both a time to perform their traditional gendered activities, and also a time to earn some money in the hours they can afford to spare.

Second, barriers in education also lead women to this option. While their male friends and siblings go to school, girls were expected to remain home and take care of younger siblings or the elderly. This inequality in access to education continues to date. In 2018, the adult (15 years and older) literacy rate in Bhutan for men was 75 percent, while for women it was 57 percent. This leads to more women being disqualified from formal sector employment, both in the public and private sectors.

Entry into the market has, however, empowered many women, at least to a certain extent. These women have made the best use of the opportunities the Centenary Farmers Market has in store for them.

A study conducted by the National Centre for Women and Children showed that violence against women is not uncommon in Bhutan. The report shows that one in every three ever-partnered women experienced an incidence of violence at least once in their lifetime, and more than 50 percent of those women (meaning one in every two) experienced violence twice or more. One of the three main causes of this intimate partner violence was financial stress in the family. To address the issue, the report recommends financial independence for women.

While a lot of research advocates for full financial independence for women to be empowered, these women have a different insight to offer. My husband consults me about our childrens education; he has to I also contribute, Pema said. We also discuss our saving strategies, and our monthly spending, she added. Merely being a part of the financial decision-making process of and in the family had empowered women, and lowered the chances of being victims of violence.

Many of the women in the market are prime breadwinners in their families, and some supplement their male counterparts incomes. Irrespective of their contributions, these women report displaying a great deal of autonomy in their marriage after becoming vendors and starting to earn money. They also started to schedule their own work time, and could decide what to do on their days off.

This said, not much has changed, however, in terms of sharing their household work. While a few of them report greater gender equality at home, many talk about the pile up of household chores on their day off. I have to wake up very early in the morning, sometimes as early as 3:00 AM when I have a lot of vegetables to carry to the market, Lhamo said. and every day, before I leave for work, I have to prepare breakfast and pack lunch for my kids and husband. Even so, these women articulate a greater feeling of satisfaction and confidence, stemming from the contribution they make to their familys finances.

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The testimonies of the women are now laced with strain. While selling vegetables does give them some financial income, for many women, it is not very substantial. Our survey revealed that the average income for each vendor is just about 44,000 Bhutanese ngultrum ($590) a year. This translates into a low lower-middle class income (Bhutans median income, according to the National Statistics Bureau, is about Nu. 200,000 a year).

For the past few years, their average income has been dwindling, as our survey also revealed. The women vendors reported a drop in their real income. They fear it might drop even further with the regular pay hikes in the government sector, and the increase in competition in their market. But on any given day, they have very few options to choose from. Many of them feel selling vegetables was the only job they could do. There are too many vegetable vendors in the market, and that makes profit making difficult. But as an uneducated person what other option do I have? We have to rely on this type of work to earn our living, Pema sighed.

A common grievance among women vendors was the increase in the number of vegetable vendors in the market and adjacent areas, and consequently the reduction in profits over the last few years. More than any other policy suggestion even more than improved sanitation, accessibility, and storage they want the governments intervention in keeping the number of vendors as it is, or even reducing it. Many of them feel licensing vegetable vending would help solve their problem.

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Interestingly however, some of the women reasoned that there were problems with that approach as well: Even if vegetable vendors needed to get a license to sell at the Farmers Market, many who cannot obtain a license would simply skirt the issue by selling their vegetables somewhere else. The state then, in an effort to help the vendors in the Farmers Market, will also have to inconvenience sellers of the secondary informal sector.

The city of Thimphu had already witnessed a similar attempt at this. When the Thimphu Thromde (a second-level administrative division in Bhutan) banned vegetable vending in Norzin Lam (one of the streets in Thimphu), rather than complying with the direction, these secondary informal sector vendors and their supporters retaliated, calling the Thromde antiGNH (Gross National Happiness). This outcry was apparently quite loud on social media. These vendors comprised of individuals who could not get a permanent selling location in the Centenary Farmers Market, and as a result resorted to selling their produce in the streets.

Increasing the stakes is the steady increase in competition coming from department stores, shopping marts, and/or e-commerce, with doorstep delivery now in fashion. On every intersection and streets in the city, big shops are now selling vegetables; and customers who otherwise come to us find it more convenient to buy their vegetables from there, Tenzin said. These shops have made life very convenient for customers who need to do grocery shopping quickly and in lesser amounts, she added. Many of these shops have staff on payroll, pay regular taxes, and keep established lines of supply and distribution. The costs of having these components is offset by the volume of trade and profit margins from other products the shops carry. They very easily outperform the informal sector in pricing their products.

Now with the COVID-19 crisis, and the accompanying changes in market scenes, what changed for these women?

Bhutan is among the few countries that has handled the COVID-19 situation with sufficient care. To date, there have been only 77 cases (mostly from students and returnees), of which 62 have recovered, and zero deaths. Yet, businesses did not go unaffected, and especially informal businesses.

Corona has affected all of us, and to me as a vegetable vendor, Sonam said. Bhutan cannot produce vegetables on large scale, and we import a lot of vegetables from India via Phuntsholing. But the government has imposed restrictions on importing certain vegetables; with the limited local [Bhutanese] suppliers, it has become increasingly challenging for us to maintain stock.

Already under strain, faced with competition coming from both within and outside the sector, the COVID-19 crisis has aggravated these womens situation. Many of their earnings are halved, and their work time has been reduced (although this was set to change starting July 1). The public panic and stay at home campaign has decreased the number of customers they get on a normal day.

Despite their plight, for these women, their hopes are relentless. Even if I earn less, Tshering maintained, I will continue doing this.

Roderick Wijunamai teaches in the Department of Social Sciences, at Royal Thimphu College. Kinley Yangchen is a student of Political Science and Sociology at Royal Thimphu College.

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The Hope and Struggles of Bhutan's Women Vegetable Vendors - The Diplomat

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Monthly Archives: July 2020

A Marxist critique of the theory of ‘white privilege’ – Red Flag

Saving workers from the hell of the fishing industry in Asia – Equal Times

What is the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement? – Bankrate.com

Are You Independent Yet? Financial Self-Sovereignty and the Decentralized Exchange – Cointelegraph

This single mother started with $20,000 and is now an early-retired millionaire heres one thing that helped her – MarketWatch

Advising Clients Interested in FIRE – TheStreet

Early Retirees Were Supposed to Be Able to Depend on Rental Income. What They Should Do Now. – Barron’s

How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Are Spending Their First Fourth of July in America – MarieClaire.com

FTSE 100 crash! Here’s why I’d buy cheap shares in July to get wealthy in retirement – Yahoo Finance UK

The Hope and Struggles of Bhutan’s Women Vegetable Vendors – The Diplomat

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