The Adventures of Unemployed Man ( Erich Origen and Gan Golan)

Erich Origen and Gan Golan

The Adventures of Unemployed Man

A comic book tale of neoliberalism whereby superheroes who have lost their job or are economic migrants are pushed into homelessness by the workings of a group of those who hold economic power and force deregulation of the workplace including reducing the ability of workers to act collectively (unions). It' brilliantly written and drawn (a variety of artists involved) and alongside the very serious message is a lot of humour much parodying traditional comic book heroes. Written in 2010 it is a response to the earlier market crashes whereby those at the very top of corporations got even richer and more powerful using the crash as a reason to push even more onerous restrictions on workers and to persuade governments to bail out the big banks putting taxpayer's money directly into the personal pockets of bank owners and top executives. All in a comic book.

Another aside as someone with a barely used economics degree. Adam Smith is much maligned as being the architect of neoliberalism and the concept of the "invisible hand" (used in the comic) that is used by the economically powerful to justify their version of the free market. Of course their version is all about trashing government regulation regarding their activities whilst using the same governments to repress workers combining to represent their interests. The free market we live in is anything but as corporations lobby governments to do their will, reduce their taxes and use the police and army to attack union activity. And of course to use the media to target the very vulnerable making them out as the cause of economic hardship most often using racism for this. Back to Adam Smith. He was writing in the 1700's when corporations didn't have the power that they have now across the globe. Yes some were forcing overseas markets to sell their goods cheaply and the slave trade was part of this. And back in the UK repressed workers rights as they started to combine. But Smith himself wrote that society and commerce could only operate with "mutual sympathy" or what we would call empathy. He saw commerce as a contract between producers (business) and workers and the buying public. See also Rousseau's The Social Contract although he and Smith definitely had major differences in opinion. Whilst Smith saw capitalism and the invisible hand (free market) the way to benefit all society he warned against having companies become too powerful and to break the "free" market by creating cartels and monopolies... or as he states "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices."  Which is exactly the version of capitalism we have today.

To end with a few statistics...

Going into 2022 the top 1% of households in the United States held 30.9% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%.

Globally the richest 10% own 76% of all wealth; the poorest half just 2%.