Pope Francis rang in the New Year by calling on people to work together to end slavery [3]:
All of us are called to be free, all are called to be sons and daughters, and each, according to his or her own responsibilities, is called to combat modern forms of enslavement. From every people, culture and religion, let us join our forces.
You may have assumed that slavery was a thing of the past. But sadly, it’s worse than ever before.
We reported [4] in 2011:
You would assume that – as messed up as things may be today – at least there is not widespread slavery, as in ancient Egypt or the American south. But as Time Magazine noted [5] last year:
Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence. While most are held in debt bondage in the poorest regions of South Asia, some are trafficked in the midst of thriving development.
And see this [6].
Indeed, inequality in America today is worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America [7] .. and twice as bad as in ancient slave-owning Rome [7].
As we warned years ago, Wall Street would like to put all of us in debt peonage [8].
Because we haven’t stood up for ourselves, they’re largely succeeding [9].
Related: