If Channel 4 chose to broadcast its documentary series, "Benefits Street", it's obviously not out of any concern for the plight of the poor - neither in Birmingham's James Turner Street, nor anywhere else for that matter. The media is not into the habit of giving a voice to the working class.

It wasn't for nothing that working households which are as dependent on benefits as their unemployed neighbours, were "edited out": Channel 4 wouldn't contradict Cameron's demagogic claim that the poor are responsible for their poverty because, after all, "work pays" - doesn't it?

Nevertheless, for all its faults and hypocrisy, this series at least has the merit of highlighting a few facts that the capitalist class and their politicians of whatever party, would rather conceal from us.

No, a "life on benefits" is not a "way of life", but just a way of keeping one's head above water! And this exposes the idiotic hypocrisy of the current xenophobic campaign against "benefit tourism".

This series also exposes the damage caused over the past decades, in which the rich have got richer while the poor were getting poorer. As a result, a sizeable section of the working class is reduced to barely surviving, using whatever means it can, due to factors for which the politicians are responsible: the absence of real jobs, poor health, a low level of education, lack of affordable nurseries for single parents, etc.. And the punitive measures advocated by politicians won't reduce this poverty - they can only make it worse!

Manufacturing poverty

Osborne chose this point in time to announce that he was considering increasing the minimum wage to £7.00/hour, by October 2016. This was probably timed to steal a march on Miliband, who was expected to make a similar promise the following day. But coming only days after the second episode of "Benefits Street", this political game highlighted the hypocrisy of all these politicians who concur on the need to "reform the welfare system" and to "get the jobless into work".

Indeed, what sort of society considers it "normal" to pay wages which are so low that they cannot possibly allow workers to have a decent life? Whether on the present £6.31/hour rate or on Osborne's promised £7.00/hour in two year's time (how much will that be worth, after inflation is taken into account?), no-one can make ends meet, not even on a full-time job - let alone on a part-time one! And that's where welfare benefits are meant to kick in.

But who are the real beneficiaries of the welfare "safety net" - if not the bosses, who pay derisory wages, thanks to benefits making up for part of the shortfall, and the private landlords, with their extortionate rents paid partly by housing benefits? As to the rest of us, workers, we'd rather earn decent wages than having to go through the bureaucratic, undignified hassle of claiming benefits of any sort!

Time for the capitalists to pay!

So, yes, we may be living in one of the world's richest countries, but it is incapable of providing for the most basic needs of all its population.

Not because it lacks the resources, of course. But because the bosses are able to steal a growing share of the wealth produced by the working class, at the expense of society as a whole.

So, for instance, Osborne's announcement on the minimum wage is really a sleight of hand - because, from this April, a cut in the National Insurance contributions paid by employers will more than offset the future increase in the minimum wage, long before it kicks in (if it really does!).

Of course, the main culprits in this organised racket are the tiny number of very rich capitalists who control the whole of the economy. The facts are there to show this. Since the beginning of the crisis, the dividends paid out by Britain's largest companies have increased by 10% every year on average. This year, they are expected to increase by no less than 28%, to reach a total £102bn - an astronomical amount by any standards!

Yes, there is a "Fat Profit Boulevard" in this society which is populated by a small layer of big capitalists - and it should be exposed for all to see. Its existence was already the main factor which led to the present crisis. It is the cause of the social degradation and rising poverty that a whole section of the working class has experienced over the past two decades, through the rise of casualisation and under-employment. And yet it has managed to carry on thriving at the expense of the working class majority, throughout its self-made crisis.

The bunch of criminal parasites living on "Fat Profit Boulevard" is the main cause of society's problems and the main obstacle to its development. If society is to go forward, they'll have to be dislodged, together with their profit system.