Pandemic? Alright for some (7)

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Amazon customers are spending almost $11,000 a second on its products and services.



 Its owner, Jeff Bezos, reinforcing his position as the world’s richest person with a fortune of $138bn.



While most businesses have been hit hard by the impact of the pandemic and the looming recession, shares in Amazon have risen to a record high as hundreds of millions people stuck in lockdown conditions turn to the delivery giant to keep them fed and entertained. The shares continued to climb on Wednesday and were changing hands at $2,295. One month ago they were changing hands at $1,689.



 Joshua Warner, an analyst at the London-based online trading firm IG Index, said: 

“Amazon stock has rocketed to a new record high,” he added. “Of all the firms that might stand to benefit, Amazon is a clear winner.”

The US investment bank Cowen likened the impact of the lockdown to the Black Friday shopping frenzy in November.

“Covid-19 surge led to ‘Prime Day in March’,” the analyst said in a note to clients. “Amazon has seen an ‘enormous increase in demand’ as shoppers are forced to stay home, essentially creating an extended Prime Day/Black Friday type of situation.
Analysts expect Amazon to increase its annual sales by nearly 20% to reach $335bn.

While many companies across the world have been forced to make staff redundant or place them on government-funded furlough schemes, Amazon is hiring tens of thousands of staff. The additional workers will take Amazon’s global workforce to nearly 1 million. 
BeZos has so far handed $100m (£80m) to the food bank charity Feeding America which represents less than 0.1% of his fortune.

Amazon has also been accused of not doing enough to protect its workers from the virus. The company this week fired two employees who criticised Amazon over allegedly unsafe conditions at some of its warehouses.

Other expanding fortunes

Reed Hastings

The founder and chief executive of Netflix has seen his estimated fortune rise by $195m so far this year to $5.1bn as shares in the entertainment service rose by 40% from the market nadir last month. Hastings owns 2.5% of the shares. Analysts said they expected more people stuck at home to sign up to the streaming service. Analysts at Pivotal Research Group said: “We believe the unfortunate Covid-19 situation is cementing Netflix’s global dominance .”
Tim SteinerThe co-founder and chief executive of Ocado has seen his the value of his stake jump 40% over the past month as shoppers flock to online supermarkets. Steiner owns about 4% of the shares, which are worth more than £400m at current prices. He is also in line for a £59m pay package to be voted on at Ocado’s AGM next month.
The WaltonsThe family behind Walmart, which also owns Asda in the UK, have seen their combined net worth rise 5% this year to $169bn. Shares in the US supermarket group have risen 23% from a low on 12 March. The Walton family own 51% of the shares.

Disease, death and deprivation

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 The reality is harsh and inescapable. Working people are more likely to live lives of greater stress and the result is a lower life expectancy even before the pandemic hit. This inequality is systemic and structural, and it is not accidental. These realities are pre-existing conditions that make us more vulnerable to the virus. They aren’t a secret, even though they are seldom discussed. Now the virus is bringing them to public attention once more. The question as always is whether anything will be done this time. After centuries of capitalism and in its continual carnage —we must make sure people’s views swiftly turns toward a more equitable future and a better society for all. Catastrophes and disasters  have brought people together across race, class and geography to demand a better world, one prepared to respond collectively to threats of all kinds. Our goal is worker solidarity. We are more educated. We have history to inform us. What we need now is a fundamental transformation that addresses the flaws and fissures of the profit system. The capitalist world, finds ways to exploit disasters while failing to meet human needs.



The capitalists’ deity – profit – always inflicts a toll upon the working class. The price and form vary but it still enslaves us to the accumulation of capital. Capitalism is at the root of this pandemic. The spread of global agribusiness, the  destruction of forests, the development of complex global supply chains that link the nations set the stage for this pandemic and others to come. We must end the capitalist economic system, sooner rather than later. Nothing less will bring good health and a better well-being for all. 



 Only world socialism has any chance at all to halting the multiple social ills we face. We require to travel upon a radically new path and take revolutionary action. What we must see is not social distancing but people coming together.



Who Pays the Price for COVID-19

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Dick Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo bank, thinks most Americans should return to work in April, urging that we “gradually bring those people back and see what happens”.




Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, whose net worth is $1.1bn, recommends “those with a lower risk of the diseases return to work” within a “very few weeks”.




Tom Galisano, founder of Paychex, whose net worth is $2.8bn, believes “the damages of keeping the economy closed could be worse than losing a few more people … You’re picking the better of two evils.”


The “economy” that the bankers and billionaires are eager to restart had been growing rapidly before the pandemic. But most of its gains had gone into corporate profits, as shown by the meteoric rise of the stock market until a few weeks ago.


The bankers and billionaires now urging Americans get back to work own a huge share of that stock market. The richest 1 percent of the population owns roughly half of the value of all shares of stock. (The richest 10 percent own more than 80%.) So when they recommend Americans get back to work for the sake of the “economy,” they’re really urging that other people risk their lives for the sake of restoring the bankers’ and billionaires’ stock portfolios.


Stephen Moore, who is advising the White House, warns: “You can’t have a policy that says we’re going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you’re talking about.”




While it’s true that we can’t save every human life at any cost we need to keep in mind which Americans we are talking about.


The trade-off average Americans might make between getting back to work and exposing themselves to the virus is likely to be quite different from the trade-off bankers and billionaires make


Workers  bear the biggest burdens during economic downturns, especially if they lose their jobs and don’t have enough money to pay the bills. Eighty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.




Late last week, lawmakers made an important step to prevent such hardships. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill provides jobless Americans an extra $600 in unemployment benefits per week for four months, and includes contract and gig workers. The bill was almost scuttled when Republican lawmakers objected that this would boost incomes of some job losers higher than their pay when they worked. Apparently, these lawmakers hadn’t noticed that the pay of the typical working American has stagnated for decades. Even four months of extra unemployment benefits may not be enough. The richest nation in the world surely has enough resources to keep its people safe at home for as long as it takes.


https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/31/name-profit-and-greed-billionaire-class-declares-back-work



The Falling Number of American Hospitals

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Since 1975, while the U.S. population has risen from 216 million people to 331 million, the total number of hospital beds has declined from 1.5 million to 925,000. 



The United States currently has only 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, just a little over half the average of 5.4 beds per 1,000 residents in other wealthy countries.



 In 2018, the American Hospital Association estimated that 30 hospitals will close each year and the number is expected to rise over time.



Rural hospitals are closing the fastest. Over 120 have closed down since 2010. A report by the Chartis Center for Rural Health found another 453 of the 1,844 that remain are at risk of closing. Failing rural hospitals are preyed upon by large corporations that take them over, extract their revenues and then allow them to lapse into bankruptcy and the land sold as valuable real estate. The highest number of rural hospital closures, 19, occurred in 2019. Six rural hospitals have already been shut down this year. Roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population lives in a rural area. Residents of rural areas tend to be older, sicker and poorer than in other areas. They require more care and often can’t pay for it, placing a greater financial burden on local hospitals than populations that are healthier and wealthier.  In general, the Pew Research Center found people living in rural areas travel twice as far as people living in urban and suburban areas to get to the hospital. According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, mortality rates rise by 5.9 percent when hospitals disappear, especially for people with emergencies such as strokes and heart attacks that require immediate attention. 



 Hospital closures in cities also tend to occur in areas that serve poor communities and often populations of color. Like rural hospitals, they may be bought by a large corporate hospital system when they are failing and then allowed to go bankrupt. It is often more profitable to redevelop them in a gentrifying area than to keep them open.



When hospitals are located in communities with high numbers of uninsured residents, they are particularly vulnerable to closures. According to the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program, the 17 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act had the highest number of hospital closures. Texas lost the most hospitals, followed by Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina. Over half of the remaining rural hospitals in Texas and Tennessee and more than a third of hospitals in Oklahoma and Georgia are at risk of closing due to their weak financial position.



 In other cities, hospitals may stay open but close down essential services to make way for more lucrative fields such as orthopedics and cardiovascular disease. MedStar, a Washington, D.C.-based corporation that owns 10 hospitals in Maryland as well as physician practices, laboratories, long-term care centers and other health facilities, abruptly closed whole departments that provided obstetric, pediatric and psychiatric care in recent years.



 Epidemiologist David Fisman of Toronto, Canada, says, “having a healthcare system that’s a public strategic asset rather than a business run for profit allows for a degree of coordination and optimal use of resources.”

https://truthout.org/articles/the-uss-wave-of-hospital-closures-left-us-ill-equipped-for-covid-19/

The Coronavirus Crisis – Who is going to Pay?

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Due to the economic costs of Covid-19 the Low Pay Commission, the independent body which advises ministers on legal wage floors, said the government target to increase the national living wage to two-thirds of average earnings by 2024 could be in danger.
The chair of the Low Pay Commission, Bryan Sanderson, warned that an “emergency break” included in the target may need to be deployed if the outbreak causes sufficient damage to the economy.
“The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic clearly represents a very challenging set of circumstances for workers and employers alike, and will require us to review whether the emergency brake is required when we next provide our advice to the government,” he said.
Isn’t it a wonder that those now classed as key essential workers, necessary for the smooth running of society are among the lowest paid and are now being stopped from gaining a few quid more for their sacrifices and the risks they have been taking.
Almost 3 million workers across Britain will receive a pay rise on Wednesday as the legal minimum wage rises more than 6%, which brought calls for a delay to protect jobs as the coronavirus outbreak escalates.



The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation – had urged the government to stage an eleventh hour U-turn, saying that postponing the rise would stop struggling businesses from laying off workers. Retailers are understood to have privately lobbied for a delay, while the British Beer and Pub Association urged the government to hold back to “prevent mass job losses and permanent pub closures.”
Tej Parikh, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, which represents business leaders, said that the legal wage floor must be set in tune with economic circumstances. “Should firms continue to struggle in the medium to long term, government may have to take another look at the current trajectory,” he said.
Once the coronavirus crisis has been overcome, the government could come under greater pressure to soften its targets.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of trade union body the TUC, said wage rises were needed to support millions of low-paid workers struggling to make ends meet as the pandemic spreads.



“Britain is indebted to its army of minimum wage heroes. Many – including care workers and supermarket staff – are currently on the frontline of the battle against coronavirus. They deserve every penny of this increase, and more,” she said.
Economists expect the fallout from Covid-19 to trigger a drop in average pay, eroding living standards across Britain.
 Thomas Pugh, of the consultancy Capital Economics, said average pay packets could fall by 2% in the coming months before recovering slightly later in the year. He said earnings growth for 2020 as a whole is expected to be less than 1%, a sharp drop from 3.5% last year, adding: “If we are wrong it will be because we have underestimated the impact rather than overestimated.”

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/31/uk-minimum-wage-rise-of-6-to-go-ahead-despite-coronavirus-pay-freeze-call

The Coronavirus Commons

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The Guardian columnist George Monbiot is always makes for interesting reading even if sometime we may differ with him. In this article of his we find a lot to agree with, although not everything.



“All over the world, communities have mobilised where governments have failed. The horror films got it wrong. Instead of turning us into flesh-eating zombies, the pandemic has turned millions of people into good neighbours.

In India, young people have self-organised on a massive scale to provide aid packages for “daily wagers”: people without savings or stores, who rely entirely on cash flow that has now been cut off. In Wuhan, in China, as soon as public transport was suspended, volunteer drivers created a community fleet, transporting medical workers between their homes and hospitals.

In South Africa, communities in Johannesburg have made survival packs for people in informal settlements: hand sanitiser, toilet paper, bottled water and food. In Cape Town, a local group has GIS mapped all the district’s households, surveyed the occupants, and assembled local people with medical expertise, ready to step in if the hospitals are overwhelmed. Another community in the city has built washstands in the train station and is working to turn a pottery studio into a factory making sanitiser.



In the US, HospitalHero connects healthcare workers who don’t have time to meet their own needs with people who can offer meals and accommodation. A group called WePals, created by an eight-year-old, sets up virtual play dates for children. A new website, schoolclosures.org, finds teaching, meals and emergency childcare for overstretched parents. A network called Money During Corona texts news of job opportunities to people looking for work.



In Norway, a group of people who have recovered from Covid-19 provide services that would be dangerous for non-immune people to offer. In Belgrade volunteers organise virtual coffee mornings and crisis counselling. Students in Prague are babysitting the children of doctors and nurses. Estates in Dublin have invented balcony bingo: the caller sits in the square between the blocks of flats with a large speaker, while the players sit on their balconies, taking down the numbers.

In the UK, thousands of mutual aid groups have been picking up shopping and prescriptions, installing digital equipment for elderly people and setting up telephone friendship teams. A mothers’ running group in Bristol have restyled themselves “drug runners”, keeping fit by delivering medicines from chemists’ shops to people who can’t leave their homes. 

Around the world, self-organised groups of doctors, technicians, engineers and hackers are crowdsourcing missing equipment and expertise. In Latvia, programmers organised a 48-hour hackathon to design the lightest face shield components that could be produced with a 3D printer. A number of UK groups are encouraging companies with protective equipment in their storerooms to give it to frontline health workers. In the Philippines, fashion designers have repurposed their workshops to produce protective suits. Sharing techniques through the website PatternReview, home sewers have been mass-producing masks and scrubs.



In just one week, a group of doctors, technicians and other experts organised themselves to design a crowdsourced ventilator, the OxVent, which can be produced from widely available parts for under £1,000. Another design, VentilatorPAL, can be manufactured for $370, according to the community of technicians that created it. The Coronavirus Tech Handbook is an open-source library pooling technologies and new organisational models for beating the pandemic. In the US, self-organised expert groups are filling some of the catastrophic gaps in public health provision, carrying out testing and tracking projects, creating directories of vulnerable people and speed-matching medical specialists with the hospitals that need them.



I have the sense that something is taking root now, something we have been missing: the unexpectedly thrilling and transformative force of mutual aid. “

Quote of the Day

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“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” – The US intelligence community, in its January 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment

A world on life support

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Private interests, many of whom have been making lucrative profits in the recent past, have been busy lobbying for government bailouts while tens of millions of working people are losing their livelihoods. Businesses are in receipt of financial hand-outs in amounts that have not been seen since the Second World War, often with little oversight. It is a transfer of wealth and power to the super rich unprecedented in peacetime. 



 Meanwhile, there is no critical reporting in ‘mainstream’ media about the destructive nature of the global system of profit maximisation and endless ‘economic growth’. 

As Chomsky says: “What our leaders are good at, and have been very good at for the last 40 years, is pouring money into the pockets of the rich and the corporate executives while everything else crashes.”



The core problem for society is that we have been subjected to a system of fairy-tale propaganda that tells us repeatedly that capitalism, despite a few ‘failures’ or ‘flaws’, has been primarily responsible for huge progress in the human condition since the Industrial Revolution. In reality, it has been people at the bottom of the social order – working for centuries to extend the voting franchise, setting up trade unions, improving healthcare and education – who have been primarily responsible for advancements in living standards.



Working people feel powerless. We are ignored by politicians. Our future is uncertain.



Capitalism assumes people are fundamentally selfish. Socialists understands people are primarily collectively-creative. This is demonstrated when workers are given the opportunity to operate cooperatives, create workers councils in revolutionary situations or even during natural disasters. Selfishness is a product of capitalism and not the primary way human beings operate. Capitalist divide-and-conquer strategies create racism on the job by giving privileges to white workers to keep them from uniting with minorities for better pay. Capitalists expect loyalty to sports teams even when the owners sell the players to the highest bidder. Capitalists expect working-class loyalty to a nation and for them to fight wars, while capitalists exercise no loyalty to workers when they relocate in another nation where the costs of labour and land are cheaper.



But the brighter, safer, saner future can still be attained, if we remember that together we have more power than the destructive forces of capitalism. Mankind has the capacity to abandon the disaster path of capitalism, and instead embark upon a journey of solidarity and compassion. A whole new ball–game may emerge.



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