The pandemic has reportedly intensified food insecurity in India, with the hunger crisis gripping vast swathes of rural hinterland and some urban areas. 

“The food stress existed long before the start of the pandemic. It has now become worse. Many people have lost their jobs, and those with low incomes complain about food insecurity,” Dipa Sinha of the Right to Food Program told DW.

A recent COVID-19 Livelihoods Survey conducted by the Azim Premji University revealed that hundreds of thousands of families in India have been forced to reduce their food consumption during the pandemic.

“Food is scarce in many states, with millions of people unable to make ends meet,” Jean Dreze, a development economist, told DW.

Experts say the hunger crisis is not due to the shortage of food production; surplus food items have been lying in the stores of the Food Corporation of India.

“Stocked food items must now be used to provide relief to millions of Indians,” Himanshu Himanshu, an associate professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told DW, adding that by they will not only help reduce the food surplus but also boost India’s economy by increasing the disposal income of households that are struggling due to the pandemic.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-exacerbates-indias-hunger-problem/a-55299109

First we have to say that the World Socialist Party of the United States is the only party that squarely stands for democracy. The World Socialist Party is essentially the party of the working class. What other parties can say the same? Capitalist parties cunningly contrive to divide the workers. The World Socialist Party is uniting them upon one issue: Ending wage-slavery. The call of the World Socialist Party is to the exploited class to rally together and put an end class conflict by conquering the capitalist government, taking possession of the means of production, and making them common property of all, abolishing wage-slavery and establishing the cooperative commonwealth.

The Republican and Democratic parties are together as one in their allegiance to Wall Street and capitalist corporations; they draw their campaign funds from the same source and have mortgaged their policies to their donors, the economic masters of the working class and the real political rulers of the nation. A vote for either of these parties is a vote for plutocratic mis-rule and the continued domination by the oligarchy. Every millionaire or billionaire in the land is in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They are the enemy of socialism for the very reason that socialism is the enemy of them. The Republican and Democratic twins are for the corporations and against the people. The Republican and Democratic parties are maintained for the same purpose, and that is to serve Big Business, and if the Democratic Party secures the presidency, it will be just as subservient to business interests as the Republican Party has been under the administrations of Trump. More and more Americans, opening their eyes to the real situation and looking at the record of the Republican Party and then at that of the Democratic Party, and now declare : “A plague on both your house.” It is time to turn towards the revolutionary socialist movement that can usher in a new era of for all mankind.

Some of the boss class realize that the rule of the Republican Party has become so rank and rotten with Trump that it is time to switch over to the Biden for a fresh lease of power. The capitalists need the Democratic Party for that very business, or it would long since have ceased to exist. The American working class have been shouting for the Democratic and Republican parties. They have been voting the capitalist parties. They have elected the same political parties into power whose mission it is today to protect and advance the class interests of capitalism. The politicians court you and flatter you before the day of the election; after election day they once again detest and despise you. Both are the tools of capitalism. The cause of the Democratic and Republican parties is a bad cause, a rotten cause, based on the principle of deceiving the working class for the purpose of enabling the ruling classes to continue their system of exploiting and robbing the toilers. Are you not ashamed of voting for the Republican or Democratic candidates? We want you to fight for the freedom of your own class and join the working class party, which is the World Socialist Party.

The ballot at election times expresses the people’s will. It gives people a voice. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to wrest this freedom from tyranny’s grip. The abuse and not the use of it is responsible for the evils its critics ascribe to the electoral system. The Republican Party is the representative of the capitalist class. Prosperity galore; give us four more. The Democratic Party is the wailing cry of calamity without end. The modern wage worker remains the wage worker, and there is no possible escape and even under the influence of Democratic or Republican oratory, the day is to dawn when he will realize he or she will be anything more than a wage worker. What excuse can be given for voting to perpetuate a system — and both the Democrats and Republicans stand for the same — by voting for a system under which you are robbed and impoverished and enslaved, and servitude imposed? The existing capitalist economic system is the system they are pledged to preserve and perpetuate and which the World Socialist Party is pledged to abolish. Corporations are organized purely for private profit; the rights of the corporations to exploit the working class and exact tribute from the people are to be respected, according to both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. The Republican and Democratic parties are in favor of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. they are in favor of the existing wage system. There is absolutely no difference between them. The World Socialist Party, stands for the common ownership of the means of production, and declares to the world that there is no other solution of this economic problem. We hold the vision of a land without a master, a land without a slave.

First we have to say that the World Socialist Party of the United States is the only party that squarely stands for democracy. The World Socialist Party is essentially the party of the working class. What other parties can say the same? Capitalist parties cunningly contrive to divide the workers. The World Socialist Party is uniting them upon one issue: Ending wage-slavery. The call of the World Socialist Party is to the exploited class to rally together and put an end class conflict by conquering the capitalist government, taking possession of the means of production, and making them common property of all, abolishing wage-slavery and establishing the cooperative commonwealth.

The Republican and Democratic parties are together as one in their allegiance to Wall Street and capitalist corporations; they draw their campaign funds from the same source and have mortgaged their policies to their donors, the economic masters of the working class and the real political rulers of the nation. A vote for either of these parties is a vote for plutocratic mis-rule and the continued domination by the oligarchy. Every millionaire or billionaire in the land is in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They are the enemy of socialism for the very reason that socialism is the enemy of them. The Republican and Democratic twins are for the corporations and against the people. The Republican and Democratic parties are maintained for the same purpose, and that is to serve Big Business, and if the Democratic Party secures the presidency, it will be just as subservient to business interests as the Republican Party has been under the administrations of Trump. More and more Americans, opening their eyes to the real situation and looking at the record of the Republican Party and then at that of the Democratic Party, and now declare : “A plague on both your house.” It is time to turn towards the revolutionary socialist movement that can usher in a new era of for all mankind.

Some of the boss class realize that the rule of the Republican Party has become so rank and rotten with Trump that it is time to switch over to the Biden for a fresh lease of power. The capitalists need the Democratic Party for that very business, or it would long since have ceased to exist. The American working class have been shouting for the Democratic and Republican parties. They have been voting the capitalist parties. They have elected the same political parties into power whose mission it is today to protect and advance the class interests of capitalism. The politicians court you and flatter you before the day of the election; after election day they once again detest and despise you. Both are the tools of capitalism. The cause of the Democratic and Republican parties is a bad cause, a rotten cause, based on the principle of deceiving the working class for the purpose of enabling the ruling classes to continue their system of exploiting and robbing the toilers. Are you not ashamed of voting for the Republican or Democratic candidates? We want you to fight for the freedom of your own class and join the working class party, which is the World Socialist Party.

The ballot at election times expresses the people’s will. It gives people a voice. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to wrest this freedom from tyranny’s grip. The abuse and not the use of it is responsible for the evils its critics ascribe to the electoral system. The Republican Party is the representative of the capitalist class. Prosperity galore; give us four more. The Democratic Party is the wailing cry of calamity without end. The modern wage worker remains the wage worker, and there is no possible escape and even under the influence of Democratic or Republican oratory, the day is to dawn when he will realize he or she will be anything more than a wage worker. What excuse can be given for voting to perpetuate a system — and both the Democrats and Republicans stand for the same — by voting for a system under which you are robbed and impoverished and enslaved, and servitude imposed? The existing capitalist economic system is the system they are pledged to preserve and perpetuate and which the World Socialist Party is pledged to abolish. Corporations are organized purely for private profit; the rights of the corporations to exploit the working class and exact tribute from the people are to be respected, according to both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. The Republican and Democratic parties are in favor of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. they are in favor of the existing wage system. There is absolutely no difference between them. The World Socialist Party, stands for the common ownership of the means of production, and declares to the world that there is no other solution of this economic problem. We hold the vision of a land without a master, a land without a slave.

 The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. 

Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote.

 American Indians and Native Alaskans were the last group in the United States to get citizenship and to get the vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said indigenous people could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group.  Laws passed specifically to disenfranchise African Americans were also passed in places which didn’t have black people. For example, Idaho put in place felony disenfranchisement around when it became the state, at a time when census data shows there were only 88 black people – it was designed to disenfranchise Native people. Half the states with harshest felony disenfranchisement don’t have many black people, but have big Native Americans or Latino populations.

The Dakotas are the heart of what was the great Sioux Nations. It’s been one of the worst places for suppression of the Native American vote. North Dakota has passed one law after another that made it harder and harder for people to vote. In South Dakota, more than a quarter of the 2016 registered voters in Todd county – which is the Rosebud Sioux – had been purged by 2020. 

Voting by mail is very challenging for Native Americans for multiple reasons. First and foremost, most reservations do not have home mail delivery. Instead, people need to travel to post offices or postal provide sites – little places that offer minimal mail services and are located in places like gas stations and mini-marts. Take the Navajo Nation that encompasses 27,425 square miles – it’s larger than West Virginia, yet there are only 40 places where people can send and receive mail. In West Virginia, there are 725. Not a single PO box on the Navajo Nation has 24-hour access. All the mail sent from post offices off-reservation arrived at the election office within one to three days. Whereas around half sent from the reservation took three to 10 days. South Dakota requires mail ballots to be notarized but there are no notaries on reservations. 

It can make it very difficult for people who live on reservations where many roads don’t have names or numbers – so-called non-standard addresses, which are very problematic in states requiring IDs with residential addresses. A number of states like South Dakota have chosen to make it a felony offense with prison terms and fines if someone votes using an address different to the one given to register, even though unstable housing is a big issue on reservations, and people stay in different places all the time.

Tribal ID has not been accepted in a number of states in the past, including North Dakota and Minnesota. 

 A federal appeals court has rejected a bid to give an extra 10 days after Election Day to count ballots mailed by Navajo Nation members living on the Arizona portion of the tribe’s reservation. Arizona’s requirement that mail ballots be received by 7 p.m. on election night would disenfranchise tribal members.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/16/native-americans-voting-rights-mail-in-ballots-us-elections

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-arizona-elections-courts-voting-2020-57804bf790e99ff158c635d3d6b9eaed

“Extreme poverty” is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. So somebody who has 5 cents more income – $1.95 a day – is no longer living in extreme poverty. Such is the poverty of statistics and its distance from actual reality. 

A  phenomenal rise in extreme poverty has been accompanied by an upsurge in the incomes of the world’s billionaires and the super-rich. The paradox of poverty amidst plenty is being blamed largely on the coronavirus pandemic which has driven millions, mostly in the developing world, into a state of perpetual poverty.

The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.

The world’s total population is around 7.8 billion, and according to the UN, more than 736 million people live below the international poverty line. A World Bank report last week said extreme poverty is set to rise this year, for the first time in more than two decades, while the impact of the spreading virus is expected to push up to 115 million more people into poverty. The pandemic, which is also compounding the forces of conflict and climate change, has already been slowing poverty reduction, the World Bank said. By 2021, as many as 150 million more people could be living in extreme poverty.

In contrast, the wealth of the world’s billionaires reached a new record high in the middle of the pandemic, primarily as “a rebound in tech stocks boosting the fortunes of the global elite”, according to a report released last week by UBS Global Wealth Management and PwC Switzerland. Providing a sheaf of statistics, the report said total wealth held by billionaires reached $10.2 trillion last July, described as “a new high”, compared with $8.9 trillion in 2017. The number of billionaires worldwide has been estimated at 2,189, up from 2,158 in 2017. The rising earnings were mostly from three sectors, including tech, health care and industry—a trend accelerated by the pandemic.  billionaires have seen their fortunes hit record highs during the pandemic, with top executives from technology and industry earning the most. The world’s richest saw their wealth climb 27.5% to $10.2tn (£7.9tn) from April to July this year, according to a report from Swiss bank UBS.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director of UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), told IPS the pandemic is going to push millions of households into poverty, all around the developing world.

The projected rise in poverty has also undermined one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which had targeted the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’, told IPS the concentration of wealth amongst a handful of oligarchs, and the spread of impoverishment to hundreds of millions more people, are not the disconnected coincidences that the super-rich claim, but are two sides of the same bad penny. He said COVID-19 has not created obscene inequality, but it has supercharged it. In this systemic crisis, the healing impact of philanthropy will be no greater than a novelty sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

Dereje Alemayehu, Executive Coordinator, Global Alliance for Tax Justice, told IPS inequality is rising in every country; so also, is the income of billionaires. These are causally linked.

“Multinationals and the wealthy do not pay their share of taxes, thus depriving countries the public revenue needed to address inequality.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/10/global-poverty-soars-incomes-worlds-billionaires-hit-new-highs/

 The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)  Cost of a Plate of Food 2020 report highlights the countries where a simple meal such as rice and beans costs the most, when compared with people’s incomes. The price in New York State would be $1.26, just 0.6 percent of someone’s income.

In South Sudan it would cost a staggering 186 percent of a person’s daily income. Seventeen of the top 20 countries featured in the index are in sub-Saharan Africa. If a resident in New York State had to pay the same proportion of their salary for a basic meal, the meal would cost US$393.

Burundi, the price would be $90.73

The price in Haiti with consumers spending more than a third of their daily incomes on a plate of food – the price would be the equivalent of US$74 for someone in New York State.

http://wfp.sixeleven.it/wfp-plate-of-food-2020/dist/en/

 Robert Smith has admitted to his role in the tax evasion scheme as part of a non-prosecution agreement. Prosecutors said Smith admitted to using a nominee trustee and corporate manager to his involvement in four offshore firms. As part of the agreement, he will pay more than $139m in penalties and taxes. He will also abandon $182m protective refund claims, which were filed partly for charitable contributions. Smith is a founder of Vista Equity Partners in San Francisco, and is the richest African-American investor in the US, according to Forbes. Smith shot to fame last year after giving a speech at Morehouse College’s graduation ceremony, promising to pay all student debt for 2019 graduates.

 Millions of garment workers could lose their jobs as global brands are demanding price cuts and delaying payments to suppliers who are desperate for orders to survive the new coronavirus pandemic, researchers said on Friday. Suppliers said they had already laid off 10 percent of their workers and would have to cut another 35 percent of their labour force if order reductions continued.

Suppliers have been asked to make their prices an average of 12 percent cheaper than last year, research by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) at Penn State University in the United States found, describing such practices as “leveraging desperation”.

“We are seeing a dramatic squeeze down of price, reduced orders and late payment,” said Mark Anner, author of the report and director of the CGWR. “This worries me for the wellbeing of the suppliers and the workers. This will affect the small and medium suppliers first.”

Fashion companies cancelled orders worth billions of dollars earlier this year as the coronavirus shuttered stores worldwide, leading to wage losses of up to $5.8bn, according to pressure group Clean Clothes Campaign.

More than half of the manufacturers surveyed said they would have to close down if the “sourcing squeeze” continued.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/10/16/fashion-victims-garment-workers-risk-losing-jobs-during-crisis

 On the eve of  the New Zealand general election it may be instructive to remind voters that  in 2017-2018 the wealthiest 10 percent controlled 59 percent of assets, while the poorest half has just 2 percent. 

The top 1 percent, about 38,000 people, owns 20 percent of all assets, with approximately $NZ140 billion secured in trusts, largely to avoid paying tax.

As in every country, New Zealand’s business and ruling elite have used the COVID-19 pandemic to further enrich themselves at the expense of the working class. The pandemic saw an unprecedented package of $50 billion worth of tax breaks, bailouts and subsidies for big business, and up to $100 billion more being printed by the Reserve Bank to prop up the banking system. 

Yet here are 148,000 children currently living in homes experiencing material hardship, including lack of access to basics such as warm clothing, health care and food. Meanwhile, state housing waiting lists have ballooned to approximately 20,000 people from 5,000 in three years.

The subservience of both parties to big business was underlined last year when the Labour-led government, which included the Greens and NZ First, abandoned plans to implement a Capital Gains Tax in the face of media hostility. Labour and the Greens had campaigned for the tax, saying it was necessary to tackle inequality. Ardern has promised that it will never be revived as long as she is the leader.

Ardern’s climate minister, James Shaw, a Green Party member of the coalition, was responsible for the toothless Zero Carbon Act (ZCA), implemented last year following climate strikes involving tens of thousands of students. It set the goal of making the country carbon-neutral by 2050—three decades from now—and even then contains exemptions for the agriculture industry, New Zealand’s biggest source of emissions. Its main mechanism is an emissions trading scheme—a market-based tool that will do nothing to stop the threat of catastrophic climate change.

Ardern’s defence minister, a NZ First member, in releasing a climate change policy for the armed forces, presented a $20 billion plan to upgrade the military, including new aircraft and navy vessels, as necessary to respond to natural disasters caused by climate change. In fact, the spending is to assist New Zealand’s integration into the US-led war preparations against China.

The World Socialist Party asks fellow-workers not to vote for any of the parties or candidates.