The World Bank has estimated that for each one percentage point increase in food prices, 10 million people are thrown into extreme poverty worldwide. 

Rich countries avoided the worst economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic but poorer ones continue to deal with debilitating debt, the UN said in a report released on Wednesday, contributing to a global “great finance divide.”

According to the report, 77 million people slipped into poverty in 2021 as governments struggled to service debts and secure early vaccine access.

Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said the new findings were “alarming” and called for “collective responsibility to ensure hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of hunger and poverty.” Mohammed of the UN warned “it would be a tragedy” if rich donor nations increased military expenditures at the cost of cutting aid to developing countries.

Produced by the UN’s Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, the report found that significantly higher borrowing rates for poorer countries had particularly hamstrung pandemic recovery and development spending there.

The poorest countries pumped billions into servicing debts and were forced to cut spending on education and infrastructure, the report noted, while developed countries could borrow far more at “ultra-low” interest rates and stave off the worst economic with comparative ease.

On average, rich countries spend 3.5% of their revenue on servicing debt while less rich nations use up to 14% of revenue, four times more, according to the UN.

The report said some 20% of countries will not return to pre-2019 levels of GDP per capita by the end of 2023 — that’s before absorbing the costs of the Ukraine war.

Ukraine war is likely to burden poorer countries further. Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s biggest food and fuel exporters and additional impacts of the war on developing economies are already becoming visible. Sri Lanka defaulted on its debts this week as the country’s foreign exchange coffers dry up. In Nigeria and Kenya, fuel shortages have crippled businesses and forced tired residents into long fuel queues. Even developed economies, including the US and most of Europe, have been struggling with a sudden spike in inflation after more than a decade where inflation had been difficult to stimulate.

The new UN report also comes as poorer countries suffer the worst effects of climate change because of limited funds to adapt.

UN warns of ′great finance divide′ as Covid shocks, debt, hits poorest hardest | News | DW | 13.04.2022

Loss Leaders

The Great Helmsman! Father of the Nation!

Or king, or queen, or tsar, or president

Or panjandrum…whatever the intent,

Good or bad, honorific adulation

Sits ill with democracy. To be led

Is to surrender self to other’s whim,

To live or die in another’s name:

Cenotaphs list the obedient dead.

Someone motivated by vanity,

Someone focused on the national mission,

Someone blinded by personal ambition,

Someone with no sense of humanity,

Someone who’s so qualified to succeed

As leader, should not be allowed to lead.

D. A.

 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the world does not give equal attention to emergencies affecting black and white people. Only a fraction of the help given to Ukraine was given to other humanitarian crises.

 Public sector pay for jobs such as NHS workers, teachers and civil servants fell further behind price rises in the three months to February, figures show.

   “Without immediate radical action, we could be witnessing the most profound collapse of humanity into extreme poverty and suffering in memory,” said Oxfam’s international executive director, Gabriela Bucher.

The rising price of food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased energy costs could push a quarter of a billion more people into extreme poverty, Oxfam has warned.

Indebted governments could be forced to cut public spending to meet the rising cost of importing fuel and food.

The World Bank had already estimated that 198 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic. 

But Oxfam estimates that 65 million more people are at risk if the invasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices are taken into account. 

It also estimates that 28 million more people will be left undernourished as a result.

Quarter of a billion people now face extreme poverty, warns Oxfam | Global development | The Guardian

 Pensioners and benefits claimants will see the value of their payments fall to the lowest point in 50 years.

According to the latest UK economic outlook report from PwC, British households are set to be £900 worse off this year in a “historic fall” in living standards. It found that inflation will hit 8.4% later this year.

Helen Barnard, the associate director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an anti-poverty group, explained that pensioners and benefits claimants had seen the value of payments fall in real terms in eight out of the last 10 years. “It means that in terms of their values, how much bread and milk you can buy in the shops, it is the biggest fall in value since 1972.”

She added: “We know the majority of people in poverty now are in working households. One of the problems is that too many jobs are not just low paid, but they’re insecure – you don’t know what money you’re getting one week to the next, you don’t get sick pay; you don’t get protection if something goes wrong. People are struggling to afford the basic essentials and having to rely on charities for toothpaste and toilet rolls. It’s humiliating for a lot of people.”

Cost of living crisis: UK benefits plunge to lowest value in 50 years | Cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 Our Anti War Statement in Japanese

 ロシア連邦は、ウクライナに対して全面的な攻撃を開始した。世界社会主義運動(WSM)は、この戦争のいわゆる善悪や国際法の礼儀が破られたかどうか、ウクライナの主権が無視されたかどうかには関心をもたない。我々は、労働者として、大国が繰り広げる地政学的なゲームのために血で代償を払うのは、同胞の労働者であることを痛切に感じている。ウクライナは、西側の政治家やメディアが主張するような「民主主義」ではない。実際、ウクライナの政治・経済の上部構造は、ロシアの上部構造と大差ない。だから、ウクライナは「民主主義」だがロシアはそうではなく、「民主主義の価値」を守るために「我々」はウクライナを支持しなければならないという主張は誤りです。東欧に住む労働者にとって厄介なのは、歴史が彼らに悪い手を与えたということです。EU-USかロシアのどちらかに支配されるしかないのです。どちらの側の政府にとっても、ウクライナの人々は自分たちの利益を増進させるために利用する手先なのです。どちらのブロックが自らの勢力圏のために領土を奪えるかを決めるこの資本主義的対立において、どちらの側を支持するためにも、労働者の血は一滴も流されるべきではない。ウクライナ国家であろうと、ドネツクやルガンスクの分離共和国であろうと、労働者の命を犠牲にする価値はないのです。WSMは、町や都市が男性、女性、子どもの死体で散乱していることに異議を唱えないすべての人々の態度を非難する。何のために？これは、単なる支配者の変更のために行われた戦いであり、それぞれの側が偽りの主張のためにウクライナとドンバスの労働者を犠牲にしている。

 Should we heed the advice of four-time presidential candidate from over a hundred years ago when Eugene Debs explained “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.” 

He would justify his position on the grounds that “The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.”

Can we state that the political situation has fundamentally changed what Debs said is no longer valid?

Challenging capitalism demands a  political struggle that starts with the realization that the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The future of humanity depends on building a class movement that once and for all ends the rule of a tiny elite and replaces it with the rule of the majority. The task of socialists is to break illusions in the capitalist system and its politicians – not to strengthen those illusions. It follows that the first task of socialists today should be to reject any support for the capitalist party candidates, no matter how “left” their rhetoric sounds.

It’s all very well having a vote – but are you normally given any real options? When it comes to elections, the choice is governed by information and knowledge and like Henry Ford’s Model T, which was available in any color providing it was black, current “democratic” practice is to allow us the widest possible choice as long as it is for one of capitalism’s representatives. At every election, we are told that if we don’t vote for Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dumber will be elected so we should vote for Tweedle Dum. 

We tend to forget that the lesser evil is still evil. Supporting the lesser evil has rarely been an effective strategy. This politics of fear in the end has delivered everything that we were originally afraid of. 

What is voting? It’s a chance to tell the country and the world what your vision of government and society really is. If you can’t vote for what you believe in or don’t believe in what you vote for, then, voting means nothing. An unprincipled vote is a wasted vote. You aren’t standing up for what you believe in by voting for “the lesser of two evils.” You have sold out your personal beliefs. We vote to tell everyone else which choice we think best represents the direction in which we want the country to go. When you vote, you gain a certain power that a non-voter doesn’t have; the power to change the status quo. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. In other words, if you want change, then create change. So rather than waste your vote on what you consider the lesser evil, Democrat or Republican, cast a meaningful ballot that clearly says what you believe.

 Each election cycle, the left-wing liberals and progressives counsel us that despite any misgivings, working people should cast aside their reluctance and vote for the Democratic Party politicians. A mistake that voters often make is to compare what the Republicans say and do with what the Democrats say. The relevant comparison is with what the Democrats do. The Biden administration left many of Trump’s policies intact and what was changed was often cosmetic change. Voting for the lesser evil breeds illusions which ultimately leads to disillusionment.

 For revolutionary socialists, the issue in capitalist elections is not campaign promises or the individual personality of candidates or the character of the candidates they run against. There is but one issue that concerns us when it comes to electoral politics and that is working-class independence. Change from below is the only change we can believe in.

Elections aren’t necessarily the be-all and end-all, but they do matter. Political parties are individuals and groups organized to defend specific class interests. They seek political power to best defend and advance these interests. Elections pose the question as to which class will run the system. The aim is to convince the electorate that the result would be “change”,  a relief from the present misery and a path to a better future. Socialists counter that the better life offered by the ruling class’s standard-bearers cannot be achieved in the framework of capitalism. And, in fact, all the injustices that so many recognize as a reality in today’s world – racism, poverty, endless war, climate change, sexism, cuts in health care, education, pensions and jobs – are inherent in the capitalist system itself. For all its democratic claims, this election campaign serves mainly to obscure the truths about our unequal society. Its important feature is the absence of real choice.

 Things can change but it’s not going to be through conventional politics, only through a quite different kind of politics. A politics that rejects and aims to change the status quo. A politics that involves people participating and not leaving things up to others to do something for them. When more and more people understand this they will begin organizing for it, in the places where they work, in the neighborhoods where they live, in the various clubs and associations they are members of, but, above all, they will need to organize politically. 

If you want a better world, you are going to have to bring it about yourselves. That’s our basic message. It’s no good following leaders, the professional party politicians. In fact, following anybody (not even us) won’t get you anywhere. The only way is to carry out a do-it-yourself revolution on a completely democratic basis. Democratic in the sense that that’s what the majority want. And democratic in the sense that the majority, rather than following leaders, organizes itself on the basis of mandated and recallable delegates carrying out decisions reached after a full and free discussion and vote.

 We are advocates of real majority rule, rule by the people themselves in their own name and in their own interests, for a socialist society free from oppression and exploitation.

 We are entering year three of the Covid-19 pandemic, and research revealed that life expectancy in the United States declined again in 2021—which followed a well-documented drop in 2020 and contrasted a recovery trend in other high-income countries.

 U.S. life expectancy fell from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 years in 2020 and 76.60 years in 2021, a net loss of 2.26 years.

Dr. Steven Woolf, co-author of the new study and director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a statement that “we already knew that the U.S. experienced historic losses in life expectancy in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. What wasn’t clear is what happened in 2021. Early in 2021, knowing an excellent vaccine was being distributed, I was hopeful that the U.S. could recover some of its historic losses,” said Woolf. “But I began to worry more when I saw what happened as the year unfolded. Even so, as a scientist, until I saw the data it remained an open question how U.S. life expectancy for that year would be affected,” he added. “It was shocking to see that U.S. life expectancy, rather than having rebounded, had dropped even further.”

In addition to examining the United States, the researchers looked at life expectancy over the past two years in 19 “peer countries,” and found a smaller drop between 2019 and 2020—an average of 0.57 years—followed by an average 0.28-year increase from 2020 to 2021.

“While other high-income countries saw their life expectancy increase in 2021, recovering about half of their losses, U.S. life expectancy continued to fall,” Woolf said. “This speaks volumes about the life consequences of how the U.S. handled the pandemic.”

Co-author Laudan Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, told The Washington Post,  “The life expectancy gap between the United States and its peer income countries is now over five years, which is an incredible gap.” 

Drop in Life Expectancy ‘Speaks Volumes’ About How US Handled Covid: Expert (commondreams.org)