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.

 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)

 As with all reporting concerning the war in Ukraine readers should exercise caution upon relying upon the media. 

Around 60 Russian paratroopers have staged a mutiny and refused to fight in Ukraine, local reports say. The men, who were from key airborne forces headquarters Pskov in northern Russia, could now face jail sentences for the insubordination.

It is the latest of several alleged cases of Russian troops refusing to obey Vladimir Putin’s orders to invade Ukraine and ‘deNazify’ the country.

60 Russian soldiers ‘stage mutiny and refuse to fight in Ukraine’ (msn.com)

 “Any profiteer is free to shorten the lives of his countrymen by denying them the essentials of life and he does this as a member of a highly respected class. The police protect him and his gains against the victims. The scientist ignores the effects of starvation, filthy lodging, and lack of education upon those who made the profit possible, and rushes to help the capitalist with technical advice, medical aid or even gratuitous praise. For who but the rich can pay well, who but those who have made heavy profits endow research? 

As for religion, it merely proclaims that the oppressed will get their due in some other life, or — still more comfortingly — that they must have misbehaved in a previous birth to suffer so now. That is, they may be ignored altogether or squeezed even more painfully. The reformer, with the best of intentions, attempts to gain the benefits of a revolution without the revolution itself.”

 Professor Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (1907—1966), mathematician, historian, philologist, and geneticist

Words of wisdom | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)

What is the Socialist Party?

 The top 0.1% of earners in the UK have annual incomes in excess of £500,000.

More than 50,000 people in the top income bracket account for 6% of all earnings – 60 times greater than their population share, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies in a report covering the 10 years to 2019.

 Earnings from self-employment and business ownership were far more important for those at the top end compared with low and middle earners because income from company ownership is taxed at a lower rate than earnings from work. Business income – from either self-employment or owning and running a company – accounts for 21% of total incomes for the top 1% of adults and 29% for the top 0.1%, compared with just 9% for the rest of the population at large.

Business owner-managers could effectively choose to take income out of their company through the form of a salary, dividends, or capital gains – allowing them to benefit from lower rates of tax. The report pointed to a preferential 10% rate of capital gains tax, called business asset disposal relief, while saying that company owner-managers were able to access tax rates of just 27% on income taken in the form of capital gains.

In comparison, the average tax rate on wage earners in the top 1% is 42%. The government sets the basic rate of income tax at 20% on earnings above the tax-free personal allowance of £12,571, up to £50,270, with a rate of 40% on income above £50,271, and 45% above £150,000.

Only 2,921 people employed by local authorities in 2020-21 received more than £100,000 in total remuneration and 739 received over £150,000, 46 more than the previous year. According to the Institute for Government, just 1,560 of the 456,410 civil servants earned more than £100,000 in 2020. Across the whole civil service, the majority of staff (55%) were paid below £30,000.

UK’s top 0.1% earners have annual income of over half a million, says IFS | Business | The Guardian

The total wealth of the world’s billionaires have dipped from a record high last year due to  drop in global stock markets since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,  but the planet’s richest people still holding a combined $12.7tn (£9.7tn) in assets.

Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, was named the world’s richest man for the first time with a $219bn fortune, up $68bn on the previous year because of the carmaker’s climbing share price. Musk leapfrogged Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Total wealth of world’s billionaires has fallen to $12.7tn, says Forbes | Rich lists | The Guardian