Poland, a nation with a population of more than 38 million, registered 357,400 births last year and some 486,200 deaths from various causes. The overall data showed a population loss of some 129,000 people, compared with a decline of some 36,400 the year before. Poland’s population has slowly decreased in the past 20 years mostly due to the emigration of young people seeking better opportunities.

The low birth rate surprised observers because some experts predicted the lockdown measures the Polish government has imposed on and off since mid-March would lead to a baby boom

Economist Rafal Mundry said, “We have a huge demographic crisis.” 

‘Demographic crisis’: Poland population shrinking under pandemic | Poland News | Al Jazeera

For capitalism a fall in numbers but accompanied by an ageing population is a problem.

Less people means a smaller market to sell to but it also means less people of working age supporting more who aren’t being productive.

China suffered it with their one-child policy and call it the 1-2-4 problem…one worker supporting his or her parents and also grandparents. It being made worse by the lack of an effective state welfare system in China to take up the burden of looking after the elderly.

Capitalism does offer solutions to this under-population. Increased productivity of those who are working. Reducing the dependency by raising the retirement age. Encouraging more immigration of younger healthier workers. To some degree or other, all three options are being introduced but not with equal priority. Japan, for instance, has done very little to invite immigration.

But we also have to note that even with fertility drop the population still grows because of what is called population momentum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum

Socialism will not suffer any unwelcomed consequences of a reduced population and we would welcome it, in general.

But our current political problem are those who wish to embark upon eugenic programmes supposedly to protect the environment. Delve a bit deeper and it is racist family-planning policies aimed at the undeveloped and developing countries with the purpose to protect the high levels of, and very profitable for capitalism, consumption and GDPs of the industrialised developed nations. Also with the land-grab and the mechanisation of plantation farming and high-tech extractive idustries, much of the labour-force is superfluous and surplus to requirements so push them into the mega-city slums and engage in service work.

 Anti-poverty agencies, programmes and others lobby and fight for attention by showcasing their own policy agendas, ostensible achievements and potential. Many believe that the more indicators they get endorsed by the ‘international community’, the more financial support they can expect to secure.

Collecting enough national data to properly monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals is expensive. Data collection costs, typically borne by the countries themselves, have been estimated at minimally over three times total official development assistance (ODA). With data demands growing, more pressure to measure has led to either over- or under-stating both problems and progress, sometimes with no dishonest intent. ‘Errors’ can easily be explained away as statistics from poor countries are notoriously unreliable.

Economists generally prefer and even demand the use of money-metric measures. The rationale often is that no other meaningful measure is available. Many believe that showing ostensible costs and benefits is more likely to raise needed funding. Using either exchange rates or purchasing power parity (PPP) has been much debated. Some advocate even more convenient measures such as the prices of a standard McDonald’s hamburger in different countries. Money-metrics imply that estimated economic losses due to, say, smoking or non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including obesity, tend to be far greater in richer countries, owing to the much higher incomes lost or foregone as well as costs incurred.

In 2000, the UN Secretariat drafted the Millennium Declaration. This, in turn, became the basis for the Millennium Development Goals which gave primacy to halving the number of poor. After all, who would object to reducing poverty. The poor were defined with reference to a poverty line, somewhat arbitrarily defined by the Bank. Presuming money income to be a universal yardstick of wellbeing, this poverty measure has been challenged on various grounds. Most in poorer developing countries sense that much nuance and variation are lost in such measures, not only for poverty, but also for, say, hunger.

Improving such metrics has thus become an end in itself, with little debate over such one-dimensional means of measuring progress. The consequent ‘tunnel vision’ has meant ignoring other measures and indicators of wellbeing. In recent decades, instead of subsistence agriculture, cash crops have been promoted. Yet, all too many children of cash-poor subsistence farmers are nutritionally better fed and healthier than the offspring of monetarily better off cash crop or ‘commercial’ farmers.

Meanwhile, as cash incomes rise, those with diet-related NCDs have been growing. While life expectancy has risen in much of the world, healthy life expectancy has progressed less as ill health increasingly haunts the sunset years of longer lives.

As poor countries get limited help in their efforts to adjust to global warming, rich countries’ focus on supporting mitigation efforts has included, inter alia, promoting ‘no-till agriculture’. Thus attributing greenhouse gas emissions implies corresponding mitigation efforts via greater herbicide use. Maximising carbon sequestration in unploughed farm topsoil requires more reliance on typically toxic, if not carcinogenic pesticides, especially herbicides. But addressing global warming should not be at the expense of sustainable agriculture. Similarly, imposing global carbon taxation will raise the price of, and reduce access to electricity for the ‘energy-poor’, who comprise a fifth of the world’s population. The UN proposed a Global Green New Deal (GGND) which included such cross-subsidisation by rich countries of sustainable development progress elsewhere. The 2009 London G20 summit succeeded in raising more than the trillion dollars targeted. But the resources mainly went to strengthening the IMF, rather than for the GGND proposal. 

Poor Lives Matter, but Less | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 Bitcoin and the Dark Web – introduced by Paul Edwards, 27th November 2020

FAQ Special – the Speaker’s Test (Pt.2) – 2nd December 2020

 The pandemic caused an “unprecedented” hit to the global economy last year, destroying the equivalent of 225 million full-time jobs, the United Nations has said. The economic blow from Covid-19 has cost workers around the world $3.7tn (£2.7tn) in lost earnings.

“Unless we step up and adapt now, the results will be increasing poverty, water shortages, agricultural losses and soaring levels of migration with an enormous toll on human life,”  3,000 scientists, from nearly 120 countries, including 5 Nobel laureates wrote.

A changing climate, including more severe floods and droughts, could depress growth in global food production by up to 30% by 2050, while rising seas and greater storm surges could destroy urban economies and force hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers from their homes, they noted. To avoid that, major new efforts are needed to conserve nature. Alongside the COVID-19 crisis, last year saw surging heat, intensifying drought and rampant wildfires, he noted, adding that the pandemic might have been avoided if the world had acted earlier to protect nature and prevent climate change.

“We must remember there is no vaccination for our changing climate,” said former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who chairs the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), which is organising the Jan. 25-26 summit with the Dutch government. “Building resilience to climate impacts is not a nice-to-have… it is a must if we are to live in a sustainable and secure world.“

A GCA report assessing global progress on adaptation cited research showing government pandemic stimulus measures that support fossil fuels and high-carbon activities outnumbered green initiatives by four to one.

A U.N. report said last week that funding was already falling far short of needs before the COVID-19 crisis, with an annual average of $30 billion available for adaptation in 2017-2018. Estimates of the costs of adapting to climate change vary widely, but CPI and the GCA said adaptation finance needed to increase by between five and 10-fold from its current levels. Only about 5% of all climate finance goes to adapting to more extreme weather and rising seas. The U.N. secretary-general and others have called for that share to be raised to half, especially in financial support for poorer nations.

Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Rotterdam-based GCA, described climate change adaptation as a “casualty” of the pandemic. “Adaptation needs to accelerate but this acceleration is not happening. In fact, it’s even slowing down,” he said. Verkooijen said the shortfall in action and financing for adaptation could be turned around if decision-makers ensure the trillions they are preparing to spend on boosting their economies are also aimed at building climate resilience.

Adapt to climate change or risk ‘enormous toll’, scientists warn (trust.org)

Many have been warning that the fall-out over the Capitol riot would spill-over on to the left-wing’s freedoms to protest. We have noted that the campaign to de-platform the Right on social media poses a threat to all political activists. Once more our ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’ are merely at the convenience and the whim of those who hold the real power.

Facebook temporarily banned Britain’s main Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Worker Party, as well as a number of its individual members. It was re-instated but without any explanation of why its account was suspended in the first place. (1)

Our position within the World Socialist Movement, despite our well-documented opposition to the SWP, is to condemn such an action. Some political parties may well indulge in some schadenfraude and suggest that the SWP had been hoisted by its own petard since it too has vigourously opposed the free speech of those it considers to be ‘class enemies’ in the past.

We in the Socialist Party, however, have always stood by our principle of protecting democracy for all, friend and foe, alike. An example being our defence of the Communist Party newspaper, the ‘Daily Worker’, when the government banned it during World War Two. (2)

Who do Facebook (or Twitter, or Instagram) think they are? Answer: they are the private business of social media and it private owners are just exercising their private property rights. It’s bad enough that the State imposes censorship but now we have powerful private corporations with not even a pretence of democratic control or accountability deciding what information or opinions should be in the public domain.

The Socialist Party holds a similar view as Karl Marx, who was hounded out of Europe because of press censorship to become a political refugee in London, when he explained that “…you cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences. You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns!…there are also bad persons, who misuse speech to tell lies… No remedy against that has yet been found.“ (3)

(1) Facebook bans UK Socialist Workers Party, revives account with ‘no explanation’ as dozens of local pages remain suspended | Defend Democracy Press

(2) https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1941/1940s/no-438-february-1941/suppression-daily-worker/

(3) On Freedom of the Press — Ch 5 (historyisaweapon.com)

 Poor white youngsters in England’s former industrial towns and those living on the coast are among the most likely to miss out on university, warns the watchdog for fair access.

 More than a third of households in the UK have not managed to put aside any money since the first coronavirus lockdown began last year, and more than half are worried about running out of savings, a survey found. Many households are struggling with lower incomes and are eating into their savings.

The latest household financial confidence tracker, for Comparethemarket, found 52% of those surveyed were spending savings and 53% were worried they would run out of money. Of those with families, more than a quarter said they had struggled to pay bills in the past week, while 16% of those with no children at home said the same. 

The same proportions said they felt less financially secure now than in previous lockdowns, while 10% of families said if lockdown restrictions continued beyond April they were worried they would not be able to pay their mortgage or rent.

Ursula Gibbs, the commercial director of Comparethemarket, said: “…for many families the financial impact of coronavirus will be felt long after lockdown lifts. Families with children at home are particularly affected, and many are more concerned now about their ability to pay bills and make ends meet than at any other point in the past year.”

By December 2020 more than 9 million people had borrowed more than usual since the pandemic began. 

Laith Khalaf, an analyst at the finance firm AJ Bell, said: “There’s a pandemic paradox at the heart of personal finances in the UK, with signs of both financial distress and excess savings at the same time. “It is clear that the young, the self-employed and those on lower incomes have borne the brunt of the financial damage inflicted by the pandemic…” But adding, “… more affluent households with steady, undisturbed income streams have found themselves awash with cash, as spending options have been severely curtailed by ongoing lockdowns.”

More than half of UK households fear losing savings in Covid crisis | Family finances | The Guardian

 Investors in Britain’s largest cinema chain have approved an incentive scheme that could result in bosses being awarded more than £200m in shares.

Cineworld, which closed all of its 127 sites in the UK and Ireland indefinitely in October, held a vote on a new pay policy and long-term incentive plan at a special meeting. The proposed long-term incentive plan will reward the company’s senior executive team if Cineworld’s share price bounces back to 190p within three years. If this level – which is close to its pre-pandemic level of 197p – is reached, bosses will share £104m. If the share price reaches the upper cap of 380p, executive directors would between them be awarded shares worth a total of £208m.

The schemes, which required 50% voter approval to be implemented, were never in any real doubt of being passed as the Greidinger family control 20% of Cineworld. If the scheme hits its top target then the chief executive, Mooky Greidinger, and his brother and deputy, Israel, will receive awards worth £33m each.

Cineworld’s 5,500 UK staff have been out of work and furloughed since October, when the company closed all its sites indefinitely. There has been a significant round of voluntary and compulsory redundancies since then.

Cineworld bosses’ bonus scheme worth up to £208m gets green light | Cineworld | The Guardian

Action on Armed Violence, said they represented “a systemic failure to consider the human rights record of states before exporting weapons to them”.

Murray Jones, of Action on Armed Violence, said his research – which reviewed UK export records between January 2015 and June 2020 – “demonstrates the frailty of the UK’s commitment to human rights abroad”.

Meanwhile, Sarah Champion, the chair of parliament’s international development select committee, said: “Our ambassadors have today been instructed by the Foreign Office to cut 50-70% from the aid budget.” Describing the speed of the planned cuts as catastrophic, she added: “There is no doubt that lives will be lost as a consequence and our global standing as humanitarians destroyed…”

UK sells arms to nearly 80% of countries under restrictions, says report | Arms trade | The Guardian

UK diplomats told to cut up to 70% from overseas aid budget | Aid | The Guardian