America’s 651 billionaires have gained so much wealth during the coronavirus pandemic that they could fully pay for one-time $3,000 stimulus checks for every person in the United States and still be better off than they were before the crisis according to new research released Wednesday by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

In the nearly nine-month period between March 18 and December 7, American billionaires gained more than $1 trillion in wealth as people across the U.S. lost their jobs, their businesses, their homes, and their lives to the pandemic. The collective net worth of U.S. billionaires now sits just above $4 trillion—nearly double the combined wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent of the American population.

“As tens of millions of Americans suffer from the health and economic ravages of this pandemic, a few hundred billionaires add to their massive fortunes,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement. “Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major Covid relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches.”

“Their wealth growth is so great,” Clemente added, “that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman, and child in the country, and still be richer than they were nine months ago.”

‘Pandemic Profits’ of Billionaires Could Fully Fund $3,000 Stimulus Checks for US Workers – Consortiumnews

As most informed socialists expected, the UN chief, António Guterres says key promise of $100bn funding will be missed, damaging trust in Paris deal. 

“We are close to a point of no return. We need to make sure that we act before that point of no return.”

Rich countries will miss a key promise they made to the poor world on the climate crisis by failing to provide the money necessary for them to cope with its effects, damaging the prospects for global action, the UN secretary general has said.

Developing countries were supposed to receive at least $100bn (£75bn) in financial assistance from public and private sources this year and in future years to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the ravages of extreme weather. The promise was one of the cornerstones of the 2015 Paris agreement and will be a key element of next year’s Cop26 climate talks. But the funding this year will fall short of the longstanding pledge.

The secretary general said: “It is clear we are not yet there on the $100bn target. In 2020 this will not happen. All the indications I have are that in 2020 we would be below that level of support from the developed world to the developing countries in climate finance both for mitigation [of emissions] and adaptation [to the impacts of climate change], from public and private sources.”

While many countries had spoken of the need for a “green recovery” from the Covid crisis, few were directing their rescue funds towards the low-carbon projects that would make a difference, he said. “It’s not the same in all countries, but globally it’s not happening. If you look at the G20 countries, and they represent probably 80% of the global economy, you have the recovery money used in fossil fuel-related industries and activities that is 50% more than the recovery money invested in the green economy.”  Guterres said leaders needed to do much more. “It is clear that we are not yet there [on a green recovery]. It is essential to transform the recovery policies in a way that makes recovery from the Covid inclusive and sustainable … It doesn’t make sense to use taxpayers’ money to ruin the planet.”

Rich failing to help fund poor countries’ climate fight, warns UN secretary general | Climate change | The Guardian

 “…the great lie of our times: that the American pie is finite. That for my family to survive, yours must suffer. That the richest nation on Earth is somehow plagued by scarcity — rather than greed.” –  Joe Kennedy III

Retiring Rep. Joe Kennedy III says greed hinders aid to poor (apnews.com)

The wealth of 650 American billionaires has increased by over $1tn since mid-March, the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns.

Who’s generating all this wealth? In many cases, it’s frontline retail, healthcare, and food workers who are underpaid and under-protected from the virus. These workers risk their lives every day to do the work that increases already obscene corporate wealth. And going into a holiday shopping season with cases exploding, the risk is only increasing.

Corporations and their billionaire beneficiaries must do more to protect essential workers going into this winter of pain. They should immediately provide, regularly replace, and upgrade high quality personal protective equipment (PPE) at no cost to all their essential workers. They should implement hazard pay of at least an extra $5 an hour. And they must provide substantial paid sick leave benefits for workers to stay home when ill and exposed.

In a new report we co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies, Billionaire Wealth vs Community Health, it profiled what was call the “Delinquent Dozen” – companies whose owners and executives have seen their wealth and profits surge but have been laggards in protecting their workers.

 The wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has increased by over $70bn since mid-March, while an estimated 20,000 Amazon workers have been infected with Covid-19.

Three owners of Walmart – Rob, Jim, and Alice Walton – have seen their combined personal wealth increase by over $48.2bn since the beginning of the pandemic. Walmart refuses to provide hazard pay to its workers.

Apoorva Mehta, founder of Instacart, is now worth $1.6bn, and his wealth will surge when Instacart goes public in 2021. Yet workers at Instacart, which hired hundreds of thousands to meet surging demand, have said that the company failed to provide sufficient protections.

John H Tyson, the billionaire owner of Tyson Foods, has seen his personal wealth increase by over $600m since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile, thousands of Tyson workers have been infected with Covid-19. At one Tyson plant in Iowa, supervisors have been accused of literally taking bets on how many workers would catch the virus. More than 1,000 workers at the now-shuttered plant were infected, and at least five died.

 Big private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, Cerberus Capital, BC Partners, and Leonard Green Partners, which own hundreds of companies. Their billionaire owners have seen their fortunes surge while the companies they own have repeatedly failed to protect their workers.

Blackstone, for example, owns TeamHealth, a company that demoted a whistleblower doctor who went public about the company’s lack of Covid-19 safety precautions. The company’s founder and CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, has seen his personal wealth increase by $4.1bn since March.

Cerberus Capital owns Albertsons and Safeway supermarkets, which employ thousands of essential workers. Hazard pay ended many months ago at Safeway, even as Covid-19 infections have increased by 161% at Safeway stores in the DC metro region alone. Meanwhile Steve Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of Cerberus, has seen his personal wealth increase by $276m.

The contrast between billionaires making no sacrifice and their essential workers making the ultimate sacrifice is both unethical and corrupt.

Billionaires made $1tn since Covid-19. They can afford to protect their workers | US economy | The Guardian

But SOYMB says – it is also capitalism at its rotten core essence.

 Resolution

Just a little prick and all will be well

With everything back to the way it was,

Those halcyon days that were lost because

Pandemic’s proved difficult to dispel.

We the builders, the makers, make great play

Of how the future can be shaped by our will,

Creators of wonders, yet we were still

Humbled by a mere mote of RNA.

Such hubris has been set aside by need,

For progress demands cooperation.

The cure hasn’t come from a single nation,

But insight and labour shared to succeed.

Those weren’t halcyon days we had before;

So, look forward to achieving much more.

D.A.

 Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities are experiencing hate incidents on an almost daily basis, while mental health issues and suicide are leading to an “epidemic of needless deaths”, a government-funded report has found.

The report suggests a possible correlation between TV shows and hate speech, with reported increases in incidents following programmes such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on Channel 4.

A spike in cases submitted to the Report Racism GRT hate crime project followed the broadcast of the same channel’s Dispatches programme, The Truth About Traveller Crime, in April 2020, with 45 cases that month and a total of 92 additional reported cases of hate crime/speech between February and May 2020.

Prof Margaret Greenfields  from Buckinghamshire New University, who carried out the study, said she was shocked by the “sheer number of families who had experienced multiple bereavement through suicide”, adding: “It is unsurprising, albeit tragic, that mental health difficulties and suicide rates are so high among the communities.”

 Josie O’Driscoll of  Josie O’Driscoll, said: “One young person told us: ‘I’ve had enough, I can’t take it any more.’ Everywhere he turned he felt he faced prejudice … A big part of Traveller life is attending funerals. By the time you get over one trauma, you are grieving for the next person.”

Hate targeted at Gypsy, Traveller and Roma linked to rise in suicides – report | Roma, Gypsies and Travellers | The Guardian

The annual emissions gap report assesses the gap between what countries committed to doing under the Paris Agreement and what they need to do to keep temperatures in check. 

Despite recent pledges from major polluters to cut their emissions, the report describes concrete commitments as “woefully inadequate.”

 World leaders could use the coronavirus pandemic to shave 25% off their greenhouse gas emissions with green recovery packages.  But they have so far continued to make choices that push them further away from targets they agreed upon five years ago to protect the climate and their citizens. By burning fossil fuels and chopping down rainforests, countries are on track to heat the world by 3.2 degrees Celsius this century, despite committing to keep it well under 2C. By emitting more CO2 with each passing year, world leaders are locking in deeper cuts to emissions in the future. 

By investing in green jobs and infrastructure and choosing climate-friendly policies, world leaders could lower emissions by a quarter of what they would otherwise be by 2030. But most rich countries are instead supporting a “high-carbon status quo” with some putting money into new fossil fuel projects.  

“There’s been a perception that, because we’ve been stuck at home and not able to travel, we were doing great and moving in the right direction,” said Martina Caretta, assistant professor of geography at West Virginia University in the US and IPCC author, who was not involved in the report. “But the truth that comes out is that this is just like a blip.” 

While the pandemic has tightened the carbon tap, slowing the flow of pollutants temporarily, it did not stop it.  

“Are we on track to bridging the gap?” the authors of the UN report ask and their answer is, “Absolutely not.” 

Stopping climate change through personal choices or government policies is often “presented as a trade-off between two choices,” the authors write. “However, system change and behavior change are two sides of the same coin.”

UN report: ′Woefully inadequate′ climate pledges spell 3.2C temperature rise | Environment| All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 09.12.2020

 A landmark United Nations report is calling on governments to declare remittance transfer an essential service and ensure access to humanitarian assistance, legal services and social protection for migrants and the displaced, as COVID-19 shifts the dynamics of global migration and hunger.

The report entitled “Populations at Risk: Implications of COVID-19 for Hunger, Migration and Displacement” is the first joint global report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and World Food Programme (WFP) and analyses food security trends in the world’s migration hotspots during the pandemic. It warns that COVID-19 and measures taken to contain its spread have disrupted human mobility patterns, the consequences of which could been seen for years to come.

Earlier this year, countries across the globe instituted various tiers of entry requirements. According to the report, while those restrictions resulted in significantly reduced international migration in the first months of the pandemic, the ensuing dip in unemployment and food security led to a desperate need to search for work elsewhere – and a spike in migration due to necessity.

One of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns involves remittances. Globally, migrant remittances are a financial lifeline for around 800 million people. World Bank figures put remittances to low and middle-income countries (LMICS) at over $550 billion in 2019. For more than half of these countries, funds sent by migrant workers to their relatives in their home countries account for over 5 percent of gross domestic product. However, remittance flows have plunged drastically in 2020 and according to the report, over 33 million people are at risk of going hungry as part of the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.

With remittances to LMICS expected to fall by about $100 billion in 2020 and 495 million full time job losses in the first quarter of the year, the report’s partners say it is possible that many migrants are sacrificing their own consumption and other needs, in order to send money to loved ones in their home countries. The report states that this is not a sustainable means of supporting families in the medium to long-term. It is also bad news for countries heavily dependent on remittances. 

“Coupled with the 32 percent drop projected for foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2020, contractions in the prices of natural resources and a significant decrease in tourism revenues, the drop in remittances will likely impact the financial stability of numerous countries….poverty, food security, nutrition, health and educational attainment are all being directly impacted by mobility restrictions and the decline in remittances,” the report said.

“It has been very clear since the onset of the crisis, that the impact of COVID on migration and mobility would be huge,” said Robelin, adding that, “migration has a positive impact from the remittance angle. The fact that many people lost their jobs who migrated for development means, means that in the long term, those benefitting from the positive impact of migration, may suffer.”

The IOM official says restriction of movement may have also pushed people to move under dangerous circumstances. Mobile and displaced populations also face new challenges such as increased exposure to work-related abuse and exploitation, the risk of losing residence status, the lack of funds to buy hygiene items and difficulties accessing COVID-19 tests, as well as restrictions on their general freedom to travel back and forth to their country of origin.

The IOM and WFP predict that partial or full lifting of travel regulations will result in more people leaving home to find work in order to feed their families. They are calling for well-governed migration to be a cornerstone of the global response to COVID-19. They believe that making remittance transfer an essential financial service can help families to meet their food and other needs. They are also advising the global community to ensure migrant access to health services including immunisation and mental health support. 

Drop in Remittances – a Financial Lifeline for 800 Million People – Could Impact Financial Stability of Numerous Countries | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

The top 1% of households globally own 43% of all personal wealth.

The bottom 50% have only 1%.  

The 1% are all millionaires in net wealth (after debt) and there are 52m of them.  Within this 1%, there are 175,000 ultra-wealthy people with over $50m in net wealth – that’s a minuscule number of people (less than 0.1%) owning 25% of the world’s wealth.

At the end of 2019, North America and Europe accounted for 55% of total global wealth, with only 17% of the world adult population. In contrast, the population share was three times larger than the wealth share in Latin America, four times the wealth share in India, and nearly ten times the wealth share in Africa.

Wealth differences within countries are even more pronounced. 

The top 1% of wealth holders in a country typically own 25%–40% of all wealth, and the top 10% usually account for 55%–75%. At the end of 2019, millionaires around the world – which number exactly 1% of the adult population – accounted for 43.4% of global net worth. In contrast, 54% of adults with wealth below US$10,000 (i.e. pretty much nothing)  together mustered less than 2% of global wealth.

 In 2019, the number of millionaires worldwide soared to 51.9 million, but has changed very little overall during the first half of 2020.

At the start of this year there were 175,690 ultra-high net worth (UHNW) adults in the world with net worth exceeding US$50 million. The total number of UHNW adults rose by 16,760 (11%) in 2019, but 120 members were lost during the first half of 2020, leaving a net gain of 16,640 in UHNW membership since the start of 2019.

During the first half of 2020, the number of millionaires shrank by 56,000 overall, just 1% of the 5.7 million added in 2019. Membership has expanded in some countries and some have lost significant numbers. The United Kingdom (down 241,000), Brazil (down 116,000), Australia (down 83,000) and Canada (down 72,000) all shed more millionaires than the world as a whole.

Today, the bottom 90% accounts for 19% of global wealth, compared to 11% in the year 2000.  In other words, there was a concentration of wealth towards the top 1% (and even more to 0.1%), but with some dispersion among the remaining 99%.

In short, what the report shows is billions of people have no wealth at all after debts and that the distribution of global personal wealth.

Richest 1% own 43% of global wealth, while billions have no wealth at all | Climate & Capitalism (climateandcapitalism.com)

 It is now more common for people using food banks to be in debt to the government than to family and friends or payday loan companies, the Trussell Trust has said. The UK’s biggest food bank network said half of all households visiting food banks struggled to afford essential goods such as food and clothes because they were repaying universal credit debts. The organisation said monthly deductions taken from claimants’ payments – in most cases to pay back a universal credit advance loan – could reduce household incomes by up to a third.

The most common deduction made by the Department for Work and Pensions is made in repayment of advance loans issued to tide claimants over during the minimum five-week wait for a first universal credit payment. Deductions are also made for benefit overpayment errors.  About 1.3 million new claimants were issued with advances between March and June.

“Our welfare system should increase people’s security, not suffering. But right now the government is taking money from the benefit payments of many people using food banks,” said the trust’s chief executive, Emma Revie. “Taking money off payments to repay these debts makes it much harder for people to afford the essentials and can impact on people’s mental health – this isn’t OK.” Revie continued, “With the pandemic continuing to hit people’s incomes, the government must pause taking money from benefit payments over the winter months until a more responsible and just system that offers security and support is in place. This would help people on the lowest incomes to keep every penny of their benefits to help afford the absolute essentials, instead of needing to turn to a food bank for help.”

UK food bank trust says half of users repaying universal credit debts | Universal credit | The Guardian