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

According to an analysis by Swiss bank UBS and consulting firm PwC, billionaire wealth increased to $10.2 trillion through the end of July, setting a new record amid the coronavirus pandemic even as millions of unemployed people fall into poverty. The number of billionaires also rose from 2,158 in 2017 to 2,189 this summer, according to the report.

 Health care billionaires saw their wealth increase by 50%. Technology billionaires saw their wealth rise by 42.5%. Billionaires in the entertainment, financial services, materials, and real estate sectors saw increases of 10% or less. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has seen his wealth rise more than 60% during the pandemic to $195 billion through late August, according to the analysis. Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw his wealth more than triple to $85 billion over that time frame.

Some executives, like Zoom CEO Eric Yuan and Bezos, have profited from a boom in business caused by the lockdowns. Others have profited directly from government aid distributed to their companies. But most billionaires saw their wealth increase due to rising investments, buoyed by a stock market surge propped up by government assistance.

This is not the first time that billionaires profited while millions suffered. 

The Institute for Policy Studies found that the wealthiest 400 billionaires in the US not only recovered from the 2008 recession within three years but increased their wealth by 80% over the following decade. By comparison, the bottom 80% of earners have still not recovered.

 The lack of government action since the spring has resulted in an estimated 8 million Americans falling into poverty since May, according to a study from researchers at Columbia University. The lack of additional stimulus payments and the expiration of enhanced federal unemployment benefits has resulted in 6 million Americans falling into poverty over just the last three months, according to a study from researchers at the University of Chicago and Notre Dame.

The problem has been even worse globally. Between 88 million and 114 million people around the world have fallen into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 per day, since the pandemic hit, according to the World Bank. There are now more than 700 million people living in extreme poverty and researchers expected that number to keep rising.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/billionaires-rich/

  Of almost 4,700 confirmed foreign victims of trafficking,  Of these, 549 adults and just 28 children were granted discretionary leave to remain as trafficking victims, an immigration status that gives people a temporary right to stay in the UK if they have suffered extreme hardship over a four-year-period. For nearly three-quarters (74%) of all trafficking victims granted discretionary leave, the period lasted between seven months to a year. A further 7.8% were given even less, between zero and six months.

The figures have shocked anti-slavery campaigners. The data challenges the claim that Britain is a world leader in tackling modern slavery.

A divided world has failed to rise to the challenge of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. He explained that far more could have been done if countries had worked together to combat the disease, which has killed more than one million people.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is a major global challenge for the entire international community, for multilateralism and for me, as secretary-general of the United Nations. Unfortunately it is a test that, so far, the international community is failing.”

He said that if coordinated measures were not taken, “a microscopic virus could push millions of people into poverty and hunger, with devastating economic effects in the years to come”.

Guterres also criticised countries for a lack of unity in trying to solve other global challenges including the conflicts in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.

“It is a source of enormous frustration,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-un/divided-world-is-failing-covid-19-test-says-frustrated-u-n-chief-idUSKBN2720JB?il=0

Do you own the wealth which you produce? No, you do not. Instead you hand it over to parasitical class. You are the fundamental power of society, and yet you don’t know it. You imagine that you are free, while in fact you are enslaved. You are dependent on your employer for a job. The bosses who own the means of production own your very life. The two parties, the Democratic and Republican parties, have brought the country to the verge of ruin but you still vote for them.

The Republicans and Democrats will, as usual, use the media to whip you into line. Needless to say, the worker has no choice between these two capitalist parties, that  are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the other succeeds, he or she will still remain a wage–slave. The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production. It is therefore a question not of “reform,” the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative industry. We hear it frequently urged that the Democratic party is the “poor man’s party,” “the friend of labor.” There is but one way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and that is by making common property of the means of production.

Is the Democratic Party, which we are assured by those sympathizers of Sanders has “strong socialistic tendencies,” in favor of socialized ownership? Is it opposed to the wage-system, with its endless flood the poverty, misery and wretchedness. The difference between the Republican and Democratic parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class have very much interest. Between these parties socialists have no choice, no preference. They are one in their opposition to socialism, that is to say, the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery, and every worker who has intelligence enough to understand class interest and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved, will once and for all time sever our relations with them both.

Several Republican former senators and congressmen have endorsed Biden for president, saying that he is better qualified than Trump to run the country. There is also a large number of intelligence and foreign policy advisers, many who have worked for Republican presidents, also endorsed Biden. Colin Powell is such a person. Former ambassador, John Negroponte, is another one who endorsed Biden. It was Negroponte who funnelled covert funds from the CIA to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua; he was ambassador to the United Nations as the U.S.A. sought to go to war with lies about Iraqi WMD and then ambassador to Iraq during the U.S. occupation of that country. He was the director of national intelligence during Bush torture program. Nobody has ever accused Negroponte of being a progressive yet he is happy to publicly endorsed Biden. Why?

There is absolutely no difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties so far as the working class is concerned. They are exactly alike. They are both committed to the capitalist system. They are both committed to wage slavery, and whether the one or the other wins, you always lose. Your condition remains the same. You have tried these two capitalist parties over and over again, with the same inevitable result. The politicians who used you to vote to perpetuate the system in which you are slaves have no respect for you. They treat you with contempt. And you say “Oh, I have grown wise this year, I am going over to the Democratic Party, over to Biden and Harris.” No matter which of these parties is in power, workers remain in a state of slavery and their lives will be broken. If now and then there is one who escapes it is simply the exception which serves to prove the rule.

The World Socialist Party is the party of the present and the future. Waste your time and your energy no longer. The World Socialist Party is the only party that has a claim upon you. The World Socialist Party is pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class-rule and wage-slavery—a party which does not compromise or confuse, but, preserving inviolate its principles of political and economic freedom.

 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.

 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/

“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/