A new category for the ultra-rich has been coined: “centibillionaires,” those who have amassed more than $100 billion.



As tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, by the end of 2019, the 500 richest people saw their total haul jump by 25 percent, with $1.2 trillion added to their collective net worth.



Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, is one of them, and he piled up and extra $27 billion in personal wealth last year. Bill Gates of Microsoft added $22 billion to his stash. And even though Amazon czar Jeff Bezos lost $9 billion last year in a divorce settlement, his fortune multiplied so much that he’s still the world’s richest person.



The moneyed elite did nothing to earn these extra bonanzas. They didn’t work any harder, didn’t get smarter, didn’t add anything of value to society. They simply  let their money make money. Their money does all the work to lift them above everyone else.  The bulk of their booty goes to making them even richer, buying out other corporations, acquiring advanced technologies, dumping billions into Wall Street with buy-backs, intentionally and artificially jacking up the price of stocks you own. Your wealth expands exponentially; inequality spreads further and faster



Rupert Murdoch saw his riches fall by $10 billion in 2019 but only because he doled out that wad of wealth to his six children. Thus were born six brand new  billionaires who did nothing to reach the top of the world’s financial heap except possess a wealthy father.  For others it can take hard work, creativity, perseverance and luck to become a millionaire, but in today’s skewed wealth system, multibillionaires don’t need any of that. No money worries, set for life.  Mansions and penthouses galore, luxury yachts, private jets, jewels, personal islands and other “trivial” trinkets barely dent their multibillionsl. Of course funding political front groups to protect your interests and financing corporate-friendly candidates takes a little bit of your wealth, as do some charity donations so to ensure some good publicity and appease your conscience.



From here

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/here-are-the-dirty-secrets-of-how-the-rich-become-the-uber-rich/?utm_source=push_notifications

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/smog-istan-pakistanis-created-equal-200123081038630.html

Protesters insist that only a government of independent experts will have what it takes to save the country. Calls to dismantle ruling parties, which include groups that transitioned into politics since the country’s civil war, have also been a major demand of the protesters.

“This is really sad,” 25-year-old Hamza said of the current economic situation. 

“We don’t deserve this. They control our jobs and our economy,” he said of the government, which he described as an “oligarchy”. 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/violent-protests-beirut-follow-lebanon-cabinet-meeting-200122161944258.html

Research by the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation thinktanks found that the poorest people were less likely to recover from mental ill-health after receiving psychological therapy and be readmitted to hospital as a medical emergency soon after undergoing treatment.



The findings  show that poorer people’s health risks being compounded by poorer access to NHS care. Moreover, previous evidence showed that, while life expectancy is still improving for the best-off, it has stalled or gone backwards among the poorest.



The research found large disparities between richest and poorest in measures of children and young people’s health, including take-up of the MMR vaccine in five-year-olds, teenage pregnancy and admissions for self-harm for under-18s.

Greta Thunberg must be getting very used to mixing with the rich and famous. Prince Charles met with Greta at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But it seems more as if it is the rich and famous who are seeking out to have the photo opportunities with Greta to boost their credibility.



The socialist movement is having its trials. This is to be expected. The transition from capitalism to socialism will be tempestuous. It would be folly to even hope for all smooth sailing. Let no comrade despair of the future. We are certain that before long the world will witness heroic rebellions of the people in all countries seeking to break once and for all the chains of exploitation and establish the true free society of socialism. Social ideas now has fertile soil to grow.



Hunger exists in a world of plenty. Why can’t the global food industry feed the hungry? Enough food is produced in the world to provide substantially more than the minimum required for good health. Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the supply of food in the world today. Despite that over-populationists blame too many people. The problem is not too many people. If people could decide what they produce, there would be more than enough food for many times the world’s population.The problem is that only a minority decide – a minority who want to organise production for their own benefit and for no one else’s.



That’s why they promote population numbers as a problem – to prove that hunger and poverty are not the fault of the rich for deciding not to produce what people need, but the fault of the poor and hungry for being too many.



The fact that there is already enough food to feed the world shows that the food crisis is not a technical problem — it is a social and political problem. The global food industry is not organised to feed the hungry; it is organised to generate profits for corporate agribusiness and they are achieving that objective very well indeed. It is profit what counts, no matter what the effect may be on earth, air, and water — or even on hungry people. World hunger can only be ended by ending capitalism.



“…the capitalist system works against a rational agriculture…a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system.” Marx



Workers puzzle over the question of why we can produce so much, how is it that we ourselves get so little? We produce hundreds of times more wealth with the factories than our great-grandfathers did without them. But the things we produce do not belong to us. Why? The answer is simple. The world’s great productive system is owned by a little handful of people who run it for their own profit and not for people’s use. And it can run at full steam and keep running only when society as a whole owns and operates it.



We live in a world where hunger, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, racial and sexual discrimination, and many forms of repression, including the most barbaric, such as torture and genocide, are the lot of the majority of the earth’s inhabitants.



The emancipation of the workers will be accomplished by the workers themselves. They will achieve it through socialist revolution, which will end private ownership of the means of production in order to establish socialist and collective property, and replace capitalist commodity production by the social organisation of production and designed to ensure the complete well-being and full development of each person. As socialists, we cannot accept that it is beyond the ability and intelligence of mankind to solve the problems of hunger, poverty, unemployment or the even greater problems of peace and war.



The unemployed, along with old, the sick, the disabled and single-parent families are forced to lead restricted and often isolated lives in poverty which prevents them from fully participating in the economic, political, cultural and social activity of our society. Socialism stands for all that is best in life, for replacing fear by hope, narrowness and meanness by generosity and compassion, poverty by plenty, exploitation by co-operation and jingoism by comradeship.



Why is it necessary that human beings should work at all? In order that the world may be supplied with goods, of course. Do we therefore rejoice when the world is so supplied? That is the greatest disaster we can imagine. We must labour in order to supply the world, and when the world is supplied we must starve because there is plenty for all and our labour is not needed. Science and invention by increasing the productivity of our labour. One insoluble difficulty of capitalism is to devise a method whereby the march of science and inventive genius can assist industry without menacing the bread and butter of the working class. 



The destruction of the environment of our planet is not caused by scarcity or overpopulation. The problem in large areas of the globe is not over exploitation but under development. Much of Africa’s farmland is not properly irrigated, and the amount of arable land could be vastly increased. Environmentalists often claim that economic growth, or even human society itself, is inherently hostile to nature. Modern technology is not in itself destructive. Some go as far as to associate humanity with a parasite upon the planet. This simplistic opposition between ‘man’ and ‘nature’ is meaningless. Human activity has already changed most of the earth’s surface beyond recognition.



‘We by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like something standing outside nature … we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst … all our mastery consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. Other animals simply use nature, unlike the hunter, the wolf does not spare the doe which would provide it with the young the next year; the goats in Greece that eat away the young bushes before they grow to maturity, have eaten bare all the mountains of the country …’ – Engels



Capitalism compromises our relation to nature. All production decisions are made by a tiny handful of capitalists, not in the interests of humanity, but purely for profit. Environmental concerns are ignored in the short term scramble for profit. The vast majority of the population who want to live in a safe, healthy world, and to enjoy nature, have no control over decisions that affect our lives. Even at our own workplace we have to struggle for the most meagre health and safety measures. The market can never be harnessed to develop a harmonious relationship with nature. Because it depends on the exploitation of most of humanity, it must keep us subjected. Because its motor force is profit, it will result in the blind destruction of the environment.

Only 6.2% of private sector workers in the U.S. today are union members. This decline has come about as employers intimidate workers into remaining unrepresented and require union leaders to obtain the favor of a majority of workers in order to gain bargaining rights. 



Two academics at Harvard Law School joined with more than 70 labor leaders, activists, and economists to publish the report, entitled “Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Economy and Democracy.” To effectively combat economic inequality and even the playing field between corporations and the people they employ, the new report argues, the U.S. must entirely overhaul labor laws to provide a “clean slate” for all workers.



“Fundamentally redesigning our labor laws, rather than pursuing incremental reforms to our current laws, would provide the foundation for building powerful organizations for working people,” the authors wrote in Newsweek. “At a time when the foundations of our democracy are being questioned, the project of creating a widespread system of workplace democracy is urgent.”

the creation of work councils, with members exclusively elected by employees, which would have a say in scheduling, safety measures, equity, and other issues affecting workers; a national just-cause system under which companies would be prohibited from terminating a workers’ employment without sufficient reasoning; a law prohibiting employers from giving replacement employees the jobs of workers who have gone on strike; and mandated paid time off for workers to take part in civic activities, including voting.

In principle, international agreements exclude plants from patenting. But there is a loophole: the upstream and downstream value chain of a plant. “When the plant is processed into a foodstuff, technology is used,” Horn told DW. “If you develop something new and inventive, why not get a patent on it?”

Examples are patents on the value-added chains of rooibos tea from South Africa or bean varieties from Mexico and parts of Africa that have been used by the locals for generations. “The development and free exchange of plant varieties over thousands of years is the basis of our agriculture today,” Thomas emphasized. Turning plants into legally protected monopolies will ultimately threaten food security in the global south. 

https://www.dw.com/en/ethiopian-teff-the-fight-against-biopiracy/a-52085081