The Human Development Index was launched in 1990 in an effort to look beyond GDP as a measure of well-being.

 One in 10 American households struggled to feed their families last year, with more than 5 million families missing meals and cutting portions due to poverty, new government research reveals.

 In the richest country in the world, children in 274,000 American households went hungry, skipped meals or did not eat for entire days because there was not enough money to buy food.

2.3m are unable to afford adequate nutritional food at times during 2021, according to the annual food insecurity report by the USDA.

The climate breakdown and Russia’s war in Ukraine are pushing up food prices, and the cost of groceries in July was up 13.1% compared to last year, with the price of cereal, bread and dairy products rising even higher.

One in four Americans rely on federal nutrition assistance such as food stamps and free school lunches. The rates are higher among Indigenous, Black and Latino households. Households are now also under more pressure as states roll back pandemic-linked financial support such as free school meals for every child, child tax credits and many states now stopping expanded food stamp benefits.

Realtime data from the US Census survey “suggest that food hardship has been steadily rising in families with children this year”, said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Every month, millions of Americans are forced to choose between paying for rent, healthcare, bills, childcare and groceries, because they are not paid a living wage. Food insecurity and unequal access to grocery stores play a major role in a range of public health epidemics, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and tooth decay, as unhealthy processed foods with high levels of fat and sugar are often cheaper and more accessible than healthier options.

Food insecurity has never fallen below 10% since 2000.

One in 10 US households struggles to afford enough food, study finds | US news | The Guardian

I’M FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Now that the Queen has died, what now of this archaic institution? 

The Socialist Party is unconcerned as to whether we live in a republic or a constitutional monarchy – capitalism is capitalism whatever its political label. Socialists desire a good deal more than a mere capitalist republic. 

The Royal Family in relation to the rest of society are members of the capitalist class. That is, they own so much wealth, in the form of vast landed estates, that it is economically unnecessary for them to work. This means, for example, that they can enjoy themselves at Ascot racecourse, the grouse moor or other similar places as often as they please.

As regards the Queen, we can agree with the constitutional description of her role that in law, she is the head of the executive, an integral part of the legislature. In practice, as a result of a long evolutionary process during which the absolute power of the monarchy has been progressively reduced, the Queen acts only on the advice of her ministers, which she cannot constitutionally ignore. She reigns but she does not rule. The United Kingdom is governed by Her Majesty’s Government in the name of the Queen. The Queen was merely a rubber stamp and in this respect, the Royals are an example of the redundant nature of the capitalist class in general.

It has been claimed that she performed a useful function on the grounds that the Queen created more goodwill around the world than a mere presidential head of state could. Elizabeth was worth her weight in gold as an ambassador for Britain. But what did all these foreign tours and visits really achieve? The warm welcomes offered to Her Brittanic Majesty were often quickly forgotten by political realities, as numerous conflicts within and outwith the Commonwealth have shown.

Even if it is conceded that the accompanying trade missions produced a certain measure of success, in that foreign firms were more inclined to Buy British—what relevance does this have for those of us whose lives are taken up in earning enough to go on living? It simply meant that the wealth which we produce, but what our employers own, was more easily disposed of on the world’s markets — without this necessarily benefiting us. Thus if the Queen can be said to have had any function at all, it is that of being public relations for the British capitalist class. She was richly rewarded for her services through generous payments from the Civil List.

The problem with the whole concept of royalty is that it signifies the difference between those who are born into the blue-blooded ranks of the privileged and we commoners and humble subjects.  Those who think that they are low can be more easily treated as low. 

The Chartist Ernest Jones expressed it well

“We’re low—we’re low—we’re very, very low.

As low as low can be;

The rich are high—for we make them so—

And a miserable lot are we!”

More than 1 million more people will be forced into poverty this winter even if the government freezes energy prices at current levels, according to a conservative thinktank, the Legatum Institute.

It estimated that even if the energy price cap was held at its summer rate of £1,971, another 1.3 million people would slide below the relative poverty line compared with pre-pandemic rates.

With living standards collapsing, many people on low incomes would still struggle with rising costs in other areas such as food, clothing, rent and transport, partly because energy prices were already high, and partly as a result of the government’s decision to award below-inflation benefit increases in April, when benefits were increased by 3.1%, even though inflation was at 9% at the time.

Legatum said government intervention to freeze energy prices was essential to avert what would otherwise be an even more drastic “once in a generation” explosion in poverty.

The institute estimated that if ministers failed to tackle gas and electricity prices, and the energy price cap rose as projected to £3,549 in October and again in January to £5,300, then numbers in poverty in the UK would increase to 16.65 million, compared with the 2019-20 rate of 13.9 million.

“Even under the assumption of energy prices fixed at summer 2022 levels, there will still be 15.2 million people in poverty over the course of 2022-23. This would represent the greatest number of people in poverty since the Social Metrics Commission began measuring poverty in 2000-01, and an increase of 1.3 million when compared with pre-pandemic levels,” the analysis says.

1 million more people in UK face poverty this winter, analysis shows | Poverty | The Guardian

Pakistan, among the most vulnerable globally to climate change, has seen the highest rainfall in at least three decades. Skyrocketing prices are putting food out of reach in flood-ravaged Pakistan. The government warned that a food crisis is looming. 

Pakistan already reeling from dwindling currency reserves and the fastest inflation in almost five decades faces a food shortage after torrential rains submerged a third of the country and destroyed crops. The toll of extreme flooding on Pakistan’s food security is becoming apparent, homes and livelihoods wiped out. Eight more districts were added at the weekend to the country’s calamity list of 80 areas hit by floods. The floods, which will cost an estimated $10 billion worth of damage, have claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people and forced half a million into camps. It’s also submerged large swathes of farmland and flushed away crops in a country where agriculture accounts for about a fifth of the economy. The direct crop loss to flood damage is $2.3 billion, according to an estimate by Uzair Younus, director at the Atlantic Council’s Pakistan Initiative and economist Ammar Khan. Almost 800,000 farm animals have perished, and 2 million acres of crops and orchards have been hit, according to the United Nations. More than 100 bridges and about 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of roads damaged or destroyed.

“The agricultural sector is in turmoil. The cotton crop and vegetables are completely wiped out in many key areas,” said Pakistan Businesses Forum Vice President Ahmad Jawad, who grows wheat, maize, citrus and sugarcane. “Wild weather just can’t give us a break. First the heat wave, now floods.”

A Bloomberg report said the surge in food prices will add stress to an already fragile and politically divided economy that has just been regaining some funding strength after securing a $1.16 billion International Monetary Fund bailout and $9 billion in pledges from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

It is raising the frightening prospect of inflation hitting 30%. Pakistan already has one of the fastest inflation rates in the region, with consumer price gains rising to a 14-year high of almost 25% in July. 

“The main concern from the floods is the impact on inflation,” said Amreen Soorani, head of research at JS Global Capital. “Food shortage from floods the last time in 2010 almost doubled food inflation in two months. We’re already in a high inflationary environment, making the scenario even more difficult.”

Consumer price gains quickened to 27.26% in August, rising for a sixth straight month before the full impact of the flooding is felt. Food inflation, that makes up a third to the basket, climbed to 29.5% last month. The calculus doesn’t include yet the full impact of energy prices rising by 50%, a condition of the IMF loan.

Inflation could accelerate to 30% in the coming two months and that would take the average price gains this fiscal year to 23%-24%, surpassing the central bank’s estimate of 18%-20%, according to Fahad Rauf, head of research at Ismail Iqbal Securities.

 The damage to food supplies will probably boost the nation’s need for imports and increase the pressure on global agricultural markets. Steps are being taken to import vegetables and other items from Iran and Afghanistan. Pakistan is also considering a temporary land route to allow duty-free shipments from arch-rival India.  Jawad said. “Indian imports are needed to help bring prices down.”

Sowing next year’s wheat crop, which starts in October, will be another challenge. Even before the floods, the country was facing a wheat shortage of about 2.6 million tons.

Pakistan Post-Flood Situation: Vegetable Costs Up 500% Threaten To Fuel Inflation| Countercurrents

  Companies have raised a record $58bn in initial public offerings in mainland China so far this year, according to Bloomberg, a financial-information firm, compared with just $19bn in America and $5bn in Hong Kong. Another 1,000 firms are reportedly lining up to go public. A fresh cohort of tycoons is emerging, too. 

China’s ten richest magnates have accumulated a net $167bn in wealth since the start of 2020.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an American think-tank, by 2020 privately controlled companies accounted for more than half of the market capitalisation of China’s 100 biggest listed firms, compared with less than a tenth a decade earlier. 

The private sector employs four in five urban workers, or around 150m all told. 

Thirty-two private Chinese companies feature in the Fortune 500 ranking of the world’s biggest firms by revenue, up from none in 2005.

 China’s wealthiest man is  Zhong Shanshan, who built Nongfu, which sells bottled water.

Muyuan has grown into one of the world’s biggest hog producers. The Communist Party of Nanyang city, where the company is based, has an explicit goal of putting it on the Fortune 500 list. In late 2021 the local party told officials to make land available for Muyuan, and to streamline its various applications and inspections. The company is to receive subsidies for farm equipment, and local engineers and other workers are to be connected with the company, the plan ordains. The fortune of Muyuan’s founder, Qin Yinglin, has swollen to $23bn.

The central government wants to create 1m innovative small and medium-sized firms between 2021 and 2025. Of those, 100,000 will be dubbed “specialised new enterprises” and 10,000 will earn the distinction of “little giant”. The state still takes direct stakes in private companies. But it is finding new ways to influence and guide the private sector, often through industrial parks and a system of state-designated status.

 Designations such as “little giants” act as endorsements and signal where capital ought to flow. Such labels also make for “good public relations”, says Gu Jie, founder of Fourier, a robotics startup. Obtaining them eases access to places like Zhangjiang Robotics Valley in Shanghai, part of a larger high-tech development zone housing 150 research and development (r&d) centres, more than 24,000 companies and 400,000 workers. The local government owns and runs the zone.

The recipients of such largesse do not see this as the first step to nationalisation. Zhou Hanyi, co-founder of Xinzailing, a company specialising in lift safety, likens it instead to a bank loan without a fixed maturity, which does not typically engender state meddling. If a particular company fails, its technology and workforce can be absorbed by others without too much waste, says Christopher Fong of Welkin Capital, a private-equity firm in Hong Kong (and investor in Xinzailing). Older businesses, too, are opting to join state-backed innovation parks. 

 Xi’s ideal private sector might look something like Germany’s Mittelstand, according to Enodo Economics, a research firm: “a large stable of small private firms that are innovative, generate high-paying jobs and produce technologically advanced manufactured goods”. Some entrepreneurs say bureaucracy is being cut back in professionally managed industrial zones and that the state is meddling less in their operations. 

Meet China’s new tycoons | The Economist

 Despite being a technology still in development stages, carbon capture and storage has been put forward as a key element in the plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Carbon capture and storage schemes, a key plank of many governments’ net zero plans, “is not a climate solution”, the author of a major new report on the technology has said.

Researchers for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found underperforming carbon capture projects considerably outnumbered successful ones by large margins.

Of the 13 projects examined for the study – accounting for about 55% of the world’s current operational capacity – seven underperformed, two failed and one was mothballed, the report found.

“Many international bodies and national government are relying on carbon capture in the fossil fuel sector to get to net zero, and it simply won’t work,” Bruce Robertson, the author of the IEEFA report, said. “Although there is some indication it might have a role to play in hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, fertilisers and steel, overall results indicate a financial, technical and emissions-reduction framework that continues to overstate and underperform,” Robertson said. 

However, he added: “As a solution to tackling catastrophic rising emissions in its current framework, CCS is not a climate solution.”

Meanwhile, despite the huge profits of fossil fuel companies, global public subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled to $700bn in 2021.

The subsidies soared as governments sought to shield citizens from surging energy prices as the global economy rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Most of the subsidies were used to reduce the price paid by consumers. This largely benefits wealthier households, as they use the most energy, rather than targeting those on low incomes. The subsidies are expected to rise even further in 2022 as Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven energy prices even higher.

“Fossil fuel subsidies are a roadblock to a more sustainable future, but the difficulty that governments face in removing them is underscored at times of high and volatile fuel prices,” said Fatih Birol, the director of the International Energy Agency, which produced the analysis with the OECD. “A surge in investment in clean energy technologies and infrastructure is the only lasting solution to today’s global energy crisis and the best way to reduce the exposure of consumers to high fuel costs.” 

“Significant increases in fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, while not necessarily reaching low-income households,” said Mathias Cormann, the OECD secretary general.

“A period of soaring fossil fuel energy prices, when oil and gas companies are posting record-breaking profits, should be the ideal time for governments to eliminate fossil fuel production subsidies – so to see rising government support for fossil fuels now is infuriating,” said Gyorgy Dallos, at Greenpeace International. “Governments need to stick to their green pledges. On the consumer side, they urgently need to replace untargeted support measures with targeted income support to people experiencing fuel poverty.”

The analysis covers 51 key countries and represents 85% of the world’s total energy supply. Subsidies that kept fossil fuel prices artificially low more than tripled to $531bn in 2021, compared with 2020. Subsidies for oil and gas production reached a record level of $64bn. The $697bn total covers explicit subsidies, including price reductions, government funding and tax breaks. Estimates including implicit subsidies, ie the cost of the climate and air pollution damage caused by fossil fuels, are far higher. These amounted to $5.9tn in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund, or $11m a minute.

Carbon capture is not a solution to net zero emissions plans, report says | Carbon capture and storage (CCS) | The Guardian

Global fossil fuel subsidies almost doubled in 2021, analysis finds | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

 The outgoing UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has said that China had committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province which may amount to crimes against humanity. Investigators said they uncovered “credible evidence” of torture. The abuses described included beatings with electric batons while being strapped in a “tiger chair” (to which inmates are strapped by their hands and feet), extended solitary confinement, as well as what appeared to be a form of waterboarding, “being subjected to interrogation with water being poured in their faces”.

“Several women interviewed by OHCHR raised allegations of forced birth control, in particular forced IUD [intrauterine device] placements and possible forced sterilisations with respect to Uyghur and ethnic Kazakh women. Some women spoke of the risk of harsh punishments including “internment” or “imprisonment” for violations of the family planning policy,” the report said.

“Among these, OHCHR interviewed some women who said they were forced to have abortions or forced to have IUDs inserted, after having reached the permitted number of children under the family planning policy. These first-hand accounts, although limited in number, are considered credible.” 

The report noted that the average rate of sterilisation per 100,000 inhabitants in China as a whole was just over 32. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region it was 243. 

The report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded: 

“The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

The report accused China of using vague national security laws to clamp down on the rights of minorities and establishing “systems of arbitrary detention”.

“Serious human rights violations have been committed in [the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region] in the context of the government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-‘extremism’ strategies,” the report said. “These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.”

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said the report’s findings showed “why the Chinese government fought tooth and nail to prevent the publication” of the report.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/22273382/22-08-31-final-assesment_unhr.pdf

 US life expectancy has fallen to the lowest level seen since 1996, continuing a steep decline largely driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the provisional data, life expectancy fell by 2.7 years between 2019 and 2021.

 Some Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are online via Discord or Zoom, and some are in-person. Please contact spgb.discord@worldsocialism.org for instructions on how to join Discord. 

CENTRAL BRANCH MEETING

Anyone wishing to join the meeting contact spgb.cbs@worldsocialism.org to get an invite.

Friday 2 September 19.30 BST (GMT +1) Discord

Sunday 2 October 11.00 GMT Discord

REGULAR DISCUSSION GROUP + BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ZOOM MEETINGS

SOCIALIST PARTY IN-PERSON MEETINGS

MANCHESTER

Saturday 10 September, 11.30am-6pm

STALL AT WIGAN DIGGERS FESTIVAL

The Wiend, Wigan

Glasgow Discussion Meeting

Second Saturday of each month at The Atholl Arms Pub, 134 Renfrew St, G2 3AU. Let’s get together for a beer and a blether. 2pm onwards. 2 minutes’ walk from Buchanan Street Bus Station. For further information call Paul Edwards on 07484 717893.

Yorkshire Discussion Group

If you live in the Yorkshire area and are interested in the Socialist Party case you are very welcome to attend our forums which currently alternate on a monthly basis either on Zoom or physical meetings in Leeds. For further information contact: fredi.edwards@hotmail.co.uk

Cardiff Street Stall

Every Saturday 1 – 3pm

Capitol Shopping Centre

Queen Street (Newport Road end)

Weather permitting