Namibia is a a country in Southern Africa. Its population is over two million eight hundred thousand. Twenty six per cent of its population live in extreme poverty.

 The most deprivation occurs in the the rural areas.

https://worldpoverty.io/ma

A report in the Namibian would appear to indicate that almost half of Namibia’s population are living in poverty or extreme poverty.

‘Almost half of the country’s population are faced with poverty, says prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila. She was speaking at the launch of the delayed sixth National Development Plan (NDP6) by the National Planning Commission (NPC).

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said the government had reduced poverty from 38% to about 18%, however, matters have since worsened.

“If you look at the new formula to calculate poverty, close to 50% of the population is living under poverty,” she said. Since 2016, the country experienced a macro-economic deterioration which exposed Namibia’s vulnerability to external shocks, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said.

“These had a negative impact on our poverty and inequality. In fact, the gains we made in reducing poverty were almost completely wiped out,” she said.

A month ago, The Namibian reported that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said 43% of the country’s population are experiencing multidimensional poverty.

According to the UNFPA 2022 annual report, the Gini coefficient index shows that income inequality in Namibia stands at 57,2%.

The Gini index is a summary measure of income inequality, which incorporates the detailed shared data into a single statistic, summarising the dispersion of income across the entire income distribution.

The report indicates that the unemployment rate stands at 33,4%, with youths aged 15-34 taking up 46,1%, while women take up 48,5%.

The report further indicates that 46% of households are female-headed, while 41% are male-headed.

At that time, economic analyst Arney Tjaronda told The Namibian these figures are not surprising, as the cost of living has drastically increased while salaries remain low.

He said most concerning is the high unemployment rate in the country, and a job market that is unable to absorb the high number of graduates’.

https://www.namibian.com.na/nearly-50-of-population-living-in-poverty-says-pm/

An unemployment rate of over a third with young people and women being affected the most means that many Nambians are struggling under capitalism.

The World Bank notes: ‘Economic advantage remains in the hands of a relatively small segment of the population, and significant inequality continues. This lack of inclusiveness and society’s vast disparities have led to a dual economy—a highly developed modern sector, co-existing with an informal subsistence-oriented one’.

‘Namibia ranks as one of the world’s most unequal countries. Its Gini coefficient of 59.1 in 2015 was second only to South Africa. Geographical disparities in both economic opportunities and access to services are large and widening. High levels of inequality result in starkly different poverty rates across different groups, including by age and gender’.

‘Due to consistently negative per capita GDP growth since 2016, and the negative impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods, poverty rates are projected to have increased. Typically, female-headed households, less educated, larger families, children and the elderly, and labourers in subsistence farming, are particularly prone to poverty.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/namibia/overview

Capitalism is global. Capitalism is the cause of such misery. Capitalism is not the solution. Socialism is.

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‘Afghanistan’s supreme leader said Sunday the country’s women were being saved from “traditional oppressions” by the adoption of Islamic governance and their status as “free and dignified human beings” restored.

In a statement marking this week’s Eid al-Adha holiday, Hibatullah Akhundzada — who rarely appears in public and rules by decree from the Taliban’s birthplace in Kandahar — said steps had been taken to provide women with a “comfortable and prosperous life according to Islamic Sharia”.

The United Nations expressed “deep concern” last week that women were being deprived of their rights under Afghanistan’s Taliban government and warned of systematic gender apartheid.

Since returning to power in August 2021, Taliban authorities have stopped girls and women from attending high school or university, banned them from parks, gyms and public baths, and ordered them to cover up when leaving home.

They have also barred them from working for the UN or NGOs, while most female government employees have been dismissed from their jobs or are being paid to stay at home.

However, Akhundzada said “necessary steps have been taken for the betterment of women as half of the society”.

“All institutions have been obliged to help women in securing marriage, inheritance and other rights,” his statement read.

Akhundzada said a six-point decree issued in December 2021 guaranteed women their rights.

Among other things, the decree outlawed forced marriages and enshrined the right to inheritance and divorce.

“The negative aspects of the past 20-year occupation related to women’s hijab and misguidance will end soon,” Akhundzada said.

A report to the UN’s Human Rights Council last week by Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur for Afghanistan, said the plight of women and girls in the country “was among the worst in the world”.

“Grave, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid,” Bennett said.

UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif added: “Over the past 22 months, every aspect of women’s and girls’ lives has been restricted.”

“They are discriminated against in every way.”

Despite his rare public appearances, Akhundzada has regularly issued lengthy “state-of-the-nation”-style statements ahead of important Muslim festivals and holidays.

“At the national level, the independence of Afghanistan has been restored once again,” he said.

He praised Afghanistan’s economic resilience, efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation, and the improvement in national security.

“It is our shared responsibility to protect and serve our Islamic system,” he said.

“The current system is the result of the sacrifices of thousands of mujahideen. Let’s stand by each other, eliminate conspiracies, value security and prosperity and work together for its further enhancement.”’.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/afghan-supreme-leader-says-women-084842660.html?guccounter=1

Hail the Daily Mail, the workers friend! Just kidding.

A piece in the MailOnline joyously proclaims how, following their ‘experts’ advice, a family was able to cut their food bill by a third. That’s now down to approximately six thousand pounds a year down from nine thousand pounds a year

The piece does give examples from various supermarkets of the hardly believable increases in some of their commodities.. Three items the Mail highlights have had a price increase of 175, 143, and 120 per cent.

Instead of editorializing about the the iniquities of a social system that promotes such greedflation the Mail prefers to pat itself on the back by offering advice on how to spend an inordinate amount of time in developing ‘new shopping skills’. Apologies, forgot that the Daily Mail is owned by Jonathan Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere.

Look out for the next article on how to save on Champagne, caviar and minions who do all the heavy graft.

The family in the article do note that before taking part in this experiment their food bill had increased by seventy per cent despite already being careful shoppers.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12308441/How-slash-weekly-shop-Family-reveals-new-shopping-skills-save-households-thousands-pounds-amid-soaring-costs.html

Chicken is a versatile food that can provide a number of varied meals.

Even non-animal activists are probably aware that the supermarket cost is lower than a that of a chicken bought from a local butcher because of intensive factory farming.

Vegans and vegetarians are likely to point a ‘told you so’ finger at the news that now even chicken may not be safe to eat.

‘A major meat supplier to UK supermarkets is sourcing chickens dosed with antibiotics linked to the spread of deadly superbugs, raising the risk of future outbreaks of life-threatening disease, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.

The Polish meat giant SuperDrob is sourcing chicken from factory farms that use medicines classified as “critically important” to human health, despite the grave risk this poses to consumers. SuperDrob sells frozen poultry products to Lidl, Asda and Iceland.

The company was linked to a fatal salmonella outbreak in 2020 – which TBIJ, the Guardian and ITV can now reveal involved bacteria resistant to multiple drugs – and there were at least 15 salmonella contaminations linked to SuperDrob poultry in the 18 months that followed.

Bacteria such as salmonella can easily spread on poultry farms, particularly where there are unhygienic or overcrowded conditions. The use of antibiotics on farms can enable potentially lethal bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs will no longer work to treat infections. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – known as “superbugs” – are a growing threat to human health, leading to an estimated 1.2 million deaths globally in 2019.

To reduce the risk of superbug outbreaks, EU legislation tightened up the use of antibiotics on farms as of last year. Yet the use of drugs critical for human health on farms in Poland, Europe’s biggest producer of poultry meat, has soared in recent years.

The country has accounted for more than half of serious salmonella contaminations involving meat originating in the EU since 2020. SuperDrob is one of Poland’s leading poultry producers and more than 50% of its revenue is from exports.

In recent years, sales of a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones, which are often used to treat serious salmonella infections, have increased by more than 70% in the country. Data shows even larger increases in the sales of colistin, a last-resort drug used to treat serious infections that have not responded to other medicines. Both are classified by the World Health Organization as critically important for human health.

More at link.

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-20/polish-meat-giant-supplied-superbug-infected-chicken-to-uk-shelves

For socialists the solution to the problem of more and more expensive food, putting many necessities out of the reach of many, is a straightforward one.

It is the replacement of capitalism, a profit-based social system by socialism, a money-free social system where food , and other life essentials, is produced for use, not profit. How hungry are you for that?

Nigerians experienced an almost twenty five per cent increase in their food bills in May.

Following on here from a post on poverty in Nigeria, 5 July, it is now reported that:

‘A state of emergency has been declared in Nigeria as a result of food shortages and surging prices, with the country’s government announcing a range of measures to address the crisis.

On Thursday, it was announced that fertilizers and grains will “immediately” be released to farmers, and 500,000 hectares of farmland and river basins will be activated for year-round farming.

The move will also expand the central bank’s role in financing the agricultural value chain.

“We declared a state of emergency and unveiled a comprehensive intervention plan on food security, affordability, and sustainability, taking decisive action to tackle food inflation,” President Bola Tinubu said on Twitter.

Tinubu emphasized that the goal of the intervention was to promote agriculture and increase job creation, pledging that “no one will be left behind” in his government’s efforts to ensure “affordable, plentiful food.”

Attahiru Bafarawa, a former governor of Nigeria’s Sokoto State, had warned earlier this month about banditry in the country’s north, saying it threatens food security and was a “serious disaster.”

Africa’s largest economy has seen a surge in the cost of food and transportation due to the president’s removal of fuel subsidies and sweeping exchange-rate reform since May.

In a statement on Thursday, government spokesperson Dele Alake said “savings from the fuel subsidy removal” would be directed at revamping the agricultural sector.

A National Commodity Board will be established and charged with reviewing food prices and maintaining a “strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilization mechanism for critical grains and other food items,” Alake said.

The cost of food in Nigeria had increased by 24.82% in May compared to the same time last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It explained that the year-on-year increase in food inflation was caused, among other things, by price hikes in oil, yam, bread, cereals, and fish.’

We will keep on saying it; the solution is socialism.

The Guardian reports that Which? Have noted supermarket prices show an increase of twenty five per cent over the last two years.

‘Two years of relentlessly soaring food prices have had a devastating impact on households,” said Sue Davies, the Which? head of food policy. “This isn’t helped by the confusing and inconsistent pricing practices used by some supermarkets, which make it incredibly difficult to work out how to find the best value products.’

Perhaps Which? Should take out a subscription to the Socialist Standard where it will discover that the ‘devastating impact on households’ is caused by capitalism.

The German owned Aldi and Lidl have the highest inflation figures , 19.3 per cent and 21.4 per cent. Across two years their inflation rate is verging on thirty five per cent.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) inflation data for June is expected to show a rate of 8.2% from 8.7% in May. The Bank of England’s target remains at two per cent inflation. Are house buyers in for another kicking soon?

The ‘best value’ products will be those which are produced for use in a socialist society – because they will be free.

The tinkering with the practices of capitalist food providers benefit no one.

Think of the benefits to all if the effort expended in making the capitalist system more palatable to all was focused on bringing about socialism.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/15/uk-supermarket-food-prices-which-loyalty-card-deals

‘As corporate profits soar, the real income of workers in 38 wealthy countries has fallen by an average of nearly 4% over the past year, and the situation could deteriorate further as artificial intelligence and other forms of technology threaten to automate 27% of existing jobs in the same nations.

That’s according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) latest annual employment outlook which stresses the “urgent need to act.”

One of the report’s key findings is that in most high-income countries, labour markets have “stabilized” since the Covid-19 pandemic unleashed economic chaos more than three years ago. The OECD unemployment rate was 4.8% in May 2023, compared with 5.3% in December 2019. However, joblessness varies widely among the club’s members, from 12.7% in Spain to 3.6% in the United States and 2.4% in the Czech Republic.

Tight labour markets typically improve workers’ bargaining power, yielding wage gains. But despite historically low unemployment rates in many OECD countries, the report finds that real wages across the bloc declined 3.8% between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023.

Nominal wages increased 5.6% from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023, but that wasn’t enough to offset the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the report indicates. As a result of high and persistent inflation—a phenomenon that many experts says is inseparable from corporate profiteering—real income decreased by as much as 15.6% in Hungary, 10.4% in the Czech Republic, and 0.7% in the United States.

Several earlier analyses have shown that since the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted international supply chains—rendered fragile by decades of neoliberal globaliation—highly consolidated corporations have capitalised on myriad crises to justify price hikes that far outpace the rising costs of doing business, padding their bottom lines at the expense of working-class consumers.

The OECD’s new report also acknowledges that “profits have often risen more than labour compensation.”

As corporate profits soar, the real income of workers in 38 wealthy countries has fallen by an average of nearly 4% over the past year, and the situation could deteriorate further as artificial intelligence and other forms of technology threaten to automate 27% of existing jobs in the same nations.

“Going forward,” the report notes, “evidence suggests there is some room for profits to absorb further wage adjustments to recover some of the losses in purchasing power gradually without generating significant price pressures or resulting in a fall in labour demand.”

Workers’ incomes could take additional hits due to technology-induced automation.

“While firms’ adoption of AI is still relatively low, rapid progress including with generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT), falling costs, and the increasing availability of workers with AI skills suggest that OECD countries may be on the brink of an AI revolution,” the report states. “It is vital to gather new and better data on AI uptake and use in the workplace, including which jobs will change, be created or disappear, and how skills needs are shifting.”

The report estimates that 27% of existing jobs in OECD countries are at high risk of automation, from AI and other technologies. If even a fraction of those jobs are automated, it could lead to a surge in unemployment—weakening workers’ bargaining power in relation to employers and setting the stage for further wage repression.

“High-skill occupations, despite being more exposed to recent progress in AI, are still at least risk of automation,” says the OECD. “Low- and middle-skilled jobs are most at risk, including in construction, farming, fishing, and forestry, and to a lesser extent production and transportation.”

According to the report, 63% of finance workers and 57% of manufacturing workers are worried about job loss due to AI in the next 10 years.’

https://www.commondreams.org/news/oecd-wages-down-ai-revolution

 The last 800 leaflets were distributed yesterday for the by-election a week on Thursday. Discarded leaflets from some of the candidates were found but nothing from the LibDems — seems they are giving Labour here a free run to garner anti-Tory votes. There is no socialist candidate. 

We talked to the owner of a house decked out with UKIP posters who turned out to be  a former Tory councillor who had defected to UKIP because they were replacing “white” local council candidates by Indians. True, as the three councillors for the ward are now all Indians, but so what? The Tories have in fact been cultivating the Hindu vote in north-west London, with some success.  

We met the Tory candidate himself, local councillor Steve Tuckwell. We had read in a Tory leaflet that the local Hindu temple handed out free fruit and vegetables at 2 o’clock on Tuesdays. Intrigued by this Tory support for free distribution we went along to see. It turned out to be just an ordinary food bank. 

But what we witnessed was a scene that bore some similarity to Dickens’s account of an election in his day. The Tory candidate and the Tory MP for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) forced the 20 or so destitute workers queuing for their bag of food to wait ten minutes to listen to their speeches which the workers dutifully applauded. What followed was even more obscene. The two suitably garlanded politicians were filmed, for an Asian TV channel, handing out food bags to the poor. This must come near to “treating” (giving gifts to voters to get them to vote for you) which since Dickens’s day has become illegal under electoral law. But professional politicians are known to have no shame when it comes to vote-catching. One reason why they are held in contempt, and rightly so.

One big issue in the election is ULEZ, the extension as from the end of August of the Ultra Low  Emission Zone from central London to the whole of Greater London. This will require owners of pre-2006 petrol vehicles and pre-2016 diesel vehicles to pay £12.50 a day to use their vehicles. As all vans are diesel, “white van man” is up in arms. One self-employed tradesman we met told us he had had to spend £10,000 of his own money to buy a new van and that all people like him who owned a pre-2016 van would have to do the same. Workers owning an old banger because they couldn’t afford anything better or a not that old diesel car will also be clobbered. There are two independent anti-ULEZ candidates and the Tories are playing it for all it’s worth (they can’t really play the anti-immigrant card here) saying “No to Labour’s £4,550 ULEZ expansion tax”.

No leaflets have been distributed in the Ruislip part of the constituency, so the workers there are going to have to work out for themselves that the problem is not  the Tories or Labour but Capitalism.

The words idiot and cretin are very similar in both English and French.

The English word for madman translates as le fou. When AI was asked to supply a definition of these three it came up with Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

Okay, that’s made up but the soubriquets surely apply to aforementioned French president given the latest decision to come out of Paris.

Several news outlets are reporting that France is going to more than annoy the Russians, poking the Bear as it’s known, with its decision to supply Ukraine with fifty SCALP long-range cruise missiles each having a range of one hundred and fifty five miles.

Reuters says that Macron said, “It rebalances things and enables Ukraine to hit deep into Russian lines and can penetrate tougher targets”.

A Russian source quotes a Kremlin spokesman, ‘Dmitry Peskov described it as a “mistake,” and one that was likely to have “consequences” for Ukraine. He warned that Moscow would take “countermeasures,” without specifying details.

Peskov expressed confidence that the delivery of French long-range missiles would not change the outcome of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Kiev’s Western backers that, by providing Ukraine with ever more advanced weapons systems, they are risking dragging themselves into direct military confrontation with Russia.’

Has Macron been ‘leaned on’ by state actors unknown? Guesses as to whom on a postcard. Or is he trying to impress his mates in NATO prior to the upcoming NATO meeting? Will the French take to the streets to demonstrate their displeasure at this dangerous racking up of international tensions?

Violence is not condoned but the so called ‘leaders’ of European states seem hell-bent on increasing the risk of unimaginable destructive upon the working class of those states.

The position of the SPGB (World Socialist Movement) remains the one it has always articulated, the only side we take in any conflict is that of the global working class.

The solution to this threat to the safety of us all, the only solution, remains the same; abolish capitalism and replace it with the only sane alternative -socialism.

 “The 500 richest people on the planet collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023 due in large part to a record-breaking rally in the U.S. stock market.

According to a Bloomberg analysis of its Billionaires Index the world’s richest people added an average of $14 million per day to their wealth over the past six months, “the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy rebounded from a Covid-induced slump.”

Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk saw the largest net worth boost of any global billionaire, adding nearly $97 billion in the first half of the year. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, saw his wealth grow by close to $59 billion, the second-largest gain of any billionaire.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaire-wealth-2023

The rest of the above piece berates the fact that they are not paying their fair share of taxes. The cry often is heard that ‘fair taxes’ or excess profits should be used to solve some crisis of hunger, poverty, or whatever ills are currently attracting attention.

From the piece below: ‘The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.’

Any amelioration of these blights on a civilised world is to be welcomed but it is not a lasting solution. It is, in fact, not the only solution that removes once and for all the ever growing gap between the asset owning class and the vast exploited majority.

The solution is a money-free, class-free society where goods and services are produced for free use, not for profit.

This solution is not one that will come about without the active participation of a majority who understand that the underlying features of capitalism and the economic exploitative mechanism which is inbuilt into that system.

Those who have an interest in the continuation of their power and control are not likely to easily acquiesce in the removal of those things from their grasp.

As a poet articulated, we are many, they are few. So, with whom does the power lie?

From the same site comes this:

“An analysis released Thursday shows that 722 of the world’s top corporations made combined windfall profits of $1 trillion per year in 2021 and 2022 as people across the planet struggled to meet basic needs due to the price hikes that businesses have used to pad their bottom lines.

The humanitarian groups Oxfam and ActionAid found that the companies raked in $1.09 trillion in windfall profits—defined as profits significantly above a given corporation’s average—in 2021 and $1.1 trillion last year.

That’s an 89% increase in total profits compared to the average between 2017 and 2020, according to Oxfam and ActionAid’s analysis of Forbes’ “Global 2000” ranking of the world’s largest companies—a major windfall during a period in which extreme poverty and global hunger surged. 

The two groups found that “45 energy corporations made on average $237 billion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022” while “food and beverage corporations, banks, Big Pharma, and major retailers also cashed in on the cost-of-living crisis that has seen more than a quarter of a billion people in 58 countries hit by acute food insecurity in 2022.”

The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.

“People are sick and tired of corporate greed,” Amitabh Behar, Oxfam’s interim executive director, said in a statement. “It’s obscene that corporations have raked in billions of dollars in extraordinary windfall profits while people everywhere are struggling to afford enough food or basics like medicine and heating.”

“Big business is gaslighting us all—they’re hiking prices to make monster profits, plundering people under the cover of a polycrisis,” Behar added.

“Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain.”

Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently conceded that corporate profiteering has been a major contributor to price increases that have fuelled cost-of-living crises worldwide. Last month, IMF economists estimated that “rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy.”

Oxfam and ActionAid argued that governments should “claw back gains driven by profiteering” by imposing a 50-90% windfall tax on the profits of major corporations. 

The groups said such a tax would generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue that could be used to lift people out of poverty, reduce hunger, slash energy bills, and support Global South nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

“Enough is enough,” said Arthur Larok, secretary-general of ActionAid. “Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain. Governments must tax windfall profits of corporations across all sectors—and invest that money back in helping people and deterring future profiteering. They must put the interests of their great majorities ahead of the greed of a privileged few.” “

https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporate-windfall-profits

A fable. A scorpion wishes to get to the other side of the river but is a non-swimmer. The scorpion asks a passing frog to carry him cross. The frog is highly suspicious and says how do I know you’re not going to sting me? Because if I do then I’ll drown as well says the scorpion. In mid-stream the scorpion stings the frog. The dying frog gasps Why? No choice, says the scorpion.’ It’s in my nature’.

‘Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has denounced domestic retailers for being engaged in ‘greedflation,’ claiming that some of them have been taking advantage of rampant inflation by raising prices.

In an interview with the BBC Newsnight 5 July, Bailey said certain retailers were “overcharging customers” as millions of families struggle to make ends meet.

“If you look at petrol prices, some sellers of petrol have possibly been charging too much for it,” the BoE head suggested.

According to the top economist, “moves by regulators on retail prices will help to lower inflation,” particularly in the fuel market.

The BoE believes UK inflation will fall back to the 2% target towards the end of next year.

Asked when a fall in interest rates might be seen, Bailey responded: “I can’t give you a date as to when interest rates start to come down because that really depends upon what happens over the period of time ahead, but getting inflation down is the most important thing that we have to do.”

Meanwhile, economists at JPMorgan projected this week that BoE may have to further hike interest rates to 7% from the current 5% to bring inflation under control, hitting household budgets even harder.

Earlier this year, the BoE warned that British households and businesses needed to accept that they were worse off and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher. The regulator’s chief economist, Huw Pill, said at the time that “a series of inflationary shocks” generated by the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, and crop shortages have sent prices in the UK to a 40-year high. He claimed that in response to surging bills and other rising costs, workers and businesses were attempting to transfer the impact of inflation onto each other.’