Covid-19 and drug overdoses led to a second straight year of worsening life expectancy in the US – its lowest in 25 years, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control.

Merry Christmas?

It is Christmas days at the food bank,

Where patient queues wait in orderly lines,

While prices rise as the temperature declines.

Unheated homes become cheerless and dank

For those who’re working at two or three jobs

Yet still can’t earn enough for a whole week.

But if they demand more they’re damned for their cheek

Or branded as greedy, unruly mobs.

Remember how nurses were applauded

For the way they bore the pandemic brunt;

Heroes then, villains now because they shouldn’t

Ask for what capital says can’t be afforded.

There’s credit, which means debt and New Year bills,

All from the ringing of the Christmas tills.

D. A.  

 Speaker: Adam Buick

Friday 5th August 2022

 More than half of all adults in Great Britain are buying less food and drink, with surging costs leaving the most vulnerable worst off.

People in the most deprived areas of England are the most likely to have cut back, with 61% saying they were buying less food when shopping last month, compared with 44% in the least deprived areas and 51% across Great Britain.

Almost a quarter of those questioned in the Food Standards Agency’s consumer insight tracker said they had skipped or reduced the size of a meal because they could not afford to buy supplies, as food and non-alcoholic drink prices rose by 16.5% in the year to November 2022, the highest increase since September 1977, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Staple foods such as bread and cereals, have seen the largest price increases, rising by 1.9% in the past month alone, contributing to an annual increase of 16.6%. Campaigners and analysts suggest that supermarkets have been raising prices in their cut-price ranges more quickly than more luxury items, piling pressure on those needing to save money.

That meant inflation for low-income households, where staple foods make up a bigger share of the budget, stood at 10.5%, while the figure for high-income households was 9.1%.

One study published this week, which tracked the cost of almost 19,000 items in UK supermarkets on a daily basis from July to December, found that items originally below 75p accelerated at the fastest rate – 16%. In contrast, items priced from £1.50 to £5 in July went up by just under 4%, and those above £5 fell by nearly 4%.’

 Price tracking agency Skuuudle said the differences made “difficult reading for those on low incomes who are seeing the cost of many value items increase but who may not be able to benefit at all from the reduction in price of more expensive items. This change could well be driven by a reduced demand for more expensive items as more people turn to value products during the cost of living crisis.”

Rising cost of basic food items leaving poorest people worst off, UK study finds | Inflation | The Guardian

Examining the latest annual earnings data from the Social Security Administration, Elise Gould and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that “the top 1% now amasses a record share of total earnings, while the bottom 90% share of earnings has hit a historic low…Wages for the top 1% grew more than seven times as fast as wages for the bottom 90% between 1979 and 2021,”

Earnings inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the past four decades and continues to accelerate, with the top 0.1% seeing wage growth of 465% between 1979 and 2021 while the bottom 90% experienced just 29% growth during that same period.

The EPI experts noted that “the share of earnings at the very top—the top 0.1% of wage earners—is driving the rising earnings share of the top 1%.”

“The share of the top 0.1% increased from 1.6% of total earnings in 1979 to a whopping 5.9% of total earnings in 2021, roughly 3.7 times as much,” Gould and Kandra wrote. “Of the 7.3 percentage point rise in the share claimed by the top 1%, 4.3 percentage points (roughly 60%) can be explained by the rise of the top 0.1% share.”

“The bottom 90% of wage earners experienced wage growth that lagged far behind average growth for much of the last 40-plus years,” Gould and Kandra observed. “In 2021, average annual earnings of the bottom 90% were $36,571, while the top 5% earned, on average, $335,891, more than nine times as much as the bottom 90%.”

In 2020 and 2021, the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the “only group to experience real wage gains… was the top 1% of the earnings distribution.”

“While the bottom 90% experienced losses of 0.2%, those in the 90th-95th percentiles experienced larger losses of 2.0%,” EPI found. “Between 2020 and 2021, earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% rose 9.4% and 18.5%, respectively.”

“With the possible exception of excess unemployment, declining union membership plays the single most significant role in slow and unequal wage growth,” the pair wrote. “This erosion was not driven by workers’ declining interest in unions, but rather by concerted employer opposition, along with state and federal policy that has made it nearly impossible for workers to form unions in the face of unwilling employers.”

 A devastating new report has revealed the full extent of the crisis in the Yanomami territory caused by a massive invasion of illegal goldminers:

– Yanomami children are dying from malnutrition at a rate 191 times greater than Brazil’s average.

– Deaths of Yanomami children under five from preventable diseases are 9 times the national average.

Other data published recently emphasize the scale of the emergency afflicting the Yanomami:

– A study by UNICEF and Fiocruz reveals that eight out of ten Yanomami children under the age of five in the regions of Auaris and Maturacá have chronic malnutrition.

New photos released by the Yanomami health organization Urihi show desperately malnourished children and adults in villages of the Surucucus region. Just two weeks ago, goldminers attacked and destroyed a health clinic serving several Yanomami communities – it had already been abandoned by health workers, who feared an attack.

Survival International’s Director of Research and Advocacy Fiona Watson, who has worked with the Yanomami for more than thirty years, said today: “It’s impossible to overstate just how unprecedented and appalling the situation in the Yanomami territory is now.

“The Yanomami rarely suffer from malnutrition in normal circumstances. Their forests are bountiful; they are experts at growing, gathering and hunting everything they need, and they enjoy excellent health.

“This is a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami’s lands. Their rivers and fish are now polluted with toxic levels of mercury, criminal gangs control access to many of the communities, the Yanomami are being attacked, raped and killed, and their children are literally starving to death…”

Junior Hekurari Yanomami, President of the Yanomami Health District, says this is a “humanitarian crisis” and that the Yanomami “are weeping [for their dead] every day and every night. They have been mourning for months…. There are no medicines and no permanent health care.”

Shocking Health Crisis for Brazil’s Yanomami | Dissident Voice

 A record number of brownfield sites in England that have been identified for redevelopment and could provide 1.2m homes are lying dormant.

The amount of land available covered 27,342 hectares (67,563 acres) in 2022, 6% more than in 2021. It has the capacity to provide 1.2m homes at a time of nationwide housing crisis.

Brownfield sites with room for 1.2m homes unused in England, report says | Housing | The Guardian

 By mid-April, India is forecast to surpass China as the world’s most populous country.

  India’s fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades – from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today.

  1.9m UK households failed to make at least one mortgage, rent, loan, credit card or other bill payment over the last month.

With the UK heading into recession, mortgages and rent costs rising and the energy price guarantee becoming less generous from April, consumers will only face further financial pressures in 2023 leading to more defaults, it warned.

About 4m households are likely to face higher mortgage payments in 2023, with the average monthly mortgage payment rising to £1,000 (up from £750), the equivalent of about 17% of pre-tax income.

Earlier this month the Trades Union Congress said 2022 has seen the sharpest fall in real wages since 1977 and the second worst on record since 1945. Analysis of official statistics found that real wages fell by an average of £76 a month in 2022 as a result of pay not keeping pace with inflation.

Nearly 2m UK households behind on bill payments as Christmas approaches | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

The number of UK billionaires has increased by a fifth since the onset of the Covid pandemic. 

 The number of UK billionaires increased from 147 in 2020 to 177 this year, with the median billionaire now holding about £2bn.

“This sudden explosion in extreme wealth was in large part due to measures aimed at lessening the impact of Covid-19 on the economy, as central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets, leading to a stock market boom which effectively lined the pockets of shareholders…” Jo Wittams, co-executive director of the Equality Trust, said. “…Every year we are invited to celebrate the very richest individuals and families in the UK, while food bank usage continues to increase, 3.9 million children are living in poverty and 6.7m households struggle to heat their homes. That these are two sides of the same coin is very rarely mentioned.”

Call for wealth tax as UK billionaire numbers up by 20% since pandemic | The super-rich | The Guardian