The blog may hold its own deep differences with Bernie Sanders but we do acknowledge his useful role in that he does occasionally brings to the US public some uncomfortable home truths.

He did so in a recent Senate speech. 

“While the vast majority of people in our country are hurting emotionally, they’re hurting economically, these are not difficult times for everybody,” he explained. “If you are a billionaire in this country or a CEO of a large corporation… these times have not been bad; they have, in fact, have been very, very good.”

As people nationwide worry about “soaring” gas prices, fossil fuel giants “are making huge profits,” Sanders said, also noting it was the same in the food industry.

The senator pointed out that chief executives now make about 350 times more than the average U.S. worker.

“The top one per cent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 per cent. Rather amazingly, two of the wealthiest people in America now own more wealth than the bottom 42 per cent,” the Senate Budget Committee chair said.

“When we speak about oligarchy, we should all understand that we’re not just talking about massive levels of income and wealth inequality,” Sanders emphasized. “We should all understand that never before in American history have so few owned so much.”

“And this issue—the issue of the incredible concentration of ownership in our country—is almost never talked about here in Congress or in the corporate media,” he continued, “and that has a lot to do with the corrupt political system that we operate under, where many members of Congress receive huge campaign contributions from these very same people.”

Sanders took aim at three Wall Street firms, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. 

They collectively manage over $21 trillion in assets, or more than the gross domestic product of the United States, the world’s largest economy.

These three firms, Sanders explained, “are major shareholders in more than 96% of S&P 500 companies.” They “are the largest shareholders in some of the biggest banks in America” and “are among the top owners of the four major airlines.” BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street also “own an average of 20% of the major drug companies,” 

He also said that a handful of firms “are now the major owners of rental housing” and ” control half of the newspapers” in the country.

He compared the conditions of ordinary American workers.

“The reality is that tens of millions of working-class people, lower-income people, in the wealthiest country on Earth, are suffering today under incredible economic hardship, desperately trying day to day to survive.”

While “half of the people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck and tens of millions of our people are an accident, a divorce, an illness, or a layoff away from economic devastation,” Sanders noted, “over 80 million Americas are uninsured or under-insured and tens of thousands die each and every year because they don’t get to a doctor when they should.”

“Many public schools throughout our country lack the resources to adequately educate our young people, or pay their teachers the wages those teachers deserve; at the same time we are the most heavily incarcerated nation on Earth,” he added. “Meanwhile, 45 million Americans who did go to college… are now drowning in $1.8 trillion in student debt.”

“[Americans]work long hours for low wages. They worry about their kids. They can’t afford healthcare. They see their jobs going to other countries.”

Polls show they are “giving up on democracy.” Faced with such conditions, Sanders said, voters are frustrated with elected officials and wondering: “Do they live in the real world? Do they understand what is going on in our lives or are they too busy going out raising campaign contributions from the rich and the powerful?”

“Maybe the time is approaching that we should offer a unanimous resolution congratulating the billionaire class for their enormous success in moving this country into the oligarchic form of society that they have long desired,” Sanders said.

British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis.

As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses.

London’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) bankers earned total fees of $3.5bn (£2.6bn) in 2021.

London’s big four banks – HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest – are expected to pay out bonuses totalling more than £4bn when they report their annual results in the next fortnight. 

Combined, the banks’ annual profits are expected to exceed £34bn – the most since 2007 in the boom before the financial crisis. 

The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second-highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.

The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.

Figures released on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that average pay in the public sector rose by 2.6% between October and December 2021, while those working in business and finance saw their pay grow by 8.1% due to “an increase in bonus payments”.

Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, which represents 600,000 mostly frontline workers, said: “These sky-high banker bonuses are a kick in the teeth for everyone suffering with the cost of living crisis. I hope Andrew Bailey tells his banking mates to show the same ‘restraint’ he so readily demands from underpaid workers in the rest of the economy. Essential workers, like our nation’s carers, often earn pennies above the minimum wage,” Smith said. “Mr Bailey should step out of his banking bubble and shadow these workers to see the people who actually deserve a proper pay rise.”

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of trade union body the TUC, said the huge increase in bankers’ pay was “an insult to working families across Britain”.

“While millions struggle with the cost of living, executive bankers are set to receive yet another cash windfall,” she said. “At a time when workers are being told not to ask for a decent pay rise, no such restraint is being asked of the City. We should be holding down bonuses, not ordinary people’s wages.”

Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre, which campaigns for executive pay restraint, said: “Decades of economic deference to the super rich have brought us to a point where bankers are raking in historic pay awards while the rest of the country is crippled by rising prices and wage stagnation…”

‘We’ve had a run on champagne:’ Biggest UK banker bonuses since financial crash | Executive pay and bonuses | The Guardian

 Derived from the English expression that refers to those born into privilege “with a silver spoon in their mouth”, a geumsujeo , a “gold spoon” is someone from the top 1% of high-income households in South Korea. It’s often used to refer to the children of super-rich families. 

The term “dirt spoons” represents the other end of the spectrum.

 Germany was the first country in the world to experience a surplus of deaths. Every year since 1972, fewer people were born there than died. Before 1990, this also started happening in Hungary (1982) and the Czech Republic (1986). 

By the middle of the current century, however, all countries in Europe, with the exception of Norway and Sweden, are expected to see natural population growth turn negative. Populous countries such as Brazil and China are also projected to experience this change before 2050.

Migration also plays a major role in the equation and can prop up population growth if a country is able to attract (and willing to admit) enough migrants. Germany, despite its long history of net negative births, benefits from an immigration surplus, meaning that more people immigrate to the country than emigrate in most years, with the effect that its population continues to grow slightly. 

Germany wants to attract 400,000 qualified workers from abroad each year to tackle both a demographic imbalance and labour shortages in key sectors.

After decades of low birth rates and uneven migration, a shrinking labour force also poses a demographic time bomb for Germany’s public pension system, in which fewer employees are burdened with the task of financing the pensions of a growing mass of retirees who are enjoying longer life expectancy.

 “The shortage of skilled workers has become so serious by now that it is dramatically slowing down our economy,” Christian Duerr, parliamentary leader of the co-governing Free Democrats (FDP), told business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. “We can only get the problem of an ageing workforce under control with a modern immigration policy… We have to reach the mark of 400,000 skilled workers from abroad as quickly as possible.” 

The German Economic Institute estimates that the labour force will shrink by more than 300,000 people this year as there are more older workers retiring than younger ones entering the labour market. This gap is expected to widen to more than 650,000 in 2029, leaving an accumulated shortage of people of working age in 2030 of roughly 5 million. 

Germany wants to attract 400,000 skilled workers from abroad each year (yahoo.com)

The End Of Natural Population Growth? | ZeroHedge

 After scraping by on just $31.5 million a year in both 2019 and 2020, JPMorgan’s board has decided that CEO Jamie Dimon deserves a pay rise in 2021

His 10% pay-rise notably outweighs inflation though as the package includes $28 million of restricted stock tied to performance, an annual base salary of $1.5 million and a $5 million cash bonus – pushing his total compensation up 10%  to $34.5 million.

Jamie Dimon Gets Pay-Rise To $34.5 Million In 2021, Goldman Banker Bonuses Surge 40-50% | ZeroHedge

 The Asia-Pacific region comprises 58 countries and territories. The Asia-Pacific region is home to approximately 4.5 billion people.

 The wealthiest 5% of the population controlling close to 70% of total wealth in the region,” reports the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Approximately half of all urban dwellers in South Asia live in slums. In large countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, 30 to 60% of the urban population lives in slums

Sharp inequalities continue to be persistent in the region, with nearly 2 in 4 people still unable to afford a healthy diet. 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets.

About 350.6 million people in the Asia and Pacific region are estimated to have been undernourished in 2019, about 51% of the world’s total of undernourished people.

An estimated 74.5 million children under five years of age were stunted and a total of 31.5 million were wasted in the Asia and Pacific region. The majority of these children in the region live in Southern Asia with 55.9 million stunted and 25.2 million wasted children.”

Estimates predict a 14.3% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children under 5 years of age, equal to an additional 6.7 million children, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asia-Pacific: Just 5% of the Region’s Population Owns 70% of Its Total Wealth | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 A cladding system similar to the one used at Grenfell Tower spectacularly failed safety tests in 2001, the public inquiry into the disaster has heard.

 The deadly impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the most deprived areas in England and Wales has been even more pronounced than first thought, according to research that reveals the north-west lost three times more years of life than the south-west.

Deaths have been unevenly distributed socioeconomically and geographically ever since the crisis began. However, until now, the full scale of inequalities has been underestimated, a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine suggests.

In the new study, led by the University of Manchester, researchers measured years of life lost attributable to the pandemic – directly or indirectly, as well as excess deaths. Years of life lost is a strong measure of premature mortality because it takes into account both the number of deaths and the age at which they occur.

The findings of the new analysis are striking, researchers say, and suggest the true toll of the pandemic has been even deadlier in poorer areas than initially thought. “The impact of the pandemic, when quantified using years of life lost, was higher than previously thought on the most deprived areas of England and Wales, widening pre-existing health inequalities,” said Evangelos Kontopantelis, who led the research. 

Between March and December 2020, 1,645 years of life were lost per 100,000 of the population in the most deprived areas of England and Wales. In the most affluent areas, 916 years of life were lost per 100,000 people. The figures mean that almost twice as many years of life were lost in the very poorest areas of the country compared with the wealthiest.

Stark inequalities were also found when examining excess deaths, especially in younger age groups, the researchers said. There were 11 times as many excess deaths in deprived areas compared with the most affluent areas in 15- to 44-year-olds, three times as many in 45- to 64-year-olds, and almost twice as many in 65- to 74-year-olds. Excess deaths were 40% higher in 75- to 84-year-olds living in the most deprived areas compared with the least.

Clare Bambra, a professor of public health at the University of Newcastle, explained: “These findings reiterate that the pandemic has been very unequal – people in our most deprived communities have suffered most.”

Covid impact in poorer areas of England and Wales ‘worse than first thought’ | Coronavirus | The Guardian

 A report from the International Labour Organization says China continues to carry out discriminatory work policies, such as forced labour, impossible production expectations and long working hours, against the Uighurs in its northwest province of Xinjiang.

It stressed that China has violated various articles of the Employment Policy Convention of 1964, which Beijing ratified in 1997, including the right to freely choose employment.

The 870-page report, titled Application of International Labour Standards, was an assessment by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations.

It looks at different countries progress from Congo to Afghanistan in relation to ratifying labour conventions and details abuses in areas like child labour, equality of opportunity, maternity protection, vocational training and more.

China continues to engage in widespread and systematic “programmes” involving the extensive use of forced labour of the Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

Some 13 million members of the ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang are targeted based on their ethnicity and religion, adding that Beijing’s justified its methods in a context of “poverty alleviation”, “vocational training”, “reeducation through labour” and “de-extremification”.

A key feature of China’s programme is the use of forced labour in or around internment or “re-education” camps housing some 1.8 million Uighur and other Turkic or Muslim peoples in the region. The abuses take place in or around prisons and workplaces across Xinjiang and other parts of the country. Life in “re-education centres” or camps is characterised by extraordinary hardship, lack of freedom of movement, and physical and psychological torture. It also alleges prison labour in cotton harvesting and the manufacture of clothing and footwear.

Outside Xinjiang, Uighur workers live and work in segregation, are required to attend Mandarin classes and are prevented from practising their culture or religion.

China continues its labour abuse practices against Uighurs: UN | Uighur News | Al Jazeera

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president has banned strikes in the health and electricity sectors as trade union action that has crippled state-run hospitals entered its sixth day.

The President on Saturday invoked a 1979 law prohibiting stoppages in the two sectors, declaring all related work “essential public services”.  The tough regulations allow courts to hand down five-year jail terms and confiscate the assets of those refusing work. Professionals like doctors can find their names struck off registers. There are a lot of strict punitive measures for those convicted under the Essential Services Act.

Sri Lanka is in the grip of a foreign exchange crisis that has crippled the economy, and the unions are demanding better promotional prospects, restructuring of their pay scales and higher allowances.

The government has refused, saying the current economic situation does not allow it to increase the salaries budget. Thousands of health workers have been taking part in the strike action, leaving only emergency services functioning at state hospitals and many routine services put off.

Electricity sector workers are not on strike, but they too have threatened trade union action if the government goes ahead with plans to sell a thermal power plant to a US company.

Sri Lanka bans strikes by healthcare workers amid hospital crisis | Health News | Al Jazeera