Twenty new “pandemic billionaires” have been created in Asia thanks to the international response to Covid-19, while 140 million people across the continent were plunged into poverty. 

According to Oxfam’s report by the aid organisation says that by March 2021, profits from the pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and services needed for the Covid response had made 20 people new billionaires as lockdowns and economic stagnation destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of others.

In 2020, an estimated 81m jobs disappeared and loss of working hours pushed a further 22–25 million people into working poverty, according to the International Labour Organization. Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific region’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by $1.46tn (£1.06tn), enough to provide a salary of almost $10,000 (£7,300) to all those who lost a job.

From China, Hong Kong, India and Japan, the new billionaires include Li Jianquan, whose firm, Winner Medical, makes personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, and Dai Lizhong, whose company, Sansure Biotech, makes Covid-19 tests and diagnostic kits.

The total number of billionaires in the Asia-Pacific region grew by almost a third from 803 in March 2020 to 1,087 by November last year, and their collective wealth increased by three-quarters (74%), the report said.

The report said the richest 1% owned more wealth than the poorest 90% in the region. The wealth gap is set to grow. Credit Suisse forecasts that, by 2025, there will be 42,000 more people worth more than $50m in Asia-Pacific and 99,000 billionaires. The number of millionaires by 2025 is projected to be 15.3 million, a 58% increase on 2020. Both the World Bank and IMF have said that coronavirus will cause a significant increase in global economic inequality.

Mustafa Talpur, of Oxfam Asia, said: “It is outrageous and highly unacceptable that poor people in Asia [were left at] the mercy of the pandemic facing severe health risks, joblessness, hunger and pushed into poverty – erasing the gains made in decades in the fight against poverty.

“While rich and privileged men increase their fortunes and protect their health, Asia’s poorest people, women, low-skilled workers, migrants and other marginalised groups are being hit hardest,” he added.

Covid created 20 new ‘pandemic billionaires’ in Asia, says Oxfam | Global development | The Guardian

  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.1 percent of children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2020, up from 14.4 percent the year before. The poverty rate also ticked up for people aged 18 to 64, from 9.4 percent to 10.4 percent.

Each year, the federal government awards states a block grant, or lump sum, of funding, with the intention that the money is spent to help poor people meet their basic needs. States have discretion in how they can use the money.

According to recently released federal data, states are sitting on $5.2 billion in unspent funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF.

Tennessee has $790 million in federal welfare funding sitting around — the largest pool of unspent welfare dollars nationwide.

 Hawaii has $364 million idling in an account, equivalent to $2,923 per person living in poverty. 

And Oklahoma has $264 million, nearly double its annual TANF budget of $138 million.

Hoarding Welfare Funds Amid Rising Need in US – Consortium News

 New Year’s Revolution?

New Year’s resolutions are already

Withering like forgotten Christmas wreathes

Left on rarely opened doors. This world seethes

With discontents; the News being a steady

Litany of wars and prospects of wars,

Diseases, and those too poor for medicine,

Sad-eyed children too bloated or too thin

From want of food, and empty shelves in stores.

All the while, billionaires, trillionaires,

Accounting for so few, still demonstrate

There’s plenty enough, that it is not fate

But choice as to who might access the world’s wares.

Nothing’s resolved without resolution

To elect the common weal solution.

D. A.

  “The world’s poorest are bearing the brunt of climate change — poverty, migration, hunger, gender inequality, and ever more scarce resources — despite having done the least to cause it.” – CARE’s UK CEO Laurie Lee

 White person: Where are you from?

Non-white, non-Indigenous person: Melbourne.

White person, confused: No, no. I mean, where do you really come from?

It is a question that very clearly asserts its purpose: “People who look like you don’t come from here. White people come from here. So, where do you really come from?”

It isn’t always said with malicious intent.

The underlying meaning is still the same, though – you can’t be from here. White people come from here.

It was common within western literature that the terms “people” and “white people” were readily interchangeable.

But they still kept all the racialised adjectives, classifications and slurs for everyone else.

It is why generations of people were taught that when a newspaper refers to “a 23-year-old Sydney man” that man is probably white, because if they weren’t, it would have said “a 23-year-old Aboriginal man living in Sydney”.

What is racial invisibility, and how do white people benefit from it? | Luke Pearson for IndigenousX | The Guardian

 Kabul’s markets full of food, but no-one has money

Kabul’s markets full of food, but no-one has money – BBC News

 BP boss Bernard Looney said the oil and gas giant had become a “cash machine” with bumper shareholder payouts, soaring profits, booming asset valuations.

North Sea oil and gas companies are expected to report near-record cashflows of almost $20bn (£14.9bn) for the current financial year. Wholesale gas prices have soared in Europe and the UK. Gas has risen as much as tenfold to new all-time highs.

Shell, the world’s largest producer and trader of liquefied natural gas (LNG), said last week that profits would be higher than expected thanks to the elevated prices. Unlike gas that arrives via pipelines from fields in the North Sea, LNG is shipped across oceans to the highest bidder, meaning companies like Shell benefit from surging global prices.

Shell was already planning to hand investors a $7bn bonus by offering to buy shares back from them, but has now said this will happen “at pace”.

The largest North Sea explorer Harbour Energy, expected “materially higher free cashflow at current commodity prices” and announced a $200m-a-year (£147m) dividend for investors.

Rising oil prices have been good news for chemical group Ineos, which is owned by Monaco-based British multi-billionaire Jim Racliffe. Revenues increased by 87%, or €2.4bn, to €5.1bn in the three-month period ending on 30 September 2021.

Ithaca, owned by the Israeli group Delek, said rising prices meant gas revenue per barrel from its North Sea assets, which include the Alba and Alder gas fields, nearly doubled in the third quarter, from $49 last year to $97. As it boosted production to meet demand and cash in on strong prices, revenues from gas more than tripled from $59m to $180m over the three-month period.

Calls for windfall tax as North Sea oil and gas profits soar | Oil and gas companies | The Guardian

 Tax hikes and soaring bills will deliver the biggest shock to household incomes for almost half a century.

A person earning £30,000 will see their take-home pay plunge by £1,660 thanks to soaring living costs, stagnant wages and tax increases, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The effective pay cut includes paying £250 more in national insurance contributions and £150 more in income tax. Poorer households, which spend more of their incomes on essentials like energy, will be hit even harder, with hundreds of thousands expected to fall into fuel poverty. Someone earning £15,000 a year will take an £860 hit to their real income after tax.

Citizens Advice warned people were being forced to make “desperate decisions” between eating or heating their homes. “…things are set to go from bad to worse…”

George Dibb, head of the IPPR’s Centre for Economic Justice, explained, “The UK is facing a sustained cost of living crisis where incomes could be hit even harder than the financial crash of 2008. If this proves to be the case you have to look back as far as the 1970s to find a worse shock to households’ real disposable income.”

Households were already approaching the current crisis in a financially vulnerable position due to 13 years without a real increase in average earnings, said Frank van Lerven of the New Economics Foundation.

According to the NEF, some 21.4 million people are living below a socially acceptable living standard. The think tank does not expect real wages to recover to their 2008 level until the end of 2028.

Sunak’s tax hikes may deepen UK’s cost-of-living crisis, experts warn | The Independent

Over the past 20 years, as documented in the table below, U.S. and allied air forces have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries. 

That is an average of 46 strikes per day for 20 years. 

The new Airpower Summary data reveal that the United States has dropped another 3,246 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (2,068 under Trump and 1,178 under Biden) since February 2020.

 The richest 1% of households in the UK each have fortunes of at least £3.6m.

At the other end of the scale, the poorest 10% of households have just £15,400 or less, with almost half burdened with more debts than they had in assets.

The wealthiest 10% of households held 43% of all the wealth in Great Britain in the latest period; in comparison, the bottom 50% held only 9%.

Figures that show the inequality gap was widening even before the pandemic struck.

 The income inequality gap as measured by the Gini coefficient had “steadily increased to 36.3%” (A Gini coefficient of 0% represents total equality where everyone has the same and 100% represents total inequality, where one person owns all the wealth.)

“The gap between the richest in society and the rest of the population has widened over the 10-year period,” the ONS said.

There are an estimated 27.8m households in the UK and there are just 263,000 in the top 1%.

The median average household wealth across the UK was £302,500, only a marginal increase on previous years.

Richest 1% of UK households are worth at least £3.6m each | Money | The Guardian