The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), an independent think tank, shows the growing gap between productivity and worker pay since 1979, during which productivity grew 3.5 times as much as pay.

 If wages had kept pace with productivity, then the median hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) in 2017 would have been $33.10. The actual median hourly wage in 2017 was $23.15, a gap of $9.95 per hour.

In 2017 alone, then, the average worker lost $17,385 — because wages have not kept up with productivity.

This means — in 2017 alone—the total amount of income lost to all production and nonsupervisory workers was $1.78 trillion.

 Total household debt has increased as workers take out loans to cover the wages they used to get.

Labor’s average share of GDP in the 1950s was 63.6%. In the 2010s, that share was 59.4% — a downward shift of 4.2 percent, about $1 trillion of lost labor compensation each year. 

 Corporate profits have been soaring. Companies have been paying employees an increasingly smaller share of the value their labor produces. they increased dividend payments to shareholders.

In 2017 alone, dividends paid by U.S. businesses totalled $1.5 trillion. Between 1979 and 2020, domestic corporations paid shareholders $27 trillion.

The wealth workers should have received has, arguably, instead been given to shareholders through dividends — a mechanism which functions like an upward distribution of wealth. 

Of the $1.8 trillion not paid to workers in 2017, $1.5 trillion went to shareholders instead. The richest 10% of Americans own 84% of the value of shares of stock.

For the 2017 tax year, aggregate data from the IRS shows that 83% of dividends went to filers with an adjusted gross income of more than $100,000 — roughly the top 18% of filers.

What’s more, 37% of all dividend income went to the top 0.3% of filers — those who took home more than $1 million. These individual tax filings don’t account for the dividends given to institutional investors — the primary shareholders of publicly traded companies, which include financial management companies and pension funds.

 In a Single Year, $1.78 Trillion Was Taken From the Working Class – In These Times

Almost daily, the pledges made at COP26 are being broken or bent. 

A politician linked to wide-scale deforestation in the 1990s and his Panama Papers-named associate, a Singaporean shell company, and the owner of an agricultural consultancy in Australia are among the figures behind a carbon trading deal worth an estimated $80bn in Borneo.

The Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA) ostensibly protects 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of jungle in the Malaysian state of Sabah from logging for the next 100 years.

But the deal was made in absolute secrecy and without credible due diligence, a tender process or public consultation, according to Indigenous leaders, activists and NGOs.

The NCA gives 30 percent of Sabah’s revenue from carbon credit sales – estimated to be $24bn over the life of the contract – to a company in Singapore, Hoch Standard, with no history in carbon trading.

An estimated 25,000 Indigenous people live in forest reserves in Sabah, with an undocumented number living on the fringes of reserves making up 39 different ethnic groups. Yet Indigenous leaders in the state, where about 60 percent of the population belong to native ethnic groups, say they were kept in the dark about the deal.

“The whole thing was very hush-hush,” Adrian Banie Lasimbang, a former Malaysian senator and Indigenous activist.

A whistleblower with firsthand knowledge of the deal told Al Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation.

“ Sabah could become the world leader in the monetisation of natural capital and carbon credits. But instead, we created a template other countries can use to pilfer and abuse the system.”

‘Very hush-hush’: Borneo’s $80bn carbon deal stokes controversy | Business and Economy News | Al Jazeera

PDF version SS FEBRUARY 2022

Amnesty International joins Human Rights Watch and B’tselem in describing  Israeli laws, policies and practices against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories amount to apartheid.

 811 million people – or 10 percent – of the world’s population go to bed hungry each night, 161 million more than the previous year.

Afghanistan is among the highest levels of food insecurity around the world. At least 37.7 million of its population of 40 million people – 93 percent – do not have enough food.

A record 23 million Afghans face acute hunger, with nearly 9 million a step away from famine, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Two in five children (38 percent) under the age of five face chronic malnutrition – that is inadequate nutrition over a long period of time – which has led to stunted growth. Up to 1 million children under five are at risk of dying from malnutrition.

Yemen is one of the world’s poorest countries. According to the latest figures from the WFP, nearly half of the country (14.3 million) of 30 million people do not have enough food.

Nearly half (47.5 percent) of the country’s children under the age of 5 face chronic malnutrition.

A seven-year war has left at least 4 million people displaced and thousands dead.

After more than 10 years of conflict, Syrians are facing unprecedented levels of poverty and food insecurity. Some 12.4 million Syrians, out of a population of 20 million, do not know where their next meal will come from, an increase of 4.5 million in the last year alone and the highest number ever recorded.

Nearly one in three children (27.9 percent) under the age of 5 are living with chronic malnutrition.

Over the past few weeks, bitter winter conditions have compounded the poverty of millions of displaced people in northwest Syria where the cost of living has skyrocketed over the past year.

South Sudan is suffering its highest levels of food insecurity and malnutrition since independence in 2011.

According to the WFP, more than half the population (6.6 million out of 11 million) have insufficient food. One in three children under five suffers chronic malnutrition.

The continued conflict and the worst flooding in decades have wreaked havoc on vulnerable communities.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the largest number of highly food insecure people in the world: some 43.3 million out of the population of 106 million.

According to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), 27 million people in the DRC are highly food insecure, with 857,000 children and 468,000 women likely suffering from acute malnutrition.

Somalia’s deteriorating security conditions and a crippling dry season has left upwards of 90 percent (11.4 million) of the East African country’s 12.3 million people hungry.

According to Famine Early Warning Systems, people have experienced not only a decrease in food supply and income, but also a prolonged drought, flooding in early 2020, a desert locust surge, the economic impact of COVID-19, and security issues with armed groups. 

Infographic: Hunger and food insecurity in maps and charts | Infographic News | Al Jazeera

All Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are currently online on Discord. Please contact spgb.discord@worldsocialism.org for instructions on how to join. 

Friday 4 February 7.30pm GMT

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 

The bottom 50% held only 9%.

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

 Bulgaria’s population has declined by 11.5% in the past decade.

The nation has shrunk by 844,000 people, from some 7.3 million in 2011 to 6.5 million today.

The ageing of the population is another lasting trend.

Experts attribute the decline to low birth rates, high mortality, and a steady migration flow that has seen working-age people leaving to look for better jobs and education prospects.

U.N. experts estimate that if these trends continue, Bulgaria will contract further to about 5.4 million people by 2050.

 The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says global food prices rose 28% in 2021.