Jeff Bezos at the top of the pyramid with $180 billion

The minimum net worth of the top 1% is roughly $11.1 million.A person would need to earn an average of $758,434 per year in order to join the top 1%. That’s a far cry from the annual income of $38,923 reported by the average taxpayer (the bottom 90%). The number of billionaires globally is around 2,755, and their numbers have been growing dramatically.Altogether, they are worth $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion on the previous year.In the United States continues to widen, with about 1.4 million people falling into the top 1%. Those who want to become part of the top 0.01% would need to make an average of $2,888,192 annually.North America’s billionaires had more wealth at $3.5 trillion compared to $2.5 trillion of Europe’s.China had 342 billionaires with a combined wealth of $1.2 trillionThe top 1% earned nearly 21% of the total adjusted gross income in the U.S. ‘Wages’ for the top 1% from 1979 to 2019 rose over 160%—compared to 26% for those in the bottom 90%.The widening gaps in wealth and income stem from a variety of factors, including the wealthiest’s increasing dominance of public and private equity, and tax breaks.In 1962, the wealthiest 1% had net worths equal to approximately 125 times that of the average American household. Their net worths were shown to be approximately 225 times the net worth of the average household in 2009. The gap between the richest and the poorest more than doubled between 1982 and 2016.The minimum net worth of the top 1% is roughly $11.1 million. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million. Between 1970 and 2000; median income increased by 41% during this time at an annual average rate of 1.2%. From 2000 to 2018, the rate was 0.3%.The top 1%  own more than 50% of the equity in both private and public companies. And they’ve also benefited from surges in the stock market. These gains help them reinvest their money back into exclusive investments like hedge funds and private equity ventures.The growing disparity can be traced to tax breaks on income, gift, and estate taxes, as well as the decline of labor unions in America. Although the middle class also benefited somewhat from the reduction in taxes, it allowed the wealthy to retain a much greater portion of their assets and pass them on to their heirs.In the U.S., the share of the nation’s wealth held by the top 1% increased from 23% to nearly 32% from 1989 to 2018.

Only a third of children under two in many developing countries are fed what they need for healthy growth and no progress has been made on improving their nutrition over the past decade.

According to the report, half of the children aged from six to 23 months across a range of developing countries were not fed the minimum number of daily meals and even fewer had a diverse diet that met minimum requirements.

As a result of poor diets, children can fall behind in school, become more vulnerable to illness and suffer the effects of malnutrition, including stunting and wasting, as well as becoming overweight or obese. 

Unicef estimates more than 11 million children under two are vulnerable to wasting globally.

Nutrition was worst for children in rural or poorer families, according to the study, and varied by region. 

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the diets of 62% of children aged between six and 23 months met the minimum diversity requirements compared with less than a quarter in Africa and only 19% in South Asia.

The report said that many families now bought their food rather than producing it themselves, even in rural areas, which made them more dependent on food systems.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last week that the food summit was taking place at a key time, after five years of the number of those affected by hunger growing globally to about 811 million people, after a period in which it declined.

“Many of the current agri-food practices are also exacting a heavy toll on our planet. Our agri-food systems are not functioning properly,” said the FAO’s director-general, Qu Dongyu. He said the key was transforming the system that delivers food, from “tillage to table”.

Most infants in 91 countries are malnourished, warns Unicef | Hunger | The Guardian

 At the General Assembly of the United Nations Biden concluded his speech by boldly declaring that “I stand here today — for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war.”

 He either has forgotten or ignores US combat troops in Iraq, Syria, and Africa.

2,500 in Iraq, 900 in Syria and an undisclosed number of special forces in various African countries. A recent air attack was carried out in Somalia in July. 

Then there are  2,976 United States military personnel in Jordan, 2,742 in Saudi Arabia, and 83 in Lebanon for the purposes of counterterrorism. 

Biden Said the US Is ‘Not at War’ Anymore (businessinsider.com)

  100 million Covid-19 vaccines stockpiled by rich nations and set to expire by the end of the year.

The European Union holds 41% and the United States 32%.

“Rich countries like the U.K. are hoarding vaccines that are desperately needed in low- and middle-income countries. We should immediately hand doses over to Global South nations. But that alone will not be enough,” Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said.

100 Million Doses of COVID Vaccines Hoarded by Rich Nations Are Set to Expire (truthout.org)

 “About half the world does not have a healthy diet. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, roughly 1 billion live in extreme hunger. Another 2 billion live with one or more micronutrient deficiencies, anaemia, vitamin deficiencies or omega-three fatty acid deficiencies, which are absolutely debilitating for health. Another billion people are obese,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

 US Border Patrol guards whipped Haitians who were trying to bring food to their encampment. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas praised “the heroic work of the United States Border Patrol” 

This is happening under a president who claims humanitarian credentials. 

Democratic Party left-winger, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, commented “It doesn’t matter if a Democrat or Republican is president, our immigration system is designed for cruelty towards and dehumanization of immigrants. Immigration should not be a crime, and its criminalization is a relatively recent invention. This is a stain on our country.”

Her colleague said, Ilhan Omar “These are human rights abuses, plain and simple. Cruel, inhumane, and a violation of domestic and international law. This needs a course correction and the issuance of a clear directive on how to humanely process asylum-seekers at our border.”

The forced deportations of Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers have begun under the fallacious authority of Title 42. 12,000 of whom are expected to be deported from Texas in the coming weeks. Title 42 is inhumane, not based on science, and a violation of the US’s own immigration laws 

“I am asking for a humanitarian moratorium,” Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, the head of Haiti’s national migration office. Haiti is expecting to accept six flights per day carrying deported migrants.

 The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, from a wealthy business family, first emerged in politics as a popular mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He is described by observers as a millennial populist who uses social media to communicate with the public, often announcing his decisions via Twitter. Bukele won a landslide victory in February 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate riding the wave of voter frustration and disappointment with the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), in power from 1989 to 2009, and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which governed from 2009 to 2019. His party then swept the legislative elections in May 2021.

The Salvadoran president is apparently following, virtually letter by letter, the manual used by other Latin American populist presidents with an authoritarian bent, whether on the right or the left, who, by means of rulings handed down by judges under their control, have overturned laws and perpetuated themselves in power.

“If the people grant power, and the people demand these changes, it would be no less than a betrayal not to make them,” the president said in his speech before civilian and military leaders.

The president now controls the three branches of government, with no checks against his style of government where everything revolves around him, a millennial who usually wears a backwards baseball cap and is intolerant of criticism.

The removal of the five judges in the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber allowed the president to appoint like-minded judges to the constitutional chamber, whose first move was to strike down the legal obstacle to consecutive presidential reelection. That opened the door for the president to run again at the end of his current five-year term, in 2024, which was prohibited by the constitution until just two weeks ago. The constitutional chamber ruled that the country’s president can serve two consecutive terms in office, whereas according to a 2014 ruling by the same court a president could only run for office again after two terms served by other leaders, based on an interpretation of article 152 of the constitution.

But the new constitutional court judges named by the legislature on May 1 reinterpreted this controversial and confusing article of the constitution and ruled on Sept. 3 that presidents can stand for a consecutive term if they step down six months before the election. The legal ruling, which drew fire from the opposition and global rights watchdogs, thus makes it possible for Bukele to seek a second term in 2024.

He also controls the Attorney General’s Office, after the governing party’s legislative majority removed then Attorney General Raúl Melara on May 1, replacing him with the pro-Bukele Rodolfo Delgado.

In addition to the removal of the constitutional court judges and the attorney general, the legislature passed a decree on Aug. 31 that forced some 200 judges to retire. The government claims it is purging corrupt judges, who do exist. However, the process has not been based on investigations but on an across-the-board decision to make retirement mandatory for all judges over the age of 60 or who have worked for 30 years. Some have interpreted the move as a purge within the judicial system in order to later fill the vacuum with judges aligned with Bukelismo.

On Sept. 15, thousands of people marched through the streets of the Salvadoran capital to protest the president’s increasing authoritarianism, in the most massive demonstration against Bukele since he came to power.

“Apparently we are in democracy, but the president’s actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state’s institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population,” lawyer Loyda Robles, of the Foundation for Studies for the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS. She added that there were warning signs that El Salvador could be heading towards an even more authoritarian, dictatorial, Nicaragua-style regime.

Analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez,  a former guerrilla commander now close to the president told IPS that the struggle between Bukele and his opponents is rooted in a silent struggle between two economic groups: the traditional oligarchy that has pulled the strings of the country’s politics, and new small, medium and even large businesspeople aligned with the president. Gutiérrez said the opposition is demanding independence of powers that has actually never existed in the country, since the oligarchy always put in place officials who would maintain the status quo. That “democracy” touted by the oligarchy, with its fallacies and abuses, is being taken up by another political project, that of Bukele, who stressed that the extent of the transformations he has planned “is yet to be seen.”

 Lawyer Tahnya Pastor remarked to IPS that when all the warning signs are analysed, “we can conclude that we are heading towards the ultimate concentration of power, and history has shown that no concentration of power is good.”

But like Gutiérrez, Pastor criticised the opposition because in the past they have also manipulated, for their own political interests, the same institutions over which they are now crying foul.

“The constitution has indeed been reformed in the past depending on the makeup of the constitutional court, and the jurisprudence has responded to partisan political interests,” she said.

Bukele Speeds Up Moves Towards Authoritarianism in El Salvador | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said the birthrate was almost half what it was at its postwar peak in the 1960s, and the country’s ageing population could lead to “long-term economic stagnation”. 

The birthrate in England and Wales peaked in 1964 when the number of children per woman averaged 2.93. Last year it was 1.58, well below the 2.1 replacement level needed to keep the population rate stable, and in Scotland it was even lower at 1.29.

There are a little under three over-65s for every 10 workers, but by the middle of the next decade that ratio will rise to 3.5, and by the 2060s the number will be closing in on four. By 2050 a quarter of Britons will be over 65, up from a fifth today.

The report explains, “This combination of a lower share of the population in work and a higher share in need of economic support clearly has a negative effect on the productive capacity of the economy.”

Dr Aveek Bhattacharya, the chief economist at the SMF and one of the report’s authors, said: “The question of whether the government should intervene to try to increase the birthrate is clearly a sensitive topic that must be delicately handled. However, given the alarming fall in fertility rates, and the risks that population ageing poses to our social and economic wellbeing, it is a discussion we should not duck.”

“Pronatalism” is the policy or practice of encouraging the bearing of children, especially through government support of a higher birthrate.

One helpful measure might be better childcare provision. The thinktank said typical British working parents spend 22% of their income on full-time childcare, more than double the average for western economies.

The report says 28% of countries worldwide specifically adopt pronatalist policies to drive up the birthrate. In some countries these can take the form of direct payments to parents, such as in France, where there is a “birth grant” worth €950 (£810).

British ‘baby shortage’ could lead to economic decline, says thinktank | Childcare | The Guardian

And the right-wingers say we will be over-crowded if we permit in more immigrants which is the other demographic policy that can be pursued. 

 Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Anti-Slavery International warns.

The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of people already living in poverty and making them more vulnerable to slavery.

Researchers found that drought in northern Ghana had led young men and women to migrate to major cities. Many women begin working as porters and are at risk of trafficking, sexual exploitation and debt bondage – a form of modern slavery in which workers are trapped in work and exploited to pay off a huge debt.

On the border between India and Bangladesh, severe cyclones have caused flooding in the delta, reducing the land available for farming. With countries in the region tightening immigration restrictions, researchers found that smugglers and traffickers operating in the disaster-prone region were targeting widows and men desperate to cross the border to India to find employment and income. Trafficking victims were often forced into hard labour and prostitution, with some working in sweatshops along the border.

Fran Witt, a climate change and modern slavery adviser at Anti-Slavery International, said: “Our research shows the domino effect of climate change on millions of people’s lives. Extreme weather events contribute to environmental destruction, forcing people to leave their homes and leaving them vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and slavery.”

Ritu Bharadwaj, a researcher for the IIED, said: “The world cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking that’s being fuelled by climate change. Addressing these issues needs to be part and parcel of global plans to tackle climate change.”

Climate crisis leaving ‘millions at risk of trafficking and slavery’ | Global development | The Guardian

 New analysis from the Legatum Institute that the extra £20 Universal Credit supplement protected some 840,000 people from poverty in the second quarter of this year. The research from the think tank includes 290,000 children.

Some 320,000 of the people in the group were in a full-time working family before the pandemic, with a further 300,000 in a family working a mixture of full-time and part-time.

Universal credit cut will push 800,000 people into poverty, Boris Johnson warned | Universal credit | The Guardian