Demographic Debt

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 The Lancet magazine last month showed the global population is now set to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064 before falling by more than 9% by the end of the century.
While that may be a relief for the environment, it has serious impacts upon economic growth and public debt implications.
Deutsche Bank meanwhile notes that the “central scenario” of Britain’s official fiscal watchdog shows a 2070 government debt/GDP ratio of 418%. During the austerity drive just five years ago, that same 2070 forecast was just 87%.
“It’s almost inconceivable that we’ll reach that point, so something will likely have to give,” said Deutsche strategist Jim Reid, opining on options from cutbacks to age-related pension and healthcare costs, to higher taxes, faster inflation, central bank bond buying or even – whisper it – default. “Economic growth could bail us out but this will be tough given demographics.”
Populations in some 23 of the 195 countries in the study – including Japan, Spain, Portugal, Thailand and Ukraine – are expected to halve by the end of the century and China could see a drop of 48%. Another 33 countries are seen declining by between 25% and 50%. Both China and India should expect to see their numbers peak before 2050.
Add in ageing in countries forecast to see 25% population declines and the ratio of those over 80 to those under 15 is expected to balloon to 1.5 from just 0.16 now.
Helped by immigration, the population of the United States is expected to grow until mid-century followed by a moderate decline of less than 10% of the peak by 2100. 

Relaxing Pollution Controls

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The Environmental Protection Agency is revoking rules that require oil and gas drillers to detect and fix leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than carbon dioxide. Methane has a much more potent short-term warming effect than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating as the world is already on track to become more than 3C hotter than before industrialization. Roughly a quarter of global warming the planet has experienced in recent decades has been due to methane, said Robert Howarth, a researcher who studies methane at Cornell University. The oil and gas industry is the biggest source of the pollutant.



 Agency administrator, Andrew Wheeler, will announce the rollback from Pennsylvania, which has major oil and gas operations and is also a politically important swing state. The rule change is part of what Trump calls his “energy dominance” agenda. The methane rollbacks are part of a broad deregulatory campaign by the Trump administration, which has weakened environment and climate standards.



 In 2016 Obama enacted rules and regulations in an effort to help stall climate change during a boom in fracking – a method of extracting fossil gas by injecting water and chemicals underground. The regulations required companies to regularly check for methane leaks from valves, pipelines and tanks. Even those in the large oil companies have argued for keeping the rules, saying they are needed so the industry can limit its climate footprint as it markets gas as a smart alternative to coal – which emits far more carbon dioxide.



 Methane emitted today is largely gone in 30 years and totally gone in about 60 years, but it has a big effect on the climate in the meantime. That effect is most significant in the first months methane is released, when it is about 120 times stronger than carbon. That drops to around 86 times more powerful over 20 years and 33 times more powerful if compared with carbon over 100 years. Reductions in carbon have a delayed effect on temperatures. But reductions in methane have a more immediate impact. By 2021, methane emissions from existing oil and gas operations could total 9.8m metric tons,  a report from the Environmental Defense Fund. EPA could cut that amount by 37%, or 3.6m metric tons.



 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/trump-rolls-back-methane-climate-standards-oil-gas-industry

Pandemic? Alright for Health Insurers

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 US health insurers doubled profits in the second quarter of 2020 compared with the same time last year.



 US’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, reported $6.7bn in profits compared with $3.4bn for the same quarter last year. Anthem’s profits rose to $2.3bn from $1.1bn for the same three-month period in 2019. Humana reported last week its earnings rose to $1.8bn, compared with $940m in 2019.

The cost of providing medical care was lower in 2020. People were avoiding the doctor’s office and delaying elective surgeries such as knee replacement. Those with mild symptoms of Covid-19 were initially advised to stay home unless they needed urgent care.
But the money insurance companies collect each month from individuals, known as premiums, kept pouring in. “Private insurance companies make money by taking in premiums and not paying for care,” Dr Steffie Woolhandler, professor at Cuny Hunter College and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.
The drop in spending was a benefit for insurers, but has left already struggling independent doctor’s offices and rural hospitals vulnerable to closures and layoffs. In late July, 20% of clinicians had salaries skipped or deferred over the previous four weeks and 24% reported recent layoffs or furloughs, according to a survey.
Andy Slavitt, a health official in Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted last week. “It’s a system designed for & by insurance companies & pharma companies. Not us. Not doctors and nurses.”

Of Mice and Men

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Large areas of Germany’s farmland are being decimated by plagues of field mice leading to significant crop loss. In some parts of the country, a quarter of the arable land is affected. Farmers said field mice had been tunnelling under the fields and gnawing at the roots of crops for months, with the neighbouring regions of Thuringia, Saxony Anhalt and Lower Saxony the worst hit. In the central state of Thuringia, as much as a quarter of the crops are affected, with damage estimated at around €450 (£407) for every hectare of wheat. Farmers’ representatives have estimated that two-thirds of their income will be lost as a result and many said they have had to buy in extra animal feed.



 Across Germany, the effects of climate change, a succession of dry summers and mild winters have enabled the mice to thrive, leaving an estimated 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) stripped bare by the rodents and now browning in the current heatwave.  Both environmentalists and farmers agree  what would be ideal is a harsh winter with ground frost, followed by heavy rain, both of which have been rare in recent years.



 One option is to leave their fields unsown for winter to try to starve the field mice. Farmers could plough up the ground, but that adds to the dry conditions and can have a detrimental effect on the subsequent sowing season.



 Some farmers say the use of rodenticides could keep the population of field mice under control. Julia Klöckner, the agricultural minister, has called for an emergency reappraisal of laws governing rodenticides to cope with what she has called an emergency situation.



 Joachim Rukwied, the president of the German Farmers’ Association, welcomed Klöckner’s initiative. “The farmers must be given the possibility to protect their harvest with appropriate measures,” he said. “Right now environmental restrictions are preventing an effective control of the mouse population.”



 But environmentalists say that endangered species, such as hamsters, hares, birch mice and migratory birds, risk being killed off as a result.



 Magnus Wessel, of the Association for the Protection of the Environment and Nature, said poison was not a solution. “The side effects would be enormous,” he told German media. “Not only would it kill off the field mice, but also the highly endangered common hamster. Birds which ingest the poison would also die.”



 It would be more effective, he suggested, to overhaul Germany’s agricultural management, including developing a more diverse landscape with hedges and smaller fields, which offer a natural habitat for birds of prey and other mice predators, such as foxes. Animal welfare groups are calling instead, for a ban on fox hunting because the animals, which each consume between 3,000 and 5,000 mice a year, could help control the population. Hunters kill an estimated 400,000 foxes in Germany every year.



 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/13/plagues-of-field-mice-decimating-crops-say-german-farmers

Good cop, Bad cop

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November 3rd is election day. The approaching election finds the parties of reaction and reform in full swing.  Another presidential election in which many eligible voters will abstain. Those who will vote are in a situation of having to chose between two candidates of the ruling class. It is precisely because workers do care about who is in control that they feel there is no real choice between the Trump and Biden. Although the two differ on their approach some of the issues, neither Biden or Trump, Democrat or Republican, take a stand on the side of the worker. And how could it be otherwise. Both the candidates represent the interests of the capitalists. Both  politicians evade the real issues and instead spout demagogic rhetoric and sound-bites. The deepening pandemic calamity exposes how the “fundamentals” of the economy impact particularly on working people, particularly African Americans. The market system has been a failure.

The Democratic Party establishment preferred to risk a Republican victory by opting for Biden as their candidate and making Kamala Harris, a top cop, as his VP running mate. The Democratic Party leadership is incapable of putting forward much of a political vision which could potentially energize large segments of the American people, and instead, will continue to chase after the Republican party as both parties move further toward the right. Those progressive Democrats who might be capable of doing so, like Bernie Sanders, are doomed to remain on the margins. The corporations has no reason to fear that its freedom to exploit, to blackmail, to pollute, to roam freely in search of the greatest profit margins, will be curbed by Biden. Any differences with Trump don’t make the slightest difference to them. Both candidates express a reluctance to challenge the economic basis of Wall St greed. The electoral system remains undemocratically rigged to deny a voice to anyone outside the party duopoly. Basic reforms have yet to be achieved, such as the elimination of the electoral college or proportional representation instead of first-past-the-post.

It is not enough to refuse to vote or to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Workers must start acting and operating as a political force in the country if they are to become one. You’re the majority and there is no reason for you not to start making your power and position in society felt. The Democrats and Republicans strive at all times to cover up class contradictions, to speak in the name of the “whole people” instead of in the interests of their class. supporters of Biden try to cover up class conflict, to gloss over them as opposed to exposing them. There can be no further social progress until the working class is united and by permitting certain sections of the population to be discriminated against, the capitalists are given a powerful weapon to split and sabotage the working class movement. 

Socialism will mean real freedom. It means not having to pay for food, housing, healthcare, education and all the other necessities for life. Socialism means that the wealth of society is shared by everyone. It means once people are capable of living without stealing from their neighbors, stealing will stop. It means living in a friendly town where hatred has ended and people are no longer afraid of one another because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) party does not bow to lobbyists or big business. Our party fights only in the interests of the exploited majority. The Democrats continuously betrayed the interests of working people who refuse to jettison their loyalty because of the threat of the “greater evil,” the Republicans. The idea of building a socialist party though seen as a good idea is always put off to the indefinite future. By legitimating “lesser evil” politics the likes of Chomsky actually discourage potential recruits from leaving the Democrats and joining the socialists.

 Whatever happens this November, the WSPUS is committed to independent political action and democratic functioning so that the party will be able to run future campaigns that challenge capitalist rule without compromise or apology. Unless socialists commit to work today to prepare the chances we will succeed will be very much smaller. We do not accept that the Democratic Party is susceptible to a progressive takeover, let alone a socialist one. We do not believe it will ever satisfy the needs of labor. All evidence demonstrates that activists entering into the Democratic Party to transform it have instead been themselves transformed by it.

Feeding Hungry Children

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Thousands of children from migrant families are at risk of hunger when schools reopen in the UK unless the free meal provision is extended, according to a group of 60 organisations.  They are calling free school meals to be extended to pupils from low-income migrant families classed as having “no recourse to public funds”. The organisations are concerned that when this help is withdrawn, thousands of children will lose out on what could be their only nutritious meal of the day.



 Sam Royston, director of policy and research for the Children’s Society, said: “It is unacceptable that thousands of children, whose lives have already been turned upside down by the pandemic, could lose out on free school meals…whether a child is able to eat should not depend on their parents’ immigration status.”



 The condition of “no recourse to public funds” or NRPF is imposed on migrants who have not qualified for permanent residency in the UK. It prevents their accessing essential support, including free school meals.



 An estimated 175,643 non-EEA citizens under the age of 18 lived in families given the NRPF condition. The classification disproportionately affects black and minority ethnic groups and removes the safety net of welfare support from families likely to be already struggling financially, bearing additional costs such as fees for “leave to remain” applications.



 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/14/migrant-children-face-hunger-over-free-school-meal-restrictions

Dehumanising the Vulnerable

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 It is legal to cross the Channel via unauthorised routes to claim asylum. It is also important to remember that the number of people who seek asylum in Britain (44,800 in 2019) is far below that in EU countries such as Germany, which takes in around four times as many, and France, which takes three times more than the UK.
There is no lawful restriction against people choosing the country in which they want to seek asylum, and the people crossing the Channel are not committing any unlawful act in doing so, according to Christopher Desira, human rights and immigration solicitor at Seraphus law firm.
The 1951 Refugee Convention, a legal document which defines the term “refugee” and outlines their rights, features no obligation for refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach – so it is legitimate for someone to pass through France and then claim asylum in Britain.
It is then up to the UK to decide whether or not to grant them asylum. Under the Dublin III Regulation, the UK has lawful means to transfer those people to the country where they first claimed asylum, so long as this can be proven. But their entry into the UK is not illegal in itself.
Mr Desira criticised Mr Johnson’s comments for being “just another attempt to dehumanise the people doing this, so we can treat them in numbers and as criminals, and not understand what they’re doing and why”.
The idea that crossing the Channel on a small boat amounts to cheating their way in or “jumping the queue” is false. They have the right to claim asylum in the UK, and the routes for doing this from outside the country are few and far between – and often very difficult to access.
Currently, due to travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, there is in fact no lawful way to reach the UK on refugee or humanitarian grounds, according to immigration lawyer Colin Yeo. If there is no safe or “legal” route through which they can request protection and start a new life in Britain, it is inevitable that some will attempt to reach UK shores via unauthorised means.
“There is a tiny proportion of those refugees who reach Europe who are desperate to reach the UK specifically and because there are no safe or legal routes to reach our country, they sometimes take extreme measures,” he says.
Last year, there were around five asylum applications for every 10,000 people resident in the UK, while across EU countries there were 14 asylum applications for every 10,000 people, according to the Commons Library.
More than half of people who claim asylum in Britain obtain refugee status and provide a net contribution to the UK, indicating that they are people who want to work and contribute to society and the economy. 
The vast majority of people trying to cross to the UK do so because they have close ties with people in the country or its culture, according to Frances Timberlake, coordinator at the Refugee Women’s Centre. 
“A lot of the families here are Iraqi Kurds, and there’s a large Kurdish community in the UK, so basically everyone I work with has very close family members or friends and community links to people in the UK,” she explains. “For the majority of people we work with it’s also linked to colonialism. They come from countries that had a former British presence in them, so have quite a strong link to British culture, British media, the English language. A lot of people from Iraq for example who have worked with British forces or British oil companies. It’s very much linked to the UK’s presence abroad, and that creates a stronger sense of connection.” Frances adds: “I would use stupid to describe most of the polices the UK has proposed so far, which have totally failed. They haven’t limited the strength of smuggling or trafficking groups at all. It hasn’t limited the number of crossings being made. It’s just forced them to more dangerous routes, and it’s not saving any money. That’s what is dangerous and criminal.”
Rob McNeil, from the Migration Observatory, says most of those who are now crossing on boats would have previously been crossing on lorries via the Channel Tunnel – and that fortified security by the British and French governments was likely to have been a key factor in people switching to a different route.
“This is to some extent one of those situations where you squeeze things in one place and it creates a bubble somewhere else, in so far as the UK and French governments have spent an extremely long time working on preventing a new Jungle being created in Calais, and trying to crack down on people entering the UK in the back of lorries,” he says. “The more that becomes a physical deterrent, irrespective of the extent to which it succeeds in preventing people from moving, the more people are going to be looking for alternative approaches to doing things.”

Cambodia and the Coronavirus Recession

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Although the number of coronavirus infections in Cambodia continues to be relatively low Cambodia has taken a heavy hit from the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic with firms staring at canceled orders and people losing jobs.

Garment worker Ny Thea never expected she would be in such big trouble. Just recently she still earned about $300 (€253) per month in a clothing factory, and on top of that, she took in extra cash renting out a luxury car. 
But the coronavirus pandemic has changed everything. The factory fired Thea and 619 of her colleagues, and no one is interested in renting her vehicle anymore. “I can’t find a new job. I have no idea how I am going to pay off my debts,” she said.
The World Bank as well as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warn that poverty may significantly increase. According to the ADB, the current crisis could push an additional 1.3 million Cambodians into poverty. The national poverty line defines the poor as people who earn $0.93 or less per day.
Cambodians working in the tourism industry and the garment sector are particularly hit by the crisis.

In the garment industry, many Western clothing brands have canceled orders or are ordering far less garment products than before. And in tourism, international visitors are now avoiding Cambodia and its neighbors as COVID-19 infections continue to spread and countries implement far-reaching travel restrictions.
Sunniya Durrani-Jamal, the Cambodia director of ADB, warns that Cambodia needs to prepare for the worst. “It’s all hands on deck while we brace for impact. 2020 is going to be a very difficult year, a year of survival,” Duranni-Jamal told DW.
In July, the United Nations warned that the crisis threatens to destroy the livelihoods of 218 million informal workers in Southeast Asia.
“Without alternative income, formal social protection systems or savings to buffer these shocks, workers and their families will be pushed into poverty, reversing decades of poverty reduction,” the UN said in a recent policy brief.

Bellicose Belarus

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Thousands of people have taken to the streets of the capital of Belarus for a fifth consecutive day of protests against an election they say was rigged to extend the rule of the country’s longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko.



 Large groups of people formed long “lines of solidarity” in several areas of Minsk on Thursday to demonstrate against a crackdown on rallies that followed the vote.



 Thousands of people have rallied all across Belarus since Sunday, demanding a recount of the ballot that gave Lukashenko a landslide victory with 80 percent of the vote, and his top opposition challenger only 10 percent.



 Police moved aggressively to break up the protests with batons, stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. One protester died on Monday in Minsk, and many were injured.  One more man died in a hospital in the city of Gomel, southeastern Belarus, after being arrested by police. The Interior Ministry acknowledged that police deliberately fired on a group of protesters. About 6,000 people have been arrested this week, according to the Belarusian interior ministry. Belarus’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal probe into mass rioting – a charge that implies lengthy prison terms.



 However, Belarus has begun releasing hundreds of detained demonstrators who took to the streets following the disputed presidential election result, with the Interior Ministry vowing to release all the protesters by Friday morning after intense pressure from the European Union.



 Lukashenko derided the political opposition as “sheep” manipulated by foreign masters and promised to continue taking a tough position on protests. “The core of these so-called protesters are people with a criminal past and currently unemployed.”



 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/hundreds-form-lines-solidarity-protesters-belarus-200813091337684.html

Argentine to be China’s Pig Farm

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A plan to turn Argentina into one of China’s main pork suppliers is being sold to the public by authorities as a $3.5bn (£2.7bn) investment that will generate $2.5bn in annual pork exports and provide 9,500 new jobs. China hopes that South American pork can make up for its bruising losses after the recent spread of African swine fever (ASF) through its own hog herd, killing millions of animals. A survey of 1,500 Chinese pig farms last year showed that 55% had abandoned plans to raise pigs again because of the risk of future disease.



 Chinese and Argentinian officials are hammering out a framework to turn Argentina into a pork powerhouse with the installation of 25 hog farms of about 12,500 sows each to supply China’s growing appetite for pork.  The national environment ministry has not yet been involved in the negotiations.



 This would practically double Argentina’s current 350,000 sows and boost production from 700,000 yearly tonnes today to 900,000 tonnes in four years’ time. Each plant will be an integrated installation, from the processing of grain for animal feed to hog rearing, slaughterhouse and packaging.



 Meeting China’s target would require hundreds of thousands of additional hectares to be turned over to maize and soybean crops, likely adding to Argentina’s runaway deforestation in its fragile Gran Chaco forest, the second largest forest in South America after the Amazon, according to Farn, an environmental and natural resources foundation based in Buenos Aires.



  The proposed project does not sit well with local environmentalists. “You could almost say China is outsourcing the risk of a repetition of such outbreaks by moving production offshore,” said biologist Guillermo Folguera.  “Hog farms produce pathogens, bacteria and viruses that can pass from animals to humans,” Folguera said.



 Pigs have a unique capacity to incubate viruses that can bounce between humans, birds and pigs, swapping genes in a process called “reassortment”, which is why hogs are considered potential “mixing vessels” for deadly future pandemics by some epidemiologists.



 Argentina’s weak environmental laws are not up to the task of dealing with mighty agroindustrial corporations. “Argentina doesn’t even have a national environmental law,” said María Di Paola, an economist at Farn. “This means that each of the plants will be under not federal control, but under the weaker control of provincial authorities.” So far those authorities have failed to control the the fires that started raging in February in the vast delta of the Paraná River, decimating the wildlife in one of Argentina’s most important natural habitats.



 “Generating thousands of new jobs may be tempting, but the truth is we don’t know what the societal, environmental and health costs for neighbouring districts and the population in general will be,” said Di Paola.



 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/14/chinas-billion-dollar-pig-plan-met-with-loathing-by-argentinians

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