Tougher at the bottom

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Researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the most vulnerable groups in society have been hit hardest financially by Covid-19.



 Low-paid workers are three times more likely than their well-off counterparts to have seen their hours halved during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study.




People who are young, low-paid, black, in self-employment, those who have low education levels or live in large families have been disproportionately affected by the recession, according to the analysis.
Long-term scars to people’s prospects may be even deeper than in past recessions, the researchers wrote.
They calculate that scarring will disproportionately impact groups that are already relatively disadvantaged. For employees who were earning less than £151 per week in February, the probability of being furloughed or having their hours cut by at least half almost three times higher than for those earning more than £600 per week (53.7 per cent compared to 18 per cent).
Black workers have also suffered relatively more – around 42 per cent were estimated to have been furloughed in June compared to 27.6 per cent of the total workforce.
Similarly, younger workers have seen their hours and earnings cut. Those aged 18-24 who were still employed in June were almost 18 per cent more likely than those aged 35-54 to have had their hours cut by at least half or to have been furloughed.
Individuals with only GCSE qualifications or equivalent are 17.1 per cent more likely to have been furloughed or lost at least half of working hours compared with those with a degree.
Professor Bell said: “Some individuals will be affected harder than others. We find those most likely to become unemployed are the young, those with a lower level of qualifications, black workers and those on low pay.”

Real Suffering in the UK

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Poverty and destitution. That’s the reality for thousands of migrants in the UK since the pandemic started.
As lockdown hit, migrants across the nation who often work in casual and low-paid roles saw their jobs disappear or incomes slashed. But unlike the rest of the country, they have no welfare safety net to fall back on, because a controversial immigration policy known as No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) means they cannot access benefits.
There are an estimated 1.4 million migrants to the UK from outside the EU who have visas subject to this rule, according to the Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford.
These migrants cannot receive most government-funded benefits, including child benefit, child tax credits, council tax benefit and disability living allowance or even free school dinners for their children. As a last resort, many migrants are having to turn to charities for help.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) pointed out that,  “…we’ve seen an increase in people becoming street homeless, acutely hungry and not being able to afford even basic medication because they literally have no support available to them.”
Since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, the Citizens Advice Bureau says it receives calls every 20 minutes from migrants desperate to access benefits.
The charity Khalsa Aid set up a food parcel delivery service soon after lockdown, responding to migrants on student visas and undocumented migrants who were struggling to feed themselves. The charity’s workers are delivering more than 200 food parcels each week. Not much but even a little helps.
Charities across the sector, the Local Government Association and the Work and Pensions Committee have recommended the government suspend NRPF altogether during the coronavirus crisis. MP Stephen Timms, who chairs the committee, says: “What we need is for the ‘no recourse to public funds’ restriction to be suspended for the duration of this crisis. So that hard-working, law-abiding families can apply for universal credit, just as three million other people have done since this crisis began.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel insists there are safeguards in place to support those affected and that the policy is in the public interest. Migrants who are applying for, or who have, leave to remain on family or private life grounds can apply to the Home Office for NRPF to be lifted. But the decision can take months.

Lockdown and locked out of school

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Lockdown widened learning gaps between richer and poorer primary school children, an analysis of thousands of families in England suggests.
Children from poorer families did at least one hour less learning a day compared with those in richer families, the Institute of Fiscal Studies found.
One head teacher says it could take up to two years to bring some children back to their correct attainment level.
The IFS surveyed the parents of 5,500 school-aged children in England during lockdown. It compared the richest 20% of pupils with the poorest 20%. In May, the IFS said children from wealthier families were spending more time studying during the pandemic than poorer children. And in its latest research, the think tank gives a more detailed picture of how coronavirus has widened the gap between the richest and poorest primary school children. Its findings suggest richer primary school children spent 75 minutes a day more on educational activities, compared with those in poorer families during lockdown.
Resources provided by schools are also unequally distributed, the IFS suggested. Around 42% of poorer primary-aged children received some sort of online lesson, conference call or support from their school, compared to 58% of richer children. And the IFS said it found evidence suggesting children who have had better access to learning resources are also more likely to spend more time learning than children who do not. 
Richer children were (37%) more likely to have their own space to study than their poorer counterparts. And although a large majority of children from all backgrounds had access to a computer or tablet, richer children were also more likely to have access to a computer or tablet.
Kirsty Tennyson is Executive Principal of the Three Saints Academy Trust and explained,  “In a deprived area there is already a gap that we’re striving to close – to narrow and ultimately to close the gap,” she says. “Children who have not got that support at home and have not been able to access that learning – that gap will have grown hugely.” She admits there is a mountain to climb. “This is going to take into this academic year and the one after to really get those children back to where they need to be and for some children it will take longer.”

Inequality in USA

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 For Every $100.00 in Median White Wealth, Black People Have $8.70


In 1968, it was $9.43. It keeps getting worse for beaten-down Americans. In the past twenty years, median income for Black households has dropped 5 percent while increasing 6 percent for White households. This year the Black and Latino communities have suffered the greatest effects of the coronavirus pandemic.


 Because of their job losses and lack of savings and inability to maintain rent payments, they will be taking the brunt of a growing housing crisis, especially in the big cities, where rent for Millennials is already over two-thirds of their incomes. Black and Latino households are also more like to face food insufficiencies. Yet the Trump administration recently considered cuts to the food stamp program.


After building their businesses on 70 years of taxpayer-funded research and development, Apple/Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Facebook have expanded their composite net worth to almost $7 trillion, while avoiding over a hundred billion dollars in taxes. 


Capitalism at Work

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 The Institute for Policy Studies shows that the dozen richest American billionaires now collectively own more than $1 trillion in wealth, a finding one analyst described as “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.”



 According to IPS, the 12 top U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth soar by 40%—or $283 billion—since the coronavirus began spreading rapidly across the U.S. in mid-March, sparking widespread economic shutdowns and mass job loss.



 “During the first stage of the pandemic, between January 1 and March 18, the collective wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen declined by $96 billion,” wrote IPS researchers Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo. “But their wealth quickly rebounded and surpassed their September 2019 Forbes 400 wealth level. The only exception is Warren Buffett, who is still $2 billion below his September 2019 wealth, but is currently worth $80 billion.”

Last Thursday, the billionaires’ combined wealth reached $1.015 trillion—the first time in U.S. history that the collective net worth of the top 12 American billionaires has topped the trillion-dollar mark. According to IPS, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth jump by $48.5 billion since mid-March, making him the “biggest pandemic profiteer” of the group.


“The total wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen is greater than the GDP of Belgium and Austria combined,” said Ocampo. “Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans are unemployed or living paycheck to paycheck, and 170,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States.”


“This is simply too much economic and political power in the hands of twelve people,” Collins, director of IPS’ Program on Inequality and the Common Good, said in a statement.


The dozen wealthiest U.S. billionaires and their respective net worth as of August 13 are:

Jeff Bezos—$189.5 billion Bill Gates—$114.1 billion Mark Zuckerberg—$95.5 billion Warren Buffett—$80.6 billion Elon Musk—$73.1 billion Steve Ballmer—$71.5 billion Larry Ellison—$70.9 billion Larry Page—$67.4 billion Sergey Brin—$65.6 billion Alice Walton—$62.6 billion Jim Walton—$62.3 billion Rob Walton—$62.03 billion https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/17/disturbing-milestone-just-12-us-billionaires-now-own-more-1-trillion-combined-wealth



Campaign from the left – Govern from the right!

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“…The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement…”  Frederick Engels to the American socialists when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886   If you are always complaining about the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and keep wondering why when America is already well provided with a multiplicity of left-wing parties, why the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is added to this profusion of the confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting the spurious programs of the parties which promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an organization of socialists working only for socialism.


Joe Biden believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and reined in. And we have a plethora of political commentators urging us that Biden is the best choice when the other option is Trump.

It is well worth offering the analysis of Eugene Debs when it comes to the US electoral circus.

“…Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists…”

“…To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the workers, and for wage-slavery…”

In contrast to the capitalist parties he argues that:

“…Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit…”

Radical activists do a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By trying to get Joe Biden to say and do what leftist want him to say and do, is to engage in a pathetic and puerile political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by moneyed interests. And we know that the Democratic Party represents corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they are still being controlled by the two-party system which is disempowering.

  Regardless that Biden may seem a genuine and honorable man to the electorate, once such a sincere person is elected to office in any government anywhere, they become the captive of capitalism, compelled by the system to represent the interests of the ruling class of the nation state, which ever nation state it happens to be. Some voters will respond, “surely, a little is better than nothing?” Except it will always result in nothing, because capitalism can never serve the exploited.

  The WSPUS espouse the theory that poverty, unemployment, racial oppression and environmental destruction are not simply side–effects of capitalism but are vital part of it. This is something that Eugene Debs understood only too very well. The membership of the WSPUS is minuscule, it is true, but there is no alternative to world socialism if the planet is to have a future.

Campaign from the left – Govern from the right!

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“…The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement…”  Frederick Engels to the American socialists when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886   If you are always complaining about the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and keep wondering why when America is already well provided with a multiplicity of left-wing parties, why the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is added to this profusion of the confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting the spurious programs of the parties which promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an organization of socialists working only for socialism.


Joe Biden believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and reined in. And we have a plethora of political commentators urging us that Biden is the best choice when the other option is Trump.

It is well worth offering the analysis of Eugene Debs when it comes to the US electoral circus.

“…Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists…”

“…To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the workers, and for wage-slavery…”

In contrast to the capitalist parties he argues that:

“…Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit…”

Radical activists do a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By trying to get Joe Biden to say and do what leftist want him to say and do, is to engage in a pathetic and puerile political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by moneyed interests. And we know that the Democratic Party represents corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they are still being controlled by the two-party system which is disempowering.

  Regardless that Biden may seem a genuine and honorable man to the electorate, once such a sincere person is elected to office in any government anywhere, they become the captive of capitalism, compelled by the system to represent the interests of the ruling class of the nation state, which ever nation state it happens to be. Some voters will respond, “surely, a little is better than nothing?” Except it will always result in nothing, because capitalism can never serve the exploited.

  The WSPUS espouse the theory that poverty, unemployment, racial oppression and environmental destruction are not simply side–effects of capitalism but are vital part of it. This is something that Eugene Debs understood only too very well. The membership of the WSPUS is minuscule, it is true, but there is no alternative to world socialism if the planet is to have a future.

A boom or a slump?

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The S&P 500, one of the widest and most prominent US market measures, has hit a new high despite ongoing worries about the sharp economic impact of the pandemic to close at 3,389.78 – about three points above its 19 February record.



 The Nasdaq hit another record after surpassing its prior high in June while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is within about 5% of its February record.



 US shares have been on an upward path since 23 March. Analysts say the recovery is partly due to America’s central bank a slew of unprecedented economic support measures, Federal Reserve moves and other stimulus, as well as demand from investors who are confident the economy will heal and see few better opportunities to make money than on the stock markets.



 Japan, which has seen its Nikkei 225 index climb back to roughly 4% of its pre-crisis high, has benefited from both aggressive government stimulus and relative success at controlling the virus without mass lockdowns.



 But the gains in the US have outstripped many other markets. London’s FTSE 100 remains about 20% lower than its January high, while France’s CAC 40 is off about 19%.

The unusual strength of the US rebound comes from its tech companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, which have been seen as winners despite lockdowns, along with companies in areas like cloud computing and machine learning.
“We would not be flirting with all-time highs were it not for technology,” said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at US Bank Wealth Management.
Shares in the S&P 500’s tech sector have climbed roughly 25% so far this year, even as other areas remain flat or negative. 
Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said that’s a warning sign for those who might want to see the new S&P 500 high as a signal about the broader economy.
“There’s big dispersion between those that have done well and those that have done poorly,” he said.  Of the 500 companies in the index, more than half have shares trading lower than they were start of the year, he said.

The Rich Get Richer

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 America’s 12 wealthiest now control $1 trillion of wealth. 



 Between 1980 and 2018, tax law changes favoring the nation’s rich left our billionaires paying 79 percent less in taxes, as measured as a share of their wealth. 



 The country’s top .01 percent, a group consisting of households with wealth in excess of $100 million, have seen their tax payments as a share of their wealth drop by almost as much, 73 percent.



 An ultra-wealthy household that realizes $25 million in tax savings doesn’t rush out and spend that extra $25 million on food, home improvements, or new clothes. Most of those added millions just add to that ultra-wealthy household’s wealth and future wealth.



 The share of America’s wealth that our top .01 percent hold has quadrupled, rising from 2.3 percent in 1980 to 9.6 percent in 2018. 



 The incomes of the top .01 percent of our nation’s investors have, over the same years, jumped from 1.5 percent to 4.6 percent.

The East-Med Hotspot

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The Israeli cabinet last week approved a pipeline deal to move gas offshore via Cyprus to Greece and Europe. The 1,900-kilometer (1,181 miles) link will connect gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean basin to European markets. The $6 billion project, many years in the discussion, was boosted in January by an agreement signed in Athens between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts. The EastMed project puts Israel on a collision course with Turkey  which has laid claim, reinforced with a maritime deal with Libya, to large parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, where it is exploring for gas—and conducting naval exercises. These moves are exacerbating tensions with Greece.
Disputes over exploration rights and pipelines will add fuel to the heated rhetoric between the two countries. Turkish naval vessels harassed an Israeli research vessel near Cyprus last December, and Israel’s annual military assessment listed Turkey as a “challenge” for the first time last year. Egypt has its own claims to gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus and Greece have already raised alarms over the Turkish-Libyan delineation of maritime rights, which intersects with the planned route for the EastMed pipeline.
For good measure, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has joined the issue, calling for European Union sanctions against Turkey over what he described as “violations” of the sovereignty of Cyprus and Greece. Israel’s main interest in the Mediterranean is to build on alliances with Greece and Cyprus that has grown over the past few decades. This dovetails with the interests of Egypt and France—which, along with the United Arab Emirates, are also anxious about Turkey’s military involvement in the Libyan civil war. Israeli-Greek military relations have deepened recently. Greece has signed a deal to lease Israeli drones, and Israeli Air Force jets have participated in a major Greek military exercise. Israeli-Greek military cooperation is a frequent topic of discussion at Israeli policy discussions and think-tanks. Israel is taking delivery of new Sa’ar 6 class corvettes and will eventually build new Reshef class combat vessels to protect its exclusive economic zone.
 Russia has opened a natural-gas link to Turkey through the Turkstream pipeline, causing concern in Washington about Russian inroads into Europe, via Turkey. 

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