“We could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months. The truth is we do not have time on our side.” – David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme
Lockdown in Latin America
“My fear isn’t becoming infected. My fear is my children going hungry,” said Liliana Pérez, a 43-year-old from Villa Soldati, a pocket of extreme poverty in Buenos Aires and one of more than three million people who live in Argentina’s densely populated villas. “People are more worried about being able to feed their families than they are about the coronavirus.”
Across Latin America and the Caribbean – where an estimated 113 million people live in low-income barrios, favelas or villas – families are struggling to adapt to coronavirus lockdowns or social isolation orders because of more immediate financial imperatives.
Across Latin America and the Caribbean – where an estimated 113 million people live in low-income barrios, favelas or villas – families are struggling to adapt to coronavirus lockdowns or social isolation orders because of more immediate financial imperatives.
In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, residents of deprived neighbourhoods have tied red rags to their windows to signal that those inside are going hungry. Riot police last week clashed with residents in Ciudad Bolívar, a sprawling mountainside neighbourhood, who were demanding food supplies promised by the president, Iván Duque.
I’ve got no money and nothing to eat,” complained María Ticona, 44, a mother of five from Villa Copacabana, a deprived corner of El Alto, in Bolivia. Before the lockdown – which is being strictly enforced by Bolivian troops – Ticona sold bread and scraped together perhaps $4 a day. That income has evaporated. “My kids haven’t eaten properly since the quarantine began,” she complained.
“We’re trying to keep safe but it’s very difficult when a whole family lives in only 16 square metres,” said César Sanabria in the 45,000-strong settlement beside Buenos Aires’ exclusive Recoleta neighbourhood. “We’re not really isolating,” he admitted. “You still see a lot of people on the streets.”
Ivan França Jr, an epidemiologist from Brazil’s University of São Paulo’s faculty of public health, said that for isolation orders to work they had to be accompanied by economic aid.
“Social distancing can’t just be: ‘Don’t leave your homes,’” he said. “This is a very elitist and middle-class mindset.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/latin-america-coronavirus-lockdowns-low-income
Around the World in Fifty Earth Days
It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day when scientists and activisits rally to help protect the Earth. In the decades since, the environmental problems that sparked thegreen movement have only gotten worse. There has been the continued widespread loss of forests and grasslands, exacerbating the dangers of climate change and contributing to an alarmingly swift decline in animal and plant species. Environmental groups for decades have campaigned to get lawmakers to take action. Fifty years of pushback against vested economic interests have failed to achieve very much success. Humanity’s problems transcend any nation or group of nations. We are seeing how a virus ravages populations globally.
But hope remains. The Socialist Party says what is necessary is a fundamental change in thinking and action which goes well beyond any one day. The Socialist Party envisages the unification of all the peoples of the world in one universal family. World socialism is not only possible will be the next stage in the evolution of mankind
COVID-19 and Capitalist Carnage
The politics of the pandemic is nasty and divisive. And politicians thrive on it. Working people around the world face an agonising choice; to go to work and risk catching COVID-19 or becoming destitute. Not working can mean hunger and homelessness. Our fellow-workers are feeling this pain right now.
We all live under an economic system that values our lives relative to our ability to produce profits for the owning class. We are measured by our productivity. In this coronavirus pandemic, many are finally awakening to understand its bitter consequences. We are now aware that we do not have access to the resources we need to live decently or, perhaps even to survive. People are now beginning to understand just how badly governments has let us down by their belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most working people now understand that our problems are more entrenched and that we remain trapped in a social system that presents us with only limited choices which have already proved unable to solve our problems, even when the solutions are well-known and obvious. The king has no clothes and sits stark naked on his throne, tossing bags of money to his friends in court as he rules over an empire of corruption, inequality, war, poverty and racism.
The apologists for the capitalist system have always pushed the narrative that homelessness, poverty, and inequality are aberrations in an otherwise healthy society. Recessions we were told are avoidable by the correct economic fiscal policies implemented by governments. Populist demagogues have presented themselves as protectors of the poor. Don’t be fooled. This crisis didn’t start with the coronavirus. Across the world, people need to question capitalism.
It should no longer be possible to ignore the structural crisis of poverty and inequality. Lockdowns reveal how expendable the majority of workers are. While at the same time, it’s ever clearer how many of the most “essential” tasks in our economy are done by the least well-paid workers. The spread of death and disease via the Covid-19 pandemic exposes its disproportionate impact on poor people and people of colour. It is working people who suffer and die while the rich, like the sharks they are circle around, to sieze the opportunities to further enhance their wealth and power.
These crises have highlighted our collective interdependence. Isn’t it time to demand a transformative change in the way we run and organise our society. This crisis demonstrates the way an economy structured around the rich brings death and destruction in its wake.
Capitalism is economic and political system that is structurally incapable of acting for the common good, even when millions of lives are at stake. It is not just failing to solve our problems. It is the problem. We must grow a political movement based on real solutions to the systemic problems of society, directly challenging the powerful interests who control and profit from the status quo. We do not have to accept a dysfunctional profit system with its ever-worsening inequality and poverty. Healing our sick society is the key to a healthy future. We have descended into insane chaos because of capitalist madness.
We all live under an economic system that values our lives relative to our ability to produce profits for the owning class. We are measured by our productivity. In this coronavirus pandemic, many are finally awakening to understand its bitter consequences. We are now aware that we do not have access to the resources we need to live decently or, perhaps even to survive. People are now beginning to understand just how badly governments has let us down by their belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most working people now understand that our problems are more entrenched and that we remain trapped in a social system that presents us with only limited choices which have already proved unable to solve our problems, even when the solutions are well-known and obvious. The king has no clothes and sits stark naked on his throne, tossing bags of money to his friends in court as he rules over an empire of corruption, inequality, war, poverty and racism.
The apologists for the capitalist system have always pushed the narrative that homelessness, poverty, and inequality are aberrations in an otherwise healthy society. Recessions we were told are avoidable by the correct economic fiscal policies implemented by governments. Populist demagogues have presented themselves as protectors of the poor. Don’t be fooled. This crisis didn’t start with the coronavirus. Across the world, people need to question capitalism.
It should no longer be possible to ignore the structural crisis of poverty and inequality. Lockdowns reveal how expendable the majority of workers are. While at the same time, it’s ever clearer how many of the most “essential” tasks in our economy are done by the least well-paid workers. The spread of death and disease via the Covid-19 pandemic exposes its disproportionate impact on poor people and people of colour. It is working people who suffer and die while the rich, like the sharks they are circle around, to sieze the opportunities to further enhance their wealth and power.
These crises have highlighted our collective interdependence. Isn’t it time to demand a transformative change in the way we run and organise our society. This crisis demonstrates the way an economy structured around the rich brings death and destruction in its wake.
Capitalism is economic and political system that is structurally incapable of acting for the common good, even when millions of lives are at stake. It is not just failing to solve our problems. It is the problem. We must grow a political movement based on real solutions to the systemic problems of society, directly challenging the powerful interests who control and profit from the status quo. We do not have to accept a dysfunctional profit system with its ever-worsening inequality and poverty. Healing our sick society is the key to a healthy future. We have descended into insane chaos because of capitalist madness.
Worse to come
“Covid-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread,” said Dr Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Programme. “It is a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat if they earn a wage. Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs. It only takes one more shock – like Covid-19 – to push them over the edge. We must collectively act now to mitigate the impact of this global catastrophe.”
The coronavirus crisis will push more than a quarter of a billion people to the brink of starvation unless swift action is taken to provide food and humanitarian relief to the most at-risk regions, the UN and other experts have warned.
About 265 million people around the world are forecast to be facing acute food insecurity by the end of this year, a doubling of the 130 million estimated to suffer severe food shortages last year.
Global hunger could become the next big impact of the pandemic, warns the Global Report on Food Crises, by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Food Programme and 14 other organisations, published on Tuesday. Some of the poorest countries may face the choice of trying to save people stricken by the virus only for them to fall prey to hunger.
Multinational food companies also recently warned that the number of people in chronic hunger could double to more than 1.6 billion as a result of the pandemic.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-could-be-next-big-impact-of-coronavirus-pandemic
Shame on Him
Trump has said on Twitter that he will temporarily suspend immigration into the USA
Private Jets Avoid Lockdowns
Rich tourists have been flouting coronavirus lockdown rules by using private jets to fly out of the UK and back in, according to a report by The Times.
A total of 545 private jets have landed in UK airfields since the lockdown began on March 23, including from countries most afflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. That included 15 from the United States, 25 from Spain, 27 from France, and 32 from Germany, the newspaper reported. The super-rich have been using private jets to leave the UK, with 767 private planes reportedly flying out of UK airfields since lockdown began. Destinations included France, Germany, Spain, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, The Times reported.
A source told The Times: “These are some of the wealthiest people who count the UK as their home, who are fleeing to second homes since the lockdown was imposed.”
Pandemic and out of pocket
British households will have £43bn less cash available for essential spending between April and June.
Disposable income earned by UK households, once it has been adjusted for tax and benefits, will be 17% lower in the second quarter of this year, according to analysis from the Centre for Economics and Business Research consultancy.
The CEBR has calculated the monthly hit to disposable incomes will reach £14.2bn per month, meaning a monthly fall of £515 per household as workers lose their jobs, accept reduced pay or hours, or are placed on furlough. In the majority of cases workers have seen a 20% fall in their earnings.
The CEBR predicts the pandemic will cause the deepest recession since the financial crisis, with unemployment more than doubling, with the biggest increase in unemployment being among the lowest-paid workers.
Workers without a university degree will be hardest hit by the Covid-19 crisis, raising fears of increasing inequality across Europe, where up to 59m jobs are at risk.
Nearly 80% of workers facing job insecurity – including cuts to hours or pay, temporary furloughs, or permanent layoffs – do not have a university degree, according to new research by the consultancy firm McKinsey.
The research raises concerns that the coronavirus outbreak could widen the gap between rich and poor across the EU and UK. “Short-term job risk is highly correlated with level of education, potentially exacerbating existing social inequalities,” McKinsey said.
People at risk include retail staff, cooks as well as construction workers and office support staff, who are twice as likely to see their livelihoods under threat during the outbreak because they work in close proximity to others and have significant exposure to the public. Low-insecurity occupations include workers who either do not need to work in close proximity to others, such as accountants, architects and journalists, or whose work provide essential health services, such as healthcare staff or other essential services such as police, food production, education, public transport, or utilities.
McKinsey warned that Europe could still face social unrest as a result of rising unemployment.
“Societies’ inequalities are exacerbated by higher unemployment rates, as social-welfare systems cannot fully alleviate the negative effects of a loss of employment. Increases in crime rates and social unrest are also potential consequences of an increase in unemployment,” McKinsey said.
“Moreover, unemployed people are twice as likely to experience mental illness (and even more so for blue-collar workers), and they receive inpatient treatment more often,” the report added.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/20/british-households-face-disposable-income-fall-of-515-per-month
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/20/uk-workers-without-degrees-face-deeper-job-insecurity-amid-coronavirus-pandemic
Markets Are Trash
I’ve never wanted to restart a year so bad in my life. We lost Kobe Bryant, Trump almost started World War 3 with Iran, and now we’re living in a real-life version of Contagion that’s got us on a trajectory rivaling The Great Depression – and we’ve barely entered the second quarter. 2020 so far’s been absolute garbage. On the bright side: at least this pandemic’s waking people up to the fact that markets are garbage, too.
I know that many people reading this may already understand what a market is. However, watching a YouTube video of Sam Seder debating a Libertarian before writing this made me realize that I need to clarify the definition of a market before I demonstrate precisely why they’re trash. The all-mighty Google sources their meanings from the Oxford Dictionary’s website Lexico.com, which defines a market as “An area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.” For example, someone voluntarily calling into a radio show for free doesn’t constitute a commercial dealing since no money or commodities have been or will be exchanged. However, the host monetizing the call later does constitute a commercial dealing with the entity that distributes it, assuming that entity’s different. In other words, a market only exists when a commodity is directly exchanged – the most common commodity of exchange being money – for another commodity, regardless of what happens later. There are a lot of reasons markets suck, but right now, we’ll mainly focus on the contradictions of effective and notional demand and supply, as well as profit.
Lexico.com defines effective demand as “The level of demand that represents a real intention to purchase by people with the means to pay.” In contrast, notional demand is the demand of people who want to pay, but are unable to for some reason, e.g., not having enough money or due to something like a temporary ban. Effective supply is the amount of a commodity furnished on the market, as opposed to notional supply, which is the amount of a commodity merely wanted to be furnished on a market if there weren’t any market constraints, such as below-average profit margins for the said commodity or a ban. Another critical relation is derived demand, which Lexico.com defines as “A demand for a commodity, service, etc. which is a consequence of the demand for something else.” A good example is Nevada’s Governor, Stephen Sisolak, ordering a temporary closure of all non-essential businesses in the state to curb the spread of COVID-19. The order led to lower derived demand for public transportation since fewer people are traveling to work, drink at the bar, get a haircut, etc.
The COVID-19 outbreak itself is an excellent example of how effective demand and supply can lead to negative results. It’s widely believed that the COVID-19 pandemic started in November of 2019. Evidence suggests that it came from the consumption of bats or pangolins sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market – a live animal and seafood market that also sold wild animal meat, referred to as ye wei or bushmeat, of various exotic animals in Wuhan, China.
It’s worth noting that the other two major coronavirus outbreaks of the past decade, MERS and SARS – which COVID-19 is a variant of – are believed to have originated in bats as well. It’s also worth noting that no one’s found evidence of anyone selling bats or pangolins at the market. However, COVID-19’s genetic similarity to another coronavirus found in bats[1] suggests that it originated with them and was most likely transmitted to humans through an intermediate animal – widely believed to be pangolins.[2] Considering that 2/3 of the first 41 people hospitalized for COVID-19 had direct exposure to the market,[3] pangolins could’ve been sold there under the table since they’re a protected species. Assuming that was the case, then the effective demand for ye wei, which is known to have already caused two significant outbreaks this decade, met with the effective supply of ye wei. Markets can incentivize the supply of dangerous goods – like bombs, whos only use is murder – or infectious meat, leading to a global pandemic like we’re dealing with right now.
Another excellent example of the contradiction of effective demand is the effect of COVID-19 hitting my hometown, Las Vegas. Most people know that Vegas’s economy revolves around the strip, which mainly caters to tourists’ and locals’ leisure activities. The effective demand for goods and services was drastically lowered on the strip after stay-at-home orders were issued across the country to curb the spread of the virus, causing a domino effect. The lower effective demand – the lower income – for goods and services on the strip led to lower effective demand for labor on the strip, causing many workers employed on the strip to be laid-off. With their derived demand for healthcare coverage and housing coming from their employment, these workers being laid-off led, in economic terms, to them losing effective demand for healthcare coverage and shelter during a pandemic. I give kudos to Wynn Resorts for committing to pay all their employees through mid-May, even though it’s safe to say it may only be because it’d be too expensive and time-consuming to bring all their employees back if they lay them off. Still, I haven’t heard of any other companies committing to that. Thank god, also, that Governor Sisolak issued a moratorium on all evictions during the pandemic. Still, he did make it clear that any unpaid rents or mortgages would have to be paid back after, essentially postponing many Las Vegan’s homelessness to a later date.
The absurdity doesn’t end there, though. A resident at St. Vincent’s – Las Vegas’s men’s homeless shelter, which I coincidentally stayed in for about a month – was diagnosed with COVID-19. As a result, they shut the shelter down until further notice as a “safety precaution,” which means they wanted to avoid liability if all the residents got sick. Now they have as much as 500 residents sleeping outside in the parking lot of Cashman Center, sectioned off into “social distancing” boxes. This on the same street as thousands of empty hotel rooms, which are now only a notional supply due to the ban on non-essential business. Even if that weren’t the case, these homeless men would only have a notional demand for these rooms that could help curb the spread of the disease among them since they can’t afford them anyway. They’re essentially leaving these residents out to die, since a vaccine may not be available until at least early 2021 – a vaccine which they may only have notional demand for anyway.
Vaccines usually take 2 – 5 years to be market-ready, but the urgency of the pandemic has experts estimating it’ll take 12 – 18 months optimistically. The lengthy timespan is due partially to the complexity of the vaccine development process, as well as in large part to the need for funding. Over 60% of vaccine research and development funding comes from for-profit companies,[4] which was a major stumbling block in the development of SARS and MERS vaccines before. For-profit companies tend to be hesitant to invest in vaccine development since it’s much more lucrative to invest their funds in other medications. Even if they do invest, a pandemic may pass before they can get a vaccine to market, essentially wasting the money in their eyes. Publicly funded research would be subject to this same sort of prioritization, so the only way to guarantee that we develop vaccines promptly is to remove market forces entirely.
In a socialist society, there’d be no markets, because there’d be no money. Since production would be for use rather than for profit, vaccine research and development wouldn’t be dependent on securing investment; It’d only be dependent on having the necessary resources at hand. We wouldn’t stop developing a vaccine just because a pandemic passes; we’d continue to develop it, so we have a head start in case a future pandemic arises with a similar genetic makeup – like SARS and COVID-19. Since there’d be universal free access to all products, we’d have an incentive to stockpile a buffer of supplies so we can isolate for long periods to fight a pandemic if needed. Since healthcare would be free, anyone could get tested and use the vaccine or get ventilators as soon as possible. Our decisions would no longer be subject to the anarchy of the market because we’d finally have fully coordinated, cooperative control over production entirely.
Jordan Levi, https://www.wspus.org/2020/04/markets-are-trash/
It is still The Jungle out there
The US government is accelerating regulatory rollbacks to speed up production at meat plants, as companies express growing alarm at the impact of Covid-19 on their operations.
It has emerged that US meat plants are being granted permission to increase the speed of their production lines. This comes despite warnings that the waivers for higher speeds on slaughter and processing lines will compromise food safety.
The latest line speed increases, announced by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) mean 11 poultry plants have been given waivers to operate higher line speeds in the past fortnight. A number of beef and pork plants have also been given waivers, including a beef plant in Kansas in late March. The move will allow the additional chicken factories to slaughter as many as 175 birds a minute – the equivalent of 3 per second.
A union representing federal food safety inspectors has said faster lines will make it harder to catch “pathology that shouldn’t be going out to the consumers”.
“There is no way that food safety is not compromised when the sole trained government inspector on the slaughter line in a chicken plant is expected to examine three birds every second,” said Tony Corbo, senior government affairs representative at Food & Water Watch. “The US government has stepped on the accelerator to grant these waivers while everyone is concentrating on the Covid-19 epidemic.”
It has emerged that US meat plants are being granted permission to increase the speed of their production lines. This comes despite warnings that the waivers for higher speeds on slaughter and processing lines will compromise food safety.
The latest line speed increases, announced by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) mean 11 poultry plants have been given waivers to operate higher line speeds in the past fortnight. A number of beef and pork plants have also been given waivers, including a beef plant in Kansas in late March. The move will allow the additional chicken factories to slaughter as many as 175 birds a minute – the equivalent of 3 per second.
A union representing federal food safety inspectors has said faster lines will make it harder to catch “pathology that shouldn’t be going out to the consumers”.
“There is no way that food safety is not compromised when the sole trained government inspector on the slaughter line in a chicken plant is expected to examine three birds every second,” said Tony Corbo, senior government affairs representative at Food & Water Watch. “The US government has stepped on the accelerator to grant these waivers while everyone is concentrating on the Covid-19 epidemic.”
Increased line speeds are supported by the poultry industry, which argues they do not represent additional risk to food or workers safety, and are necessary to remain financially competitive. Three years ago the National Chicken Council lobbied the government to scrap line speed limits completely, calling them “arbitrary”. Under traditional poultry processing rules, line speeds ran at 140 birds a minute, and required at least four inspectors to be stationed on each line, tasked with checking carcasses for defects, disease or contamination, including fecal matter which can cause salmonella. That has since been reduced to one inspector per line, with individual regulatory waivers enabling line speed increases.
“It potentially reduces some of the quality control efforts,” said Adam Speck, a senior commodity analyst at IHS Markit’s Agribusiness Intelligence.
At least one in 10 US poultry slaughterhouses failed government salmonella tests last year. In some categories, failure rates are as high as 34%. Targets to reduce salmonella disease outbreaks have also been missed, with a rise of 9% in the incidence rate over the last three years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A report by US consumer organisation PIRG found that meat and poultry recalls are up by 65% since 2013. Meanwhile a report by the CDC highlighted the rise in antibiotic-resistant salmonella as a serious threat that requires “prompt and sustained action”.
A report on the FSIS by the US Government Accountability Office in 2018 stated that a review of data had shown that “some plants are still not meeting pathogen standards – in some cases repeatedly not meeting the standards – and are allowed to operate”. It also pointed out that the agency still had no mandatory recall authority.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/20/no-way-food-safety-not-compromised-us-regulatory-roll-backs-during-covid-19-criticised