How much is a human life worth?

Uncategorised No Comments
Private equity manager and former manager of Goldman Sachs’ Germany operation, Alexander Dibelius, has publicly wondered whether it is right to protect the 10% of the population that is at particularly high risk from coronavirus while allowing the economy to be affected.



The financial daily Handelsblatt published an interviewwith investor Alexander Dibelius.



Dibelius opposes the measures designed to delay the spread of the virus. He justifies this by saying that “the acute collapse of the world economy with all of its consequences is the much larger and more dangerous stress test than Sars-CoV-2.” He is “more worried” about the “collective shutdown of the economy and social life, implemented with virtually no discussion and with a raised moral finger” than “this viral infection.”
“Is it right,” he asks, “that 10 percent of the population—the really high-risk group—is protected while 90 percent and the entire economy are massively crippled, with the potentially dramatic consequence that the basis for our general wellbeing will be massively and permanently eroded?”
“Better the flu than a broken economy,” is how he sums up his position.



COVID-19 culling the elderly – Good for the economy

Uncategorised No Comments
A Daily Telegraph assistant editor, Jeremy Warner, has suggested coronavirus could ‘prove mildly beneficial’ to the UK economy by killing off elderly Britons. He reasoned the 1918 Spanish flu had a ‘lasting impact on supply’ because it killed off ‘primary bread-winners’, which he said is unlikely to happen with coronavirus.



He wrote: ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.’


Responding to criticism in the article’s comments section, Warner said he is ‘unrepentant about the economic point I was trying to make’. He wrote: ‘Any thinning out of those of prime working age is a much bigger supply shock than the same thing among elderly retirees. ‘Obviously, for those affected it is a human tragedy whatever the age, but this is a piece about economics, not the sum of human misery.’


COVID-19 Can Be a Catalyst

Uncategorised No Comments
Working people must be wondering in the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic if the wealthy and powerful have been contaminated by another sort of virus – humanitarianism. Some are quite baffled by the ruling class’s response to COVID-19. Why has our ruling class suspended the laws of capitalism, closing down production, shutting down borders, ending the movement of peoples, foregoing share dividends? What has made those who normally have little concern for the well-being of their employees suddenly panic?



One obvious motivation looms large – the ruling class is not protected from this virus, unlike diseases of poverty like TB which is the most prevalent infectious disease that kills a million every year. So they have reason to be seriously worried. Historically public health legislation has been passed e.g. for water sanitation, clean air etc, when the ruling class also found themselves affected. Their most immediate worry they’ve got is catching it themselves, as all the money in the world can’t buy a cure right now. Their more long-term worry is going bust amid a global slump while governments are also racking up unsustainable levels of debt, and The operating laws of capitalism may be suspended for several weeks and perhaps several months but they cannot be broken permanently – hence the growing voices albeit still minority now saying lets return to normalcy and accept the inevitable deaths as the price worth paying. We can be sure all parties will be very keen to tell workers it’s safe to go back to work at the  earliest possible opportunity, as soon as international health regulators can be persuaded to back their play. Whether workers will be convinced is debatable, however once the temporary subsidies are removed they won’t have any choice in the matter.



But is the fear of getting the virus isn’t the overriding factor for the ruling class. We can suspect it’s the fear of a total collapse of the social order.



Capitalism remains stable as long as populations are acquiescent and docile, doing what they’ve been brought up to do, but that requires a quid pro quo from the rich, an income to cover food, rent or mortgages and utility bills, to provide healthcare and general security. You can always deprive or deny a proportion of the population but not all of it simultaneously, and certainly not globally.



The spectre that’s haunting the minds of our masters must be the possibility of massive discontent and social disorder breaking out worldwide. No wonder they’re panicking with visions of their Old Etonian chums being strung up from the lampposts. If that seems exaggerated let’s remember that the ruling class is the class-conscious class. They know what’s in store for them if the 99% rise up against them. They must be thinking that if they mess this up, they could be facing revolution in country after country from desperate workers who have nothing to lose. And we should add it is said that workers are just six meals away from the barricades.



It has been the voluntarism of working people that has kept society running. A new disease has gone viral – one that is spreading solidarity. There is a new epidemic – an outbreak of altruism – a rush to help one another. When this pandemic eventually subsides, those who had been previously ignored and neglected will they forget that their communities survived because of their contributions and sacrifices. Surely, there’ll be a day of reckoning?



This pandemic is most probably the greatest political and economic development in our life-time. It could also be one of socialists greatest opportunity in generations to present the case for a society of mutual solidarity. iI has empowered those who previously were seen as surplus to requirements. Capitalism has identified who really are the key workers to the operation of its economics. Surely the shelf-stackers, the uber and gig workers will not forget the lesson. The skills and scalpel of the surgeons was very much secondary to the scrubbing brush and disinfectant of the hospital cleaners.


It is not unprecedented for capitalism to give priority to something other than profit-making. They don’t in major wars where their priority is victory and they spend “what it takes” to achieve this. But once the war over, it’s a return to prioritising profit as usual. Which is what will happen after this public health crisis is over.


But as in post-WW2 Britain, people expect their sacrifices to be rewarded and received the Welfare State. Can we now expect to raise our economic demands and exercise our newly discovered power if we are refused.


What will capitalism do this time around? Will it opt, as it did in 2008 recession, for policies of austerity to restore profits and to pay back the debt of extra government spending? Or shall we recognise that it was cooperation and solidarity which got us through COVID-19. 


The task now for socialists is to use this coronavirus crisis to strengthen the case for socialism – that even with social distancing, and self isolation we are social animals and when push comes to shove, we will work together as citizens of the world. This pandemic is exposing the inequalities inherent within capitalist society and also to point out the cooperation and mutual aid initiatives being set up as positive signs of perhaps social changes that in future maybe stepping stones to socialism. Today, offers an opportunity for ourselves to promote our vision for the future, one of social ownership and social planning of production.



Workers make the world run.

Uncategorised No Comments

Workers for Instacart, the Silicon Valley start-up that employs 175,000 people to deliver groceries nationwide via its online platform, plan to walk off the job Monday if the company does not immediately provide them with hazard pay and increased safety precautions to protect them from the deadly coronavirus now ravaging the nation.



Instacart’s delivery workers are demanding hazard pay of $5 per order, free hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes, and paid sick leave for workers with pre-existing medical conditions that would make COVID-19, more dangerous if they contract it.

Like millions of sanitation workers, pharmacy and grocery store employees, and healthcare workers across the country, said Instacart worker and strike organizer Vanessa Bain, the company’s shoppers “are working on the frontlines in the capacity of first responders”—all while many other Americans are able to work from home.



“Instacart’s corporate employees are provided with health insurance, life insurance, and paid time off and [are] also eligible for sick pay and paid family leave,” Bain told Vice. adding that the company’s gig workers “are afforded none of these protections.”

“We deserve and demand better,” Bain added. “Without [us], Instacart will grind to a halt.”


Bain slammed the company for “profiting significantly off of this pandemic” and planning to hire 300,000 new shoppers to keep up with demand and capitalize on the unemployment crisis resulting from the pandemic, while failing to ensure the safety of its current workers.


“Instacart has been busy crafting a rather heroic public image as the saviors of families sheltered-in-place, and as the economic saviors of laid off workers,” Bain explained. “In truth, Instacart is providing no protection to its existing gig workers.”




Instacart’s current sick leave policy for its delivery workers allows them to take two weeks of paid leave only if they test positive for the coronavirus. With tests in short supply and many Americans being told by healthcare providers that they don’t qualify for testing, Instacart could be forcing many of its shoppers to work while ill—or at least contagious. Providing the workers with safety supplies and a fair paid sick leave policy could actually save lives.



Considering delivery and grocery workers are just some of the millions of Americans considered “essential” during the public health crisis, “it’s especially cruel to withhold these guarantees from the very workers keeping millions of people fed,” tweeted Joelle Stangler, a field director for Sen. Bernie Sanders.



 Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Instacart would be nothing without the laborers they treat so poorly—people now deemed ‘essential’. No employee, especially those who work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, should be forced to work in unsafe conditions. Workers at Amazon warehouses worldwide continue to raise concerns that their employer is not doing enough to protect them from exposure to COVID-19



The pandemic proves that low-waged workers make the world run. Hopefully, history books will record 2020 as the year when people began to mobilize and launch the long-overdue political and social revolution. Common sense tells us it is now time to change what up until now has been considered “conventional” behavior. Now is the time to build  a movement for radical social change. We are all in this together. Hopefully 2020 will be remembered as the moment of transformational change when working people finally awoke. 



“Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number-

Shake your chains to earth like

dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many-they are few.”
Shelley




https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/27/without-us-instacart-will-grind-halt-delivery-workers-threaten-strike-over-hazard

Farmers need foreign workers

Uncategorised No Comments
Charter flights to bring in agricultural workers from eastern Europe are needed as a matter of urgency, otherwise fruit and vegetables will be left unpicked in Britain’s fields. Some large farms have already been chartering planes to bring in labour from eastern Europe. British growers have been contacting companies in the hospitality sector to recruit laid-off staff.
90,000 workers are needed, many in just a few weeks’ time. One leading supplier, Concordia, was looking to bring in around 10,000 labourers – half from the EU and the rest from Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Barbados. But all of the non-EU countries are closed. In a big setback, Ukraine extended its lockdown from 2 April until 23 April.

Stephanie Maurel, Concordia’s chief executive, said: “Our recruitment outside the EU is stalled which leaves us with Lithuania, which has closed borders, Romania with no airplanes, and Bulgaria which is our little beacon.”



Nick Marston, the chairman of British Summer Fruits, said. “They may be people from eastern Europe who were working here in the hospitality sector, who are relatively young and don’t have that many ties and want a job paying reasonable pay in reasonable conditions.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-and-veg-will-run-out-unless-britain-charters-planes-to-fly-in-farm-workers-from-eastern-europe

There is Always Money for War

Uncategorised No Comments

The government has quietly drawn up proposals to lend other countries £1bn of public money so that they can buy British-made bombs and surveillance technology.



The plan was revealed in a single sentence slipped into this month’s budget. Unveiling a new £2bn lending facility for projects supporting clean growth, the government also announced the creation of “a new £1bn fund to support overseas buyers of UK defence and security goods and services”.  The fund will be overseen by UK Export Finance, which gives loans to help foreign countries, especially those with developing economies, buy British goods and services.



“Even in times of crisis, the government is showing that it will go to any length to sell as many weapons as possible,” said Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade. “The arms deals being supported with this money could be used in enabling atrocities and abuses for years to come. Government should be regulating and controlling arms sales, not using public money and doing everything it can to promote them.”



In 2018, the latest figures available, the UK won arms contracts worth £14bn. Between 2008 and 2018 the UK was the second biggest arms exporter in the world, with 19% of the market share. Three-fifths of arms sales over the period went to the Middle East. £5.3bn of arms have been licensed to Saudi Arabia since the war in Yemen began. 



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/revealed-1bn-of-taxpayers-cash-to-help-foreign-countries-buy-british-arms

The Rich Get Richer

Uncategorised No Comments
THE BAIL-OUTS Millions of people across the world have lost their job and businesses.



But not everyone has lost out. Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest person, is $5.5bn (£4.3bn) richer today than he was at the start of the year. His paper fortune, held mostly in Amazon shares, rose by $3.9bn on Thursday alone to $120bn – enough to buy 188,000 standard gold bars (even taking into account the soaring price of gold).



Bezos benefited this week from the best three-day stock market rally since 1933 helping Amazon’s share price to recover almost all of its losses this month to trade at about $1,920, though that was slightly down on their peak of $2,170 in February.

Other US executives that have been either lucky or smart by selling large chunks of their shareholdings in February include Larry Fink, the chief executive of fund manager BlackRock, who saved potential losses of $9m.



  Lance Uggla, CEO of data firm IHS Markit, who sold $47m of shares on 19 February that would have dropped to $19m if he had held on to them.



 In total US executives sold about $9.2bn in shares of the companies they run in the five weeks before the start of the stock market rout. Selling before the 30% collapse in the market saved them from paper loses of $1.9bn.



 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/27/jeff-bezos-sold-34bn-of-amazon-stock-just-before-covid-19-collapse

The poor cannot work from home

Uncategorised No Comments
As the coronavirus cases continue to rise in America, the US government has advised people to work from home. But working from home is not a privilege everyone has. Only one in four US workers have a job that allows them to work from home.
Those on the lowest incomes are least likely to be able to work from home – just 9% of workers who had earnings in the lowest 25% percentile said they could work from home, compared with 62% of workers in the highest 25% percentile. Full-time workers were twice as likely as part-time workers to say that they can work from home.
The industry where workers were most likely to say they could work from home was financial activities. Ironically, also the industry where employees are highly likely to have savings to tide them over during a period of employment. Not only did 57% of people who work in finance say that they could work from home, but 47% said they did work from home and were paid for doing so.



Safety – too expensive

Uncategorised No Comments
The Department of Health rejected high-level medical advice about providing NHS staff with certain protective equipment during an influenza pandemic because stockpiling it would be too expensive, the Guardian revealed.



Documents show that officials working under former health secretary Jeremy Hunt told medical advisers three years ago to “reconsider” a formal recommendation that eye protection should be provided to all healthcare professionals who have close contact with pandemic influenza patients.

The expert advice was watered down after an “economic assessment” found a medical recommendation about providing visors or safety glasses to all hospital, ambulance and social care staff who have close contact with pandemic influenza patients would “substantially increase” the costs of stockpiling.

The documents may help explain a devastating shortage of protective gear in the NHS that is hampering efforts by medical staff to manage the Covid-19 virus pandemic. Officials resisted advice about stockpiling supplies of eye protection in case of a pandemic of this kind.

The new and emerging respiratory virus threat advisory group (Nervtag), to review the UK’s approach to stockpiling personal protective equipment (PPE) for use in an influenza pandemic “to help inform future stockpile and purchasing decisions” Asked what items of PPE would be required in a pandemic, the government’s advisers recommended “providing eye protection for all hospital, community, ambulance and social care staff who have close contact with pandemic influenza patients.”



 A health department official told the advisers to reconsider their advice as information had emerged about “the very large incremental cost of adding in eye protection.” The department asked Nervtag “to clarify the detail of their advice in light of the costings…” The advisory committee then changed its official advice. The recommendation over protective eyewear was rewritten.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

All content on this website CC BY-ND 4.0 with additional translation permissions

MENU

Navigation