Socialism — The Hope of the World

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Socialism can’t be built on the ruins of the existing society by a revolt of starving beggars in rags. It can only result from organised working people. The present strength of the Socialist Party counts for little. Its ability to build for the future is its true significance. We are not a party of patchwork reform, nor a party of sham revolutionary slogans, but are firmly rooted in a policy of education and organisation. For many long years the Socialist Party has appealed to fellow-workers to organise and take over the entire means of production and distribution. Books, pamphlets, leaflets and periodicals of all kinds we have freely circulated, with scant result. It is not a question of condemning capitalism; capitalism repeatedly condemns itself.



 The onus is on the Socialist Party of demonstrating in a way that can be understood that the theories it has so long expounded can be translated into a practical method of producing and distributing the wealth in such a way as to end for ever the exploitation of the many by the privileged few. Can we carry through a revolution that will take us out of capitalism into the new world of socialism? Yes, we say, we can do it. All we have to do is to organise and capture political power. If wages are abolished with the taking over of the industries, what form of organisation, for the purpose of distributing the necessities of life, do we propose should take its place? The industries are already in the hands of the workers, but the strength of the employers lies in the fact that they own, control and direct production. What the Socialist Party show is that we can carry on the distribution without feeding the voracious greed of these socially useless parasites, who are waiting at every turn to squeeze a profit out of us.



 The Socialist Party does not hide the fact that it is the consistent enemy of capitalism which aims to replace capitalism by socialism not only because it is possible to do so but because it is absolutely necessary to the maintenance and the progress and evolution of society.



We are convinced that if capitalism is allowed to continue, we will be plunged into barbarism. If humanity is to advance it must move on to socialism. Capitalism produces only when there is a profit for the owner of capital. When there is no profitable market for his product, the capitalist will not produce, no matter how great and urgent the need of the people for a secure decent living standard. What is worse is that the longer capitalism is allowed to exist, the greater becomes the inequality-social, economic and political and the lesser becomes the prosperity of the people. Capitalism reeks more and more. of the slave-market. Every day it lives it brings us a step closer to barbarism.



Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and their democratic organisation and running by all the people in a society free of classes, class divisions and class rule. Socialism is the democratic organisation of production for use, of production for abundance, of plenty for all, without the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the union of the whole world allocating the natural resources and wealth of our planet. Can this great ideal ever be accomplished? It can and must be if we are to maintain and advance society to new levels. Can socialism organise production and distribution in the interests of society as a whole, providing abundance, security and freedom for all? Yes, socialism and only socialism  With socialism, production is organised for use, not for profit.



Where there is abundance for all, the nightmare of insecurity vanishes. There are jobs for all, and they are no longer dependent on whether or not the employer can make a fat profit in a fat market. There is not only a high standard of living, but every industrial advance is followed by a rising standard of living and a declining working-day. Where there is abundance for all, and where no one has the economic power to exploit and oppress others, the basis of classes, class division and class conflict vanishes. The basis of a ruling state, of a government of violence and repression, with its prisons and police and army, also disappears. Police and thieves, prisons and violence are inevitable where there is economic inequality, or abundance for the few and scarcity for the many. They disappear when there is plenty for all, therefore economic equality, therefore social equality. Where there is abundance for all, and where all have equal access to the fruits of the soil and the wealth of industry, the mad conflicts and wars between nations and peoples vanish. With them vanishes the irrepressible urge that exists under capitalism for one nation to subject others, to rob it of its rights, to exploit and oppress it, to provoke and maintain the hideous national and racial antagonisms that cling to capitalism like an ineradicable bloodstain.



Where mankind is free of economic exploitation, of economic inequality, of economic insecurity, he is free for the first time to develop as a human being among his fellow human beings, free to contribute to the unfolding of a new culture and a new human race, which recalls the capitalistic war of all against all only as a sordid and horrible memory of mankind’s ugly childhood. To the achievement of this noble ideal which is a burning necessity, socialism addresses itself firstly and above all to the members of the working class. 



 History has given them the lofty task, of making a reality out of the ideal. They are the most numerous class in present-day society. They are the best organized and best trained class, and the most democratically representative of all the people ruled by capitalism. But not only that. The conditions of existence to which capitalism condemns them, forces them, day in and day out, to fight against these very conditions. This fight cannot be conducted consistently nor, in the long run, successfully, unless it becomes a conscious fight against the whole rotten foundation of capitalism and for laying the foundation of socialism. 



The migrants few know about

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On average, 11,500 people boarded vessels each month from the Horn of Africa to Yemen in 2019, making it the busiest maritime migration route on earth.



International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) shows that over 138,000 people crossed the Gulf of Aden to Yemen last year. More than 110,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe during the same period.



This is the second year in a row that the so-called Eastern Route has reported more crossings than the Mediterranean. In 2018, roughly 150,000 people made the journey.

“While tragedies along the Mediterranean routes are well reported, our staff bear witness daily to the abuse suffered by young people from the Horn of Africa at the hands of smugglers and traffickers exploiting their hopes for a better life,” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM Regional Director for the East and Horn of Africa.

“To get to Yemen, they crammed about 280 of us into one boat,” a thirty-two-year-old Ethiopian man told IOM in Aden, Yemen. “There was no oxygen, and some people committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea.”
“When we arrived in Yemen, smugglers held us for a month,” said one eighteen-year-old Ethiopian migrant. “We were beaten, tortured, abused and threatened for ransom. My family sent USD 900 to save my life so I was released with some other people who had paid.”



Not only has migration on the Eastern Route not been reduced by five years of conflict in Yemen, migrants appear undeterred by the Gulf’s strict immigration policies for undocumented migrants. Those making the perilous journey to the Gulf cross deserts with little food or water and territories controlled by armed groups. Most are travelling in search of economic opportunities unattainable at home, while others are fleeing insecurity, human rights abuses and adverse living conditions.
IOM works across the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Gulf, providing life-saving emergency support to migrants in need and supporting development in home communities.



“However, the most effective protection mechanism for migrants remains the establishment of legal pathways for migration. IOM is committed to supporting all authorities along the Eastern route to better manage migration, ensuring the safety and dignity of migrants.”

Nearly 90 per cent of those who arrived in Yemen in 2019 intended to continue on to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Often coming from the rural regions of Oromia, Amhara and Tigray, approximately 92 per cent of people making the journey were Ethiopian nationals.



https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/journey-africa-yemen-remains-world-s-busiest-maritime-migration-route

People are a valuable resource

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At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos primatologist Dr Jane Goodall remarked at the event that human population growth is responsible, and that most environmental problems wouldn’t exist if our numbers were at the levels they were 500 years ago.



 Such an argument has grim implications and is based on a misreading of the underlying causes of the current crises. As these escalate, people must be prepared to challenge and reject the overpopulation argument. 



 The idea that there were simply too many people being born – most of them in the developing world where population growth rates had started to take off – filtered into the arguments of radical environmental groups such as Earth First! Certain factions within the group became notorious for remarks about extreme hunger in regions with burgeoning populations such as Africa – which, though regrettable, could confer environmental benefits through a reduction in human numbers.



In reality, the global human population is not increasing exponentially, but is in fact slowing and predicted to stabilise at around 11 billion by 2100. Population has been predicted to start declining and has in fact already started to decline, there is no need for “population engineering”



 More importantly, focusing on human numbers obscures the true driver of many of our ecological woes. That is, the waste and inequality generated by modern capitalism and its focus on endless growth and profit accumulation. Inequalities in power, wealth and access to resources – not mere numbers – are key drivers of environmental degradation.



In 2018 the planet’s top emitters – North America and China – accounted for nearly half of global CO2 emissions. In fact, the comparatively high rates of consumption in these regions generate so much more CO2 than their counterparts in low-income countries that an additional 3-to-4 billion people in the latter would hardly make a dent on global emissions.

Issues of ecological and social justice cannot be separated from one another. Blaming human population growth – often in poorer regions – risks fuelling a racist backlash and displaces blame from the powerful industries that continue to pollute the atmosphere. Developing regions in Africa, Asia and Latin America often bear the brunt of climate and ecological catastrophes, despite having contributed the least to them.




The problem is extreme inequality, the excessive consumption of the world’s ultra-rich, and a system that prioritizes profits over social and ecological well-being. This is where we should be devoting our attention. 


Capitalism, not consumerism, not population, is the greatest danger to the species.


Taken from here





Toward A New Freedom

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 Today the whole world is in the throes of the deep crises of capitalism. General living standards are falling and a growing proportion of the people of the World are under-nourished and actually starving. It is an astonishing paradox that, in a world where science and technology have advanced to the stage where there could be plenty for all, there is a growing amount of want and hunger. Not only are millions unnecessarily materially deprived but the great majority of the people of the world are oppressed in various ways. Capitalists oppress workers, states oppress whole classes, some nations dominate other nations, men oppress women, etc. Even those people who escape the worst excesses of oppression and exploitation often find that their lives are empty and meaningless; they experience severe alienation.



  Capitalism is poisoning the atmosphere, polluting the oceans and ravaging the land, and surely nature is turning against us. Although the human species has shown itself able to radically change itself and the world it lives in, it has not yet brought these processes under full conscious control. None of these things are isolated and are all interconnected in one way or another with this system of economics that rules over us. Our species has developed to the point where, if we so choose, we can harmonise ourselves and our environment so as to bring about our further development in a positive direction.



At the root of all these problems is the exploitation of some people by other people and it is the capitalist class exploiting the working class. All of the deprivations and conflicts, in the last analysis, are brought about by a society divided into oppressors and oppressed. No lasting solution to any of these problems will be found while capitalism survives in the world. The only way forward is to bring about the socialist revolution and build a society where oppressive and exploitative class divisions and all the evils that go with them are abolished. 



 Today humanity stands at a turning point: either we develop the revolutionary socialist transformation of society or we may eventually witness our civilisation destroyed. There is nothing inevitable about the future advancement of mankind. The only real, lasting way forward is socialism. If we do not move forward then we will stagnate or move backwards. The choice before us is “Socialism or Barbarism”. 



Capitalists are not interested in production to benefit the peoples of the world or even their own people. They are interested only in profits. If the productive forces in the world were to be utilised for the purposes of construction, the entire planet could be transformed and the standards of living and level of culture raised to undreamed of heights. This is not possible under capitalism. Plenty under this system can only produce crises of over-production, slumps and unemployment, because of the basic necessity of the capitalist class to make profits. This springs from the economic laws of the system, not the desires, good or bad, on the part of the capitalists. Only the unity of the workers, leading to world socialism can produce a “One World” which can abolish want and oppression and war.



Sleeping pods

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San Francisco! The Golden Gate City! Birthplace of food staples like Mission Burritos, It’s-Its, and Ghirardelli Chocolate! Founded in 1776, five days before America’s Declaration of Independence, it was the Viceroyalty of New Spain’s northernmost military outpost prior to the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, becoming part of the Mexican territory of Alta California in 1824, before finally being admitted into the union as part of the 31st state of California in 1850. With the California Gold Rush starting in 1848, droves of prospectors flooded into the area the following year, leading to the moniker “forty-niners.” Brimming with history, Frisco’s arguably best known for being the center of the counterculture movement in the ’60s and, more recently, for being a major hub of the dotcom and social media booms of the ’90s and 2000s. These booms led to a rapid influx of well-paid tech professionals, choking the housing market and, thus, drastically increasing housing prices.



In December 2019, the average rental price of an apartment in SF was $3,688,[1] and the average home sold for $1.58 million,[2] which is 2.5 and 5.64 times higher than the national average, respectively. These outlandish prices beg the question: how do low and even middle-income workers afford to live in such an expensive city? The answer’s usually: roommates. 38.5% of adults in Frisco have roommates,[3] which is equivalent to more than 60.9% of its total renters. It’s worth noting that, even though not everyone with roommates has them due to economic necessity, a steady increase along with housing prices hints that financial constraints may be the cause, especially when taking the rapid rise in homelessness into account.



San Francisco’s biennial point-in-time homeless count conducted in January 2019 reported a homeless population of 8,011 by the federal government’s definition.[4] However, it could be more than double that based on a city database of people who receive health care and other services for the homeless.[5] Using the federal government’s definition, 63% of those polled said they were homeless because they couldn’t afford rent in the city. It’s mostly not new residents either; 55% had been living there for ten or more years, and only 6% had lived there less than a year. Of those counted, 1,794 were living out of their vehicles, which was a 45% increase from 2017.[6] However, it’s also worth noting that another survey found that 25% of people living out of their vehicles were “super-commuters” – people who drive long distances into the city for the workweek, returning to their homes on the weekends where housing’s more affordable.



But even after you account for that, the circumstances are still bleak once you consider the fact that San Francisco had 38,651 empty homes in 2018,[7] almost five times higher than 2019’s homeless count. Some types of reforms are needed pronto, or people might start grabbing the guillotines. Possibly the fairest legislation would be to enact some form of rent control, whether capped at a certain yearly increase percentage or a certain percentage of someone’s income. Another way to ease the pressure could be to increase the minimum wage, or maybe a combination of the two. They could even consider – I don’t know – giving people housing for free?



But Chris Elsey of Elsey Partners in Manhattan, KS isn’t suggesting either of those things. His plans have been in the works for more than four years to turn two parking lots in the city’s Mission District that are catty-corner from each other at 401 S Van Ness Ave and 1500 15th St into new apartment buildings that would each have eight floors with 161 units that would be 200 square feet, including a bathroom and kitchen. But what’s the game-changer? Each building will also have two basement-level floors – space traditionally used for storing bikes – that’ll include 88 “sleeping pods” renting for $1,000 to $1,375 each that would be about 50 square feet, which is just roomier than a king-size bed.[8] The pods would stack on top of each other like bunk beds, with one side opening to a shared living space. A curtain could provide privacy for them, but city building codes won’t allow them to be closed in by a wall and door that shuts. They also wouldn’t have windows but would receive natural light as they circle common living spaces facing an outdoor courtyard in the center of the building. And, to add insult to injury, you also wouldn’t be allowed to come home drunk or have sex in the pods either. They notably made no mention of bathrooms, refrigerators, cabinets, laundry facilities, or other residential amenities.



Now, let’s think about this for a second. Most definitions recommend 100 – 400 square feet per person in an apartment.[9] Laws vary in each state, but 70 – 80 square feet is generally considered the acceptable minimum for a bedroom.[10] These sleeping pods would be just over half that or the size of a standard jail cell[11] or double grave.[12] It’s a genuine possibility that these pods could mostly shelter people working 40 or more hours per week to come home and sleep in an oversized closet they can’t even stand up in, let alone drink or fornicate.



No matter how you cut it, the entire concept of a sleeping pod is wholesale encroachment on basic needs. It’s not radical to want anyone working a full-time job to have an actual home to sleep in and not just a spruced-up box. When I was a kid, I believed that if you graduated college with a decent degree, you’d practically be guaranteed to own a home, but that’s hardly even the case anymore in most cities due to crippling student loan debt.[13] No one should have to forego the right to drink a beer to unwind after work so they can live within a reasonable commuting distance from their job. The proposal itself begs the question: what if those become too expensive, too? If sleeping pods are even remotely normalized and eventually become unaffordable, will the landlords try to sell us bunks? Mats? Tents? How much space will they be willing to deprive us of before they give any leeway if only to keep low-wage workers in the city to hand them coffee in the morning?



This proposal ties back into the power imbalance inherent in the landlord-tenant relationship I mentioned in my last article.[14] If Chris were genuinely interested in providing more housing to combat the crisis, he’d open a rent or income-controlled apartment with adequately sized units that could accommodate bachelor’s and families. But he’s not proposing that, because it wouldn’t be in his financial interest, and that’ll always come first. Chris isn’t planning this to help San Franciscans; they’re proposing it so they can capitalize on the extra space that otherwise wouldn’t amass any profit. If someone can’t afford a pod, he couldn’t care less where they sleep. Capitalists don’t build homes out of the kindness of their hearts; they do it to accumulate more capital. Capital will always tend to lower the lot of the worker for its benefit if given the opportunity. The only way we can guarantee everyone a decent-sized home is by getting rid of capitalism and its incentive for profit over people by building a socialist economy that would finally put people and our environment as our main priority. With our economic system based on common ownership of the means of production and production for use, we could solve every problem caused by capitalism. There wouldn’t be any more empty homes while people sleep in their cars or empty stomachs while grocery stores and restaurants waste food, because there’d be universal free access to everything we need. We could logically utilize our resources via a direct democracy with a conscious plan rather than the fragmented chaos of a market.





























Jordan Levi

https://www.wspus.org/2020/02/sleeping-pods/

Slavery

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“Slavery is illegal everywhere.” The truth of this statement has been taken for granted for decades. Yet our new research reveals that almost half of all countries in the world have yet to actually make it a crime to enslave another human being.



Legal ownership of people was indeed abolished in all countries over the course of the last two centuries. But in many countries it has not been criminalised. In almost half of the world’s countries, there is no criminal law penalising either slavery or the slave trade. In 94 countries, you cannot be prosecuted and punished in a criminal court for enslaving another human being.



94 states (49%) appear not to have criminal legislation prohibiting slavery 112 states (58%) appear not to have put in place penal provisions punishing forced labour 180 states (93%) appear not to have enacted legislative provisions criminalising servitude 170 states (88%) appear to have failed to criminalise the four institutions and practices similar to slavery. In all these countries, there is no criminal law in place to punish people for subjecting people to these extreme forms of human exploitation. Abuses in these cases can only be prosecuted indirectly through other offences – such as human trafficking – if they are prosecuted at all. In short, slavery is far from being illegal everywhere.



Human trafficking is defined in international law, while other catch-all terms, such as “modern slavery”, are not. In international law, human trafficking consists of three elements: the act (recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring, or receiving the person); the use of coercion to facilitate this act; and an intention to exploit that person. The crime of trafficking requires all three of its elements to be present. Prosecuting the exploitation itself — be it, for instance, forced labour or slavery — would require specific domestic legislation beyond provisions addressing trafficking.



So having domestic human trafficking legislation in place does not enable prosecution of forced labour, servitude or slavery as offences in domestic law. And while the vast majority of states have domestic criminal provisions prohibiting trafficking, most have not yet looked beyond this to legislate against the full range of exploitation practices they have committed to prohibit.
less than 5% of the 175 states that have undertaken legally-binding obligations to criminalise human trafficking have fully aligned their national law with the international definition of trafficking. This is because they have narrowly interpreted what constitutes human trafficking, creating only partial criminalisation of slavery. The scale of this failing is clear:



a handful of states criminalise trafficking in children, but not in adults some states criminalise trafficking in women or children, specifically excluding victims who are men from protection 121 states have not recognised that trafficking in children should not require coercive means (as required by the Palermo Protocol) 31 states do not criminalise all relevant acts associated with trafficking, and 86 do not capture the full range of coercive means several states have focused exclusively on suppressing trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, and thereby failed to outlaw trafficking for the purposes of slavery, servitude, forced labour, institutions and practices similar to slavery, or organ harvesting. https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/slavery-is-not-a-crime-in-almost-half-the-countries-of-the-world-new-research/



Worth a read from the website of the World Socialist Party of the United States.

Pensions Back-lash

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Were you born after April 1978? Then you will be the first generation of both males and females who won’t receive a penny in state pension until you reach the age of 68 – and there is even talk of raising that to 70. Why have we so meekly accepted this when in Ireland and France it has reached the point of bringing down governments?



It played no small part in Sinn Fein’s victory. Sinn Fein’s extraordinary election victory in Ireland is widely seen as a protest vote against the disarray in public hospitals and soaring rents in urban areas. Yet the exit polls also revealed that plans to raise the state pension age in Ireland to 67 in 2021, and 68 in 2028 was the third most important issue among voters after health and housing. It seems almost every political party was taken aback by how frequently the pension age was raised on doorsteps during the election. Sinn Fein pledged to roll back the state pension age to 65.



  Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said during the election campaign: “For us the idea that somebody would be forced to continue working until they’re almost 70, or that people of 65 or 66 will be sent down to the dole queues, it’s absolutely disgraceful.”



In France, the protests have gone on to the streets. The rail network has been paralysed, electricity supplies cut, and violent demonstrations met with police teargas. All this because Macron’s government is proposing that those born after 1974 won’t get a full pension (more generous than in the UK) until they are 64, at present 62.



  In Britain, we have been browbeaten by endless talk of the demographic time bomb; the idea that they’ll be trillions of elderly people and hardly any young workers coming up behind them to support pensions as before. There is no alternative, we’re told.



Yes, the population is ageing, and state pensions take up a vast proportion of public spending. But recent projections show that the population is ageing rather less fast than predicted. Even in 2017, before the slowdown in longevity growth was part of the picture, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the EU were projecting that Britain’s demographic time bomb was much less explosive than elsewhere in Europe.

It projected that age-related expenditure on pensions would rise from 7.7% of UK GDP in 2010 to 9.2% in 2060. That’s an increase of 1.5% of GDP over a half century although that will, of course, be in part because of the measures we have already put in place. Other countries face much bigger forecast burdens; the Netherlands and Belgium are in the 8-10% range.

Yet Britain is fast-tracking to a pension age of 68 ahead of every other Western European country apart from Ireland.

No Aid

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CDC, formerly known as the Commonwealth Development Corporation, a government development corporation that invests billions of pounds in Asia and Africa,  stands accused of squandering public money and failing to make a difference to poverty levels.



It has provided “little to no evidence that … it is making an impact in terms of tackling poverty, providing genuinely additional resources or making effective use of government resources,” according to a new report.



In the past, the corporation, which has invested in luxury hotels, shopping centres, gated communities and private hospitals, has been accused of favouring high financial returns on its investments over tackling poverty. It uses tax havens, and critics say its executive salaries are too high and its accounts are opaque.
In 2011, the then secretary of state for international development, Andrew Mitchell, set out a new vision for CDC, pledging to make it more “socially and environmentally responsible”, with fewer investments in “harmful tax regimes” and greater transparency. He was concerned that too much money was going to private equity intermediaries, with the result that not enough was going to development projects. But in 2019, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact gave the CDC an “amber/red” rating, finding that it had produced an “unsatisfactory achievement in most areas”.
Now, according to Doing More Harm Than Good – a new report from Global Justice Now, a social justice organisation – CDC, which in 2016 saw its potential investment budget increase from £1.5bn to £6bn, remains a cause for concern. 



The report says that, despite Mitchell’s reforms, which were designed to reduce the amount of money being siphoned off by intermediaries, CDC today invests an annual £2bn via private equity funds compared with £1.9bn in 2011. Of the investments in which CDC owns more than 20%, two-thirds are based in tax havens – something that the institution insists is necessary to stop it being taxed twice, but which campaigners say is a cause for concern.



“CDC has demonstrated a near-total resistance to reform by continuing to make more profit than it should and by channelling its investments through tax havens,” said Daniel Willis, an aid and climate campaigner at Global Justice Now and co-author of the report. “This ‘market knows best’ approach to development uses aid money to facilitate the extraction of wealth from the global south to the global north – the exact opposite to what any institution with a development mandate should be doing.”
Global Justice Now highlighted several CDC investments which it said were a concern. These include the Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund, which invests in private healthcare institutions around the world, and Bridge International Academies, a low-cost private school chain with significant operations in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda.
The report states: “Our research has found numerous issues with Bridge schools, including exclusion of poor and disadvantaged children; violation of health and safety and labour conditions; and a severe lack of transparency and accountability. The situation became so serious that authorities in Kenya and Uganda actually tried to stop the schools operating.”
CDC has also invested in a company which operates coal-burning cement factories in east Africa, one that owns a petroleum pipeline in Cameroon, and another that owns an oil-burning power plant in Benin.
The report states: “The evidence presented here undermines the claims made by government ministers … that CDC is ensuring that its investments will ‘soon in real terms’ be compliant with the Paris agreement on climate change.”
CDC has also invested in a company which operates coal-burning cement factories in east Africa, one that owns a petroleum pipeline in Cameroon, and another that owns an oil-burning power plant in Benin.
Willis said: “This is not development as we know it. CDC has continually failed to show how its investments are genuinely tackling poverty around the world. What’s more, the aid money being channelled through CDC is actually exacerbating inequalities, damaging the environment and undermining human rights.”



Hunger should be over – but it isn’t

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Between 1968 and 2017, the world’s population increased by 113% from 3.55 billion to 7.55 billion. 



 Over the same time period, the average global food supply per person per day jumped 27% to almost 3,000 calories.



In sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, food supply per person per day rose from 1,852 in 1961 to 2,449 in 2017 – a 32 percent increase. 



https://quillette.com/2020/02/11/the-battle-to-feed-all-of-humanity-is-over-humanity-has-won/

Defence Spending Rises

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According to the report, which measures over 170 countries, global defense spending rose 4% in 2019 compared to 2018.



  The U.S. continued to claim top spot in military expenditures, spending $638 billion in 2019. China was the second biggest spender at $185 billion. Both countries’ spending grew 6.6% compared to the prior year. But, “the trajectory of the two states’ defense spending is diverging,” wrote Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, IISS research fellow for Defence Economics and Procurement, in a related blog post. “The budget increase in the U.S. was the largest in 10 years, and spending has increased year-on-year since U.S. President Donald Trump took office. While spending is still rising in China, the pace of growth is decelerating.” As a result, the spending gap between the two countries has widened. 



The U.S. increase alone of $53.4 billion, the report added, was roughly on par with Britain’s entire defence budget.




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