While billionaire CEOs like Mark Zuckenberg make over a million times more than the average American worker every year, many families out there, whose parents work themselves to the bone every single day, will still struggle to find what to eat and where to sleep with their children tonight.
Extreme poverty continues to grow all across the country. According to an analysis released by the University of Chicago, at least 336,000 households with children live on less than two dollars a day.Oxfam report: Poorer countries going from crisis to catastrophe
In the lead up to the semi-annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank being held in Washington this week, the global aid agency Oxfam has produced a report detailing the horrendous impact of rising inflation, coming on top of the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, for almost half the world’s population.
It said the crises of extreme inequality and massive food and energy inflation, accelerated by the war in Ukraine and COVID-19, are converging to create a catastrophe for the world’s poorest people “that is unprecedented in living memory.”
The report, entitled “First Crisis, Then Catastrophe,” estimated that at least a quarter of a billion more people could be pushed into extreme poverty, defined as receiving below $1.90 per day, bringing the total to 860 million.
The number of people estimated to be living below the poverty line of $5.50 per day is already 3.3 billion, almost half the world’s population.
It noted that at the same time, billionaire wealth “has seen its biggest increase ever” with more accumulation at the top to come.
“Large corporations appear to be exploiting an inflationary environment to boost profits at consumers’ expense: soaring energy prices and margins have pushed oil company profits to record levels, while investors expect agriculture companies to rapidly become more profitable as food prices spiral,” Oxfam stated.
Inflation is rising rapidly and will far outstrip wages growth this year.
Poorer countries are being bled white by the international banks, multilateral lending institutions, including the IMF, and investment houses.
According to the report, debt servicing for all the world’s poorer countries is estimated at $43 billion for this year, equivalent to nearly half their spending on food import bills, healthcare, education and social protection combined.
The situation is even worse for the lowest income countries. In 2021 the amount spent on debt servicing and repayments was 171 percent of their combined spending on healthcare, education and social protection.
The report made clear that the very limited measures initiated at the start of the pandemic, supposedly to lessen the debt burden, the Debt Service Suspension Initiative and the Common Framework introduced by the G20, “have proven largely ineffective.”
Likewise, the much-trumpeted decision by the IMF to make available $650 billion of additional Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in August, which provides for greater access to foreign currencies without conditions being attached. The additional SDRs were not allocated in accordance with need but in line with IMF quotas which meant richer countries were the chief beneficiaries.
There were pledges by the G20 to reallocate some $100 billion but so far only $36 billion has been provided.
The financial situation confronting poorer and highly indebted countries is only going to worsen in the coming period because of the moves by the world’s major central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, to hike interest rates amid soaring inflation.
This is a recipe for financial turmoil in lower income countries that need dollars to pay for their energy, food and medical imports.
The report warned, “Several developing countries are likely to default on their debts in coming months, and will try to stave off bankruptcy as they try to maintain vital imports. This could mean drastic cuts to spending worldwide, exacerbating an already dangerous path towards austerity that countries were beginning to take with IMF backing.”
According to Oxfam representatives, whereas in 2020 the IMF had urged countries to spend money to combat the effects of the pandemic, without imposing the conditionalities that had been tied to loans in the past—measures such as cuts in social spending and privatisation of government-owned entities—these conditionalities were now returning in a large majority of loans and debt restructuring agreements.
The IMF is laying down such conditions as representatives of the government of Sri Lanka, one of the countries at the centre of the debt crisis, meet with its officials in Washington this week.
The Oxfam report provided figures showing there is more than enough money to deal with the crisis.
“A progressive wealth tax of just 2 percent on personal wealth above $5 million, rising to 3 percent for above $50 million and 5 percent for wealth above $1 billion could generate $2.52 trillion worldwide,” it said.
That amount of money would be “enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough COVID-19 vaccines for the world, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower middle-income countries” with a combined population of 3.6 billion.
But such measures will never be implemented while control of the economy remains in the hands of the representatives of the financial elites, multi-billionaires and capitalist oligarchs that comprise the governments of all countries. In fact, they are moving in the other direction.
In the US, for example, the limited so-called “billionaire tax” floated by President Biden is already effectively dead in the water. In Australia, amid an election campaign, the opposition Labor Party has announced it will support tax cuts for the wealthiest sections of the population proposed by the Liberal government, while ruling out any increase in payments to the unemployed.
As is often the case with its reports, Oxfam produced a devastating picture of the workings of the capitalist system. But as always, the height of its indictment is only matched by the depth of its political bankruptcy when it approaches the key question: what is to be done?
A single paragraph in the report said it all:
“While the COVID-19 pandemic pushed people and countries into economic crisis worldwide, the compounding effects of the Ukraine crisis mean we risk now heading towards catastrophe. But this can be averted through bold and coordinated international and national action.”
In other words, if only reason and rationality prevailed the catastrophe could be prevented. But the capitalist profit system, which all governments serve, does not operate on this basis. The refusal of all governments to undertake science-based measures to eliminate COVID-19 demonstrated that fact once again.
A system which, through its very objective logic, necessarily produces fabulous wealth for an oligarchy at one pole and poverty, death and misery for billions at the other, cannot be made to change course by appeals to see reason.
Furthermore, no matter how rational and necessary international cooperation is in a world that has never been so intimately connected, it cannot be achieved under capitalism because the profit system itself is rooted in rival and conflicting nation-states and great powers.
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Mass demonstrations spread worldwide as food, gas costs spiral
The intolerable increases to the cost of living triggered by the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine are producing a massive wave of working-class protests throughout the world. Two years into a pandemic that has killed 20 million people and still rages on, social anger that has been building up around kitchen tables and on shopfloors is now boiling over into the streets. Masses of people of all racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds are reaching the same conclusion: life cannot continue in the old way.
Fifty days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, protests are now taking place on every continent. Demonstrators defy states of emergency and respond to police repression with mobilizations of growing size and intensity. Initial protests in Peru, Sudan and Sri Lanka are not only continuing, but are now spreading to heavily populated and more urban countries. In the major imperialist powers, the same governments that plotted the present war crisis now confront growing strike movements that the trade union bureaucracies are desperately trying to hold back.
In recent days, municipal workers, government employees, oil workers, telecommunication workers and teachers in Iran have walked off the job to demand massive increases to wages and pensions. Economist Ibrahim Razzaqi told Shara newspaper that “every day society is becoming less tolerant of all its problems” and that Iran was witnessing “a popular outburst over critical living conditions.”
In Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population, large student demonstrations erupted last week over the rising price of cooking oil and the recent announcement by President Joko Widodo that he intends to stay in office for another term. Demonstrators in Jakarta, South Sulawesi, West Java and other areas confronted brutal police repression, with one protester suffering life threatening injuries.
In Pakistan, concerns within the ruling class over protests against rising prices are at the heart of the recent parliamentary removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan. The Diplomat wrote Thursday that food prices have increased 15 percent over the last year, and that, like Sri Lanka and Peru, “Pakistan is the latest victim of political instability. The existence of panic in the commodity and financial markets; a global inflationary spiral, rising food prices, and a surge in protests especially in emerging markets, shows that this process will not be confined to Pakistan or Sri Lanka only.”
In Latin America, a region once thought relatively shielded from declines of Russian and Ukrainian exports, mass demonstration took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week as a truckers’ strike has choked the country’s grain exports. El PaÃs noted Thursday that “the conflict in the street is growing together with the loss of purchasing power of the local currency” as inflation soared in April to 6.7 percent from March, with year-to-year inflation increasing to 55 percent.
A strike of truckers, taxi drivers and bus drivers shut down Honduras last week, to which the government of Xiomara Castro responded by raising fees for working class passengers.
Social discontent is also growing in the centers of world imperialism. In the United States, where inflation has surged to an annual rate of 8 percent, 30,000 doormen at luxury apartments in New York City authorized a strike Thursday. This powerful sign of opposition comes as contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers in critical industries are set to expire in the coming weeks.
In the United Kingdom, The Guardian warned in an editorial last week that the UK “is sliding into a social and economic crisis, the likes of which its people have not seen for decades. Household fuel bills are on course to top £2,400 by this autumn, while the price of a grocery shop is rocketing.” Inflation in the UK hit 7 percent last month, the highest rate since 1992.
The Guardian noted, “On one projection, one in three Britons – 23.5 million people – will be unable to afford the cost of living this year.”
In every country, strikers and protesters are fighting over matters of life and death. Global food prices have risen 34 percent since last year. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is brutal and reckless, but who can believe the crocodile tears from NATO governments and their corporate media propagandists when it is their prolongation of the war that is forcing billions to confront hunger at varying degrees of immediacy?
In impoverished West and East Africa, tens of millions face starvation. In the Middle East and North Africa, already-low food reserves will run dry in a matter of weeks. All of these are regions devastated by the impact of US wars of the past 30 years. And as the war in Ukraine drags on into the spring harvest, crops that would have fed billions of people will now lie fallow. In the months ahead, cuts to fertilizer exports from Russia and Belorussia will reduce global staple crop yields by up to half.
Last week, the United Nations published a stark warning of the emerging upsurge of the global working class. The document, titled “Global impact of war in Ukraine on food, energy and finance system,” states that “the war in Ukraine, in all its dimensions, is producing alarming cascading effects to a world economy already battered by COVID-19 and climate change, with particularly dramatic impacts on developing countries.”
The UN warned that 60 percent of governments in developing countries are so heavily indebted to the world’s banks and corporations that they will be unable to provide subsidies to those affected by rising prices. Another key factor in the explosiveness of recent protests, the UN acknowledged, is the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the working class, which has produced “great social and economic scarring.”
What is now emerging, the UN wrote, is a “perfect storm” of social discontent: “In an environment of already high levels of socioeconomic stress due to the impacts of COVID-19, the rise in food prices threatens knock-on effects of social unrest.”
These nervous statements from the major institutions of capitalist rule show that the imperialist governments have failed in their effort to use war to deflect from growing domestic tensions. On the contrary, the escalating drive to world war is producing social explosions.
The spontaneous eruption of protests throughout the world is an objective process, produced by the enormous crisis of the world capitalist system. The transformation of this objective process into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of the building of the revolutionary leadership, the International Committee of the Fourth International.
The ICFI, its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees are holding an online rally May 1, May Day, the day of international working-class solidarity.
Report: Joe Biden to Focus on Domestic Crises After Failing to Prevent War in Ukraine
President Joe Biden intends to shift his focus to domestic crises after failing to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with sanctions.
Biden will direct his attention to the mounting domestic crises impacting American workers, Politico reported. By focusing on Biden’s failures at home, White House officials reportedly feel his poll numbers may increase heading into the November midterms. Democrats currently trail Republicans in nearly every important midterm poll, including on voter enthusiasm, key issues, and the generic ballot.
“Voters, as sympathetic as they are to Ukraine, are getting a little fatigued,” Democrat pollster Celinda Lake told the publication. “And they’re wondering: We’re spending all this money abroad, but what are we spending here at home?”
The White House is undoubtedly aware of its 40-year-high inflation and fears the midterm elections may be a referendum on Biden’s poor management of the economy. As a result, “a concerted effort is being launched to reemphasize to Americans that the president understands their pain and is trying to help.”
To express his sympathy, Biden plans to spend taxpayers’ money traveling throughout the nation on Air Force One. On Tuesday, he will visit Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to speak about pumping more money into the economy during record-high inflation. On Friday, Biden will fly to Seattle to speak about how Americans’ economic well-being will improve by purchasing an expensive electric vehicle to fight global warming.
Biden’s transition from foreign affairs to domestic crises comes after he contradicted his administration on the effectiveness and purpose of imposing sections on Russia. Biden told reporters in February that “no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” referencing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But both Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan had previously claimed that sanctions were implemented to deter Russia’s aggression.
“The President believes that sanctions are intended to deter,” Sullivan said.
With the White House’s foreign policy in tatters, polling suggests that 62 percent of voters say Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were president. Sixty-nine percent of voters believe the nation is on the wrong track under Biden. Just 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance. Fewer than 25 percent of voters strongly believe Biden is mentally fit, healthy, and stable. Only 36 percent of Democrats want Biden on the 2024 ticket.
The polling reflects Biden’s challenges at home.
Inflation has reached 40-year highs and is reportedly costing Americans an extra $433 per month. The invasion of the southern border remains ongoing. Fentanyl overdoses have increased. Gas prices have soared to record highs. Weekly wages have shrunk. Supply chains have broken. And the deadly Afghan withdrawal has deeply embarrassed the nation.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Inflation Here to Stay Despite White House ‘Temporary, Transitory’ Claim
President Joe Biden’s 40-year-high inflation is here to stay despite the White House claiming for months that rising costs were “temporary, transitory.”
“Inflation is pushing prices higher and higher, and some of those costs may never come back down to the levels Americans were accustomed to before the pandemic,” Axios reported Monday. [T]he good old days of cheap goods, and even cheaper services, may be long gone.”
“Gas, food and other consumer prices have soared, with no end in sight,” the article added.
Biden’s inflation will reportedly cost consumers an extra $5,200 in 2022, or $433 per month. According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, inflation already cost consumers an estimated $3,500 in 2021, impacting low-income families the hardest.
Last year, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that Biden’s inflation would only be “temporary” and “transitory.”
“Obviously, our analysis is going to be done by our economic experts. They continue to convey that they believe the impact will be temporary, transitory,” Psaki said in May.
After inflation kept rising, Psaki was asked again in December if she thought inflation was still transitory. “Given what Jerome Powell is now saying, does the administration, does the President acknowledge that inflation is more entrenched and not transitory?” NBC News’s Kristen Welker questioned.
Psaki responded by lengthening the “transitory” timeline into 2022 while suggesting the soaring prices were rooted in the pandemic.
“It [inflation] will ease next year, and that our supply chain issues and higher prices are rooted in the pandemic,” she said.
Biden’s inflation has not eased. Instead, inflation has only become worse and will continue to soar in 2022, Barrons reported. Inflation has become so bad that Goldman Sachs estimated the Federal Reserve has a 35 percent chance of triggering a recession as a result of tightening monetary policy to cool inflation.
“Eleven out of 14 tightening cycles in the U.S. since World War II were followed by a recession within two years, but only eight of them can be even partially attributed to Fed tightening — and soft or ‘softish’ landings have been more common more recently,” Bloomberg reported.
Biden has struggled with messaging on inflation. What was once called “transitory” inflation is now “Putin’s price hike.” Before that shift, CNN labeled inflation “good,” but the Washington Post noted that some reframe it as “corporate greed.”
“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world,” Biden claimed in Iowa last week. “So everything is going up. We saw it in today’s inflation data.”
Biden’s claim that inflation is only a result of Putin’s actions is incorrect. Inflation was climbing well before “Putin’s price hike.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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