Like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and other imperialist organizations, the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) recently announced that the forecast for global economic recovery will be revised downward in light of the Omicron virus variant that emerged a few weeks ago .1
Predictably, the OECD claimed that “a swifter roll-out of COVID vaccines” will improve the economy even though this has not stopped social and economic decline so far, and even though President Joe Biden, South African leaders, Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, and many others around the world, even Anthony Fauci have stressed that the Omicron variant generally causes mostly mild symptoms and does not warrant hysteria and panic. The OECD’s “the-vaccine-will-solve-all-economic-problems” narrative is evident in many news items and publications on its website.
The ruling elite and their media have been dogmatically insisting for 20 consecutive months that elusive economic recovery depends largely on giving everyone multiple vaccination shots with or without their consent—something that makes Big Pharma extremely happy.
But so far neither billions of vaccination shots nor top-down lockdowns have stopped the deepening economic and social crisis confronting the majority of humanity. Lockdowns have devastated the livelihoods of millions and increased poverty, debt, unemployment, inequality, misery, and depression worldwide. Millions of businesses have permanently disappeared in less than 20 months. How is this an effective response to a health crisis? Will more debt, poverty, inequality, unemployment, and insecurity improve people’s health and well-being? Do security and good health come from constant instability, fear, and uncertainty? Can an economy controlled and dominated by the top 0.1% even meet the needs of the people? Not surprisingly, a key feature of the “COVID Pandemic” has been even greater concentration of socially-produced wealth in fewer private hands, bringing inequality worldwide to even more barbaric levels. Currently, “the poorest half of the planet’s population owns about 2% of its riches”. In addition, high levels of inflation are spreading globally, thereby decreasing people’s purchasing power even further. Whatever wage or salary gains many people may be getting are being rapidly eaten up by rising inflation.
Nearly two years after the “COVID Pandemic” started economies around the world are plagued by many serious intractable economic problems. It has been a huge struggle for the rich and their political and media representatives to anchor themselves in any legitimacy, and given the chaotic, anarchic, and violent way everything is being approached by the rich and their entourage, more tragedies are in store.
The necessity for an economy, society, and institutions controlled by the people themselves has never been sharper and more urgent. The rich and their cheerleaders cannot offer a way forward. They are historically exhausted, unfit to rule, and determined to preserve obsolete arrangements that keep everyone marginalized and disempowered. They reject social responsibility and block any striving of the people for a better world. The all-sided crisis plaguing people everywhere can only be solved by people relying on themselves instead of the rich and their representatives.
- Imperialist organizations like the OECD regularly over-project economic growth and thus they routinely revise their projections downwards several times a year, causing many to lose faith in their ability to accurately cognize economic realities and conditions.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
