The COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented nationwide protests against racial inequity in 2020 shined a necessary light on the systemic racism embedded in our country’s policies and institutions. The Child Tax Credit is one striking example. From the time it was enacted in 1997 until this year, the Child Tax Credit, which was expressly intended to help struggling families, was not fully available to 50 percent of the Black children in this country (as compared to just 20 percent of white children) because their families’ incomes were too low. This statistic should stop us all in our tracks.
As Congress continues to debate one of the most significant pieces of legislation in our lifetimes — a nearly $2 trillion Build Back Better “reconciliation” bill that would expand childcare, health care, and education funding among so many other overdue structural supports to our economy — we need to push for an extension of the Child Tax Credit beyond 2022 and make it permanent.
This is a critical opportunity to not only create an infrastructure that supports historic, sustainable long-term economic growth but also helps close the racial wealth gap.
For the first time since its enactment, the Child Tax Credit included a temporary increase and refundability provision that made it fully available to families whose incomes are too low to owe any federal income tax and distributed those payments periodically, instead of just once per year during tax season. This change in policy helped prevent millions of families from slipping into poverty during the pandemic and allowed working parents to start building savings to offset future economic downturns.
Congress is now debating whether to make these temporary changes permanent, which researchers from Columbia University estimate would cut the child poverty rate for Black children by more than 50 percent and for all children by 45 percent. This would lift over 4 million children above the poverty line and provide significant long-term benefits for children’s academic progress, health, and future earnings as adults.
We are already seeing significant gains from the temporarily expanded Child Tax Credit. Within just the first month of the initial payment being issued, the number of households with children reporting that they did not have enough to eat dropped by 3.3 million or nearly one-third. By boosting household consumption of goods and services and spurring economic activity in local communities, the impact of the Child Tax Credit has extended far beyond households with children and those experiencing poverty.
An issue at the heart of the current debate in Congress — that making the expanded Child Tax Credit permanent could discourage parents from working — is unfounded. More than 400 economists recently signed a letter of support for making expanded availability permanent, explaining, “recent empirical studies suggest that the income provided through the program is unlikely to meaningfully reduce parental labor supply.” In fact, according to a new study by Humanity Forward, 94 percent of Child Tax Credit recipients said they planned to continue working or even pursue overtime opportunities since they would be able to afford child care and other child-rearing expenses. Similarly, the National Academy of Sciences projected that 99.5% of working parents receiving the Child Tax Credit would continue to work.
Beyond a poverty-fighting tool, the expanded Child Tax Credit has the power to set millions of Black families on an upward path toward long-term economic and social mobility. By making it permanently fully refundable at current levels — $3,600 per child for children under five and $3,000 per child for children between six and seventeen — the Child Tax Credit would generate an increase of $76 billion in children’s future earnings in adulthood and nearly $536 billion in increased benefits caused by children’s improved health outcomes. This kind of economic mobility benefits the entire national economy — the estimated $800 billion current and future value of this tax credit to society is roughly eight times the $100 billion initial cost. It is rare that any public policy achieves such a high return on investment.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift over 4 million children out of poverty and shore up structural damage in the U.S. economy by correcting a provision in our tax code that has systemically prevented Black families from thriving for decades. Congress needs to make the fully refundable expanded Child Tax Credit permanent and continue to distribute those payments periodically. There should be no debate.
YOUTH living in Windhoek’s 8ste Laan informal settlement are demanding a basic income grant (BIG), while accusing the nation’s leaders of intentionally keeping the country in an enforced state of poverty since independence.
Christa Nekwaya (20), who was speaking at a BIG Coalition media conference today in Otjomuise, accused Namibia’s three presidents of being the engineers of poverty in the country.
Another speaker, Kevin Wessels (25), said the government should be held accountable for the low employment rate and poverty in the country.
“The BIG can help improve the lives of the youth. The N$750 we got from the government as Covid-19 relief funds last year has proven that it can help alleviate and reduce poverty,” Wessels said.
He added that the youth are told to create opportunities for themselves, but are expected to do so without funds.
“We are demanding a basic income grant. We are telling the president that the 42 000 people he wants to give the BIG to is nonsense. How do you determine that only 42 000 people are going to get it? That is where you create inequality,” Wessels said.
Josephina Nekwaya (21) said the majority of the country lives in poverty, which has exacerbated unemployment.
“Our supposed freedom only exists on paper but not in practice because we, the majority, which is 1.6 million Namibians, live in our own country as impoverished slaves and are struggling to survive while being lied to that Namibia is doing well,” she said.
On February 1, 2022, the relief student-loan borrowers have had since the start of the pandemic will be stripped away and they will be thrown back into repayment — whether they’re ready or not.
And most of them are not.
The Student Debt Crisis Center, in partnership with Savi — a social impact technology startup — released the results of the fourth installment of the Student Debt x COVID-19 series on Wednesday examining the impact of the pandemic on student-loan borrowers. It found that although student-loan company communication to borrowers has improved since June, 89% of fully-employed borrowers say they do not feel financially secure enough to resume payments in a few months.
One in five of the respondents said they will never feel financially-secure enough to restart their student-loan payments.
We don’t want a BIG out of laziness, we need it because, without it, our poverty will kill us. If I ask any woman or man in my community if they want to work, they will say ‘I am ready to work — just tell me where and when’. The BIG and decent-paying jobs must happen together.
My name is Israel Nkuna, a community activist from a small village called Mahlathi near Giyani in Limpopo, who receives the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. Every month, I assist around 500 people in all nine provinces with their SRD grant applications.
I have serious questions about the ‘household grant’ that we hear the National Treasury is considering.
Who is the head of a household — is it a man who has a wife and children in Mahlathi but spends months living and working in North West, where he has another family? Which household will receive the household grant? What will happen if the man receives the household grant and withholds it from the family? Or if the mother receives the grant, but she’s not able to spend it on herself and her children because of an abusive husband?
What about a family with no parents, just young brothers and sisters, some with drinking and drug problems? Who receives the household grant, and how will you make sure everyone in that family can buy food and put money aside?
How will the government register all these families and heads of families, and make sure this grant gets to the people who need it?
These questions trouble me, especially when I think about all the problems we’ve had with the SRD grant. The Treasury says they have consulted with people. But they haven’t consulted with people like me and those in my village — if they had, they would know the problems we face.
The majority of people I help with SRD applications don’t know technology and don’t have smartphones to apply for the grant. Even if I can assist them, the Sassa system often declines them. How will a family grant application work any better?
We need a Basic Income Grant/guarantee (BIG) without a complicated, faulty application process. We need a BIG at a decent level that’s given to individuals so they can access their own funds.
And we need it now.
There are many things we have to pay for to survive in my community. A simple thing like getting water is a problem — I have to spend R5 for 20 litres of water and I don’t have a choice. We have a gravel road that is in a bad state — if we need to buy something in town, if we have to go to a government office, if we want to get our sick relatives to a clinic, we have to pay to get there. We don’t have a choice.
If we want to look for work, we have to pay, too. But there is no work to be found for many of us in our community. For someone over 40, if they don’t have work now, they are not going to find it for the rest of their life.
We don’t want a BIG out of laziness, we need it because without it, our poverty will kill us. If I ask any woman or man in my community if they want to work, they will say ‘I am ready to work — just tell me where and when’. The BIG and decent-paying jobs must happen together.
My community believes in education. But our daughters and sons cannot learn if they cannot eat. They cannot learn if they can’t afford the bus or the taxi fare to get to school. They cannot learn if they see their family around them starving.
A BIG would support families so it’s easier to send our daughters and sons back to class.
For those people like me, who do receive the SRD, we are able to buy maize meal, cooking oil, potatoes, soap, and washing powder. But R350 is equal to R11 a day — that’s not enough to live on. I’m unable to buy clothes and healthy foods. I’m unable to save money to go to the clinic when I feel sick. I’m unable to save to pay a funeral parlour for a deceased relative, or to buy the many things that are needed in a household.
The BIG would be a guarantee — not a handout — that everyone in this country can have their basic needs met. What else should our government be working towards?
Let’s make the BIG something South Africans can be proud of, not something to be ashamed of. Let it save lives, save our daughters and sons from starvation, let our women live safely, let all people live with dignity, give them a chance to build something and contribute to their communities and our economy. Let us resist a household grant and insist on a BIG for individuals.
Only around a quarter of people eligible to vote chose to cast their votes for the ANC in the recent election. The mass stay away from the polls is a mass rejection of the ANC, along with the DA and the EFF which could not attract the support of significant numbers of former ANC voters. When you do not respect the dignity of the people and you undermine their power you always pay the price.
We have always said that the day is coming where South Africans will no longer have the loyalty to the ANC and will vote them out of power. This election shows that that day is coming.
We must never forget that this country was liberated from apartheid by ordinary people, by the long history of popular organisation at a mass scale running from the ICU to the UDF. We must not forget the Durban strikes of 1973, the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and the uprising in cities and towns across the country that began in 1984. We must always remember the price that ordinary people paid for our liberation from apartheid.
However, we do also remember the great men and women who led the ANC, people like OR Tambo, Chris Hani, Dorothy Nyembe and many others who gave their lives to the fight against the evils of apartheid. We must also acknowledge that when the mass struggles on the factory floors and in communities brought apartheid to the brink of collapse the majority of the people accepted the ANC as their leaders.
But now, twenty-seven years after the end of apartheid, we are ruled by political gangsters in some parts of the country. When we organise and march against corruption we are organising against the day to day theft of our own futures. When houses are actually built they are sold by corrupt councillors. We have seen this in Cato Crest, KwaNdengezi, Lindelani, Cornubia, Mount Moriah and in many places around the eThekwini Municipality.
When there is development it is imposed on the people. Grassroots planning is taken as criminal, as a political threat to be crushed. We have seen this in In Tembisa outside Johannesburg where the ANC undermined people’s democracy by imposing reblocking. This is a process that needs to take place through democratic engagement with the communities. However the ward councillors ignored the views of the people.
Evictions take place with impunity and at gunpoint through private security companies or the Anti Land Invasion Unit. They are carried out in brazen violation of the law, and sometimes court orders too. The politicians continue to assume that they are above the law and that we are beneath the law.
As a result of austerity and corruption we are left in the mud without water, electricity and sanitation and violently attacked when we organise land reform, urban planning , service provision and food sovereignty from below. We cannot continue to live without land and work, to have our dignity vandalised and to live in the mud like pigs year after year while a few political elites live in luxury at the expense of the poor. Many families continue to go to sleep without any bread on the table. The same system that makes the rich to be rich makes the poor to be poor.
We are beaten, arrested, tortured, jailed and murdered when we stand up for our dignity. ‘Land or death’ has become a common saying because people know that to struggle for land is to risk death. ‘Phansi nge ANC!’ has become a common slogan in rallies and big meetings.
The ANC has become the enemy of the people. It is just as Frantz Fanon warned us.
We have always said that the anger of the people may go in many directions. Some of those who took their votes away from the ANC took them to right-wing and xenophobic parties. This is a dangerous development. Nobody is poor because their neighbour was born in another country. We were made poor by colonialism and kept poor by the ANC.
Prior to these elections we have called on our members, of which there are more than 100 000 in good standing, as well as those who support our struggle, to refuse to vote for their grave, to refuse to vote for the ANC. Our members, many of our supporters headed this call and huge numbers of other people also refused to vote for the ANC. For the first time the ANC could not win a majority in Durban and the municipality is now a hung municipality. The ANC will have to depend on other parties in order to run the municipality again.
The outcome in these elections are not about the factions in the ANC, they are a result of years of the abandonment and repression of the poor. They are about years of gangsters continuingly looting the state while we continue to live in shacks of indignity. But there are consequences for undermining the poor.
Now the poor have shown their power.
The ANC, DA and EFF will all leave the poor to continue to be poor. There is no hope from these parties. The only hope that we have is ourselves. We will continue to mobilise and organise the power of the impoverished from below to build our power from below to ensure that all of us in the shack settlements, the townships and rural areas find solutions to move forward, abolish poverty and build a real democracy.
A prolific writer and researcher for seven decades, Miller’s greatest talent was putting that knowledge to work on behalf of activist groups in the United States and around the world.
Joey King, a community services professional and student living with mental illness, details the systemic pressures that keep her ‘dirt poor’ and homeless.
I googled the term “dirt poor”. I know it comes from a time when people couldn’t afford to have flooring or even straw in their homes, but I wanted to see what it might mean here, in Australia. Many dictionaries said “suffering extreme poverty” or “very poor”, but Dictionary.com states: “lacking nearly all material means or resources for living”. This resonates for me, a 52 year-old woman living in Australia in 2021.
I am part of the fastest growing demographic for homelessness and poverty in Australia. I have had a severe and persistent mental illness for most of my life and I have been living in my car outside Perth, in the south west of Western Australia, for the past two years.
I do not have the material means or resources to secure viable safe housing or employment. I do not have choices that will help me move on from where I find myself. I do not want to be this person but cannot see a way things will change.
In Perth, homelessness has risen almost 60% in 2021. It is not going to stop until people that the Government is prepared to listen to speak out loud and demand true action, not the token efforts of events the rich are invited to participate in that raises money for a few or one week in a year of marketing to remind people that people have mental illnesses, experience homelessness and live in poverty. We are desperate and real change needs to occur – or the chasm that exists between rich and poor will continue, and ever more people will be living in poverty.
I’m educated, articulate, and used to be involved in my community through work and volunteering, yet I have lived out of my car since July 2019.
Have I asked for help? Yes!
I used to work and teach Community Services, and I know how to research to find and ask for help.
Have I been helped? No.
I am looking at least another two years before public housing becomes available.
My Jobseeker payments are approximately 38% below the recognised poverty line in Australia. I miss meals, juggle my medication, have no social life, and wonder how I can be expected to look for employment when I might go days without a shower or have been awake all night because I’m in fear of my surroundings? I am one of the 40% of women my age who live in poverty. I am ‘dirt poor’.
I am constantly stressed, afraid and triggered. My mental health has been further destabilised because of my financial and housing situation. Women like me experience (in no particular order): uncertainty, fear, loneliness, truly being cold, vulnerability, mental and physical health decline, risk of being assaulted or being moved on by police, discrimination, judgement, assumptions you are an alcoholic or drug addict or that you chose to be homeless.
I’m not what people assume homeless people should look like, therefore not considered desperate enough to be helped.
As a 52-year-old woman without children, I am the lowest priority for both government and social services – as I was informed by WA Department of Housing staff. I tell people I’m homeless and they just shrug likes it’s no big thing. I wonder: when did the wellbeing of some of the most vulnerable people in this country become so dismissed? When did homelessness and poverty become normalised in people’s eyes? When did people stop caring?
This year, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has delivered a record budget surplus of about $5 billion. This money has the potential to end all street homelessness in Western Australia – and also build 15,000 social/public houses, end all public housing waiting lists and all other forms of homelessness, like couch surfing. The WA Government has pledged to spend $884m to build 3,300 social housing properties – far short of the required number. Luke Henriques-Gomes, Social affairs and Inequality Editor at Guardian Australia, wrote last week that 44 homeless people have died so far this year in Western Australia. These people didn’t need to die. They died because they were “lacking nearly all material means or resources for living”. They, like me, were “dirt poor”.
Poverty is a national and state problem that needs the support of business, community, and government leaders across Australia, to ensure we are heard, supported, and given choices so that we can be part of a community, gain back what we have lost and be seen again.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson
The effect of Rishi Sunak’s budget has potentially become clear. Several think tanks have calculated that despite measures around things like Universal Credit, the poorest people in the UK will still be worse off. And the picture is even bleaker for the most deprived of all of us. Because the think tanks have not even been able to quantify just how much worse off the most destitute in society will be.
The budget: losers and losers?
The Canary previously reported on Wednesday 27 October’s budget. It noted that Sunak made some changes to Universal Credit and the National Living Wage. These included reducing the Universal Credit taper rate from 63% to 55%. Sunak tweeted that the taper rate:
withdraws support gradually as people work more hours. It is currently 63%, so for every extra £1 someone earns, their Universal Credit is reduced by 63p.
As The Canary noted:
Around 5.5 million families were hit by the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit. So, over 3.6 million of them, including many sick and disabled people, are still worse off – because the changes to Universal Credit will only affect 1.9 million people. Moreover, as The Canary previously reported, the £20-a-week uplift was inadequate to begin with. With inflation continuing to rise, the value keeps diminishing.
Think tank the Resolution Foundation has crunched the numbers further. As it summed up:
Around 75 per cent of the 4.4 million households on Universal Credit will be worse off as a result of decisions to take away the £20 per week uplift despite the Chancellor’s new Universal Credit measures in the Budget.
But the devil is in the detail. And the Resolution Foundation have found that the negative effect of the budget varies depending on how poor you are.
Haemorrhaging money
Overall, the changes in Universal Credit don’t fully make up for the loss of the £20-a-week uplift for many. The poorest people are set to lose the most:
The budget also hits poorer lone parents on Universal Credit. The Resolution Foundation says that a lone parent with one child who works 20 hours at the minimum wage will actually be £5 a week worse off by April 2022:
A single adult not working will be £20 a week worse off:
A couple with two children, where one adult works full time on the minimum wage, will only see a £4 weekly increase in their money:
However, the Resolution Foundation didn’t look at is the poorest 5% of households. It breaks its analysis down into 20 income brackets. But it says that:
We exclude the bottom 5 per cent, due to concerns about the reliability and volatility of data for this group.
Spiralling poverty?
The New Economics Foundation’s analysis also paints a similar picture. It found that:
the poorest fifth of people would have been £380 a year better off on average if the £20-a-week uplift had stayed in place instead
And it said that if Sunak had kept the £20-a-week uplift, this:
would have prevented 300,000 more people from being pushed into poverty this winter.
But like the Resolution Foundation, the New Economics Foundation did no calculations for the bottom 5% poorest people. So, while the negative effects of the budget are stark for some of the poorest people, how it will hit the most destitute in society is still unclear.
The most destitute, forgotten?
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) gave some indication of who would be affected and the scale of it. As it noted:
The position of those out of work, especially those without children, remains precarious indeed. No increase in out of work benefits [so-called legacy benefits like Jobseeker’s Allowance, JSA] for the childless unemployed for half a century leaves their living standards dramatically trailing those of the working majority. The gap between the generosity of the furlough scheme and the meanness of our out of work benefit system could hardly be more stark.
In other words, people on social security like JSA and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) are hit the hardest, and these people may well be in the other think tanks’ missing bottom 5% bracket. It’s of concern that neither the Resolution Foundation nor the New Economics Foundation gave this data. Because as The Canary previously reported, 1.9 million people on these legacy benefits are sick and disabled people – who should be protected by the Equality Act.
More misery to come
It seems that after over ten years of austerity and then the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the poorest people in the UK will now face another decade of misery. Sunak’s budget has done little for those lower down the UK’s economic pecking order. But it’s done the least for those that are on the bottom rungs of the system through no fault of their own. Sick and disabled people and the country’s poorest individuals have been thrown under the bus by a government intent on pushing people to the fringes of society.
The they, of course, are the capitalists. The bankers. The mortgage companies. The housing agencies. The alphabet soup of agencies which will squeeze blood from turnips and your progeny’s progeny.
The media is the medium for their poison, all those tricks of the mind, subliminal and overt, messages that cause chaos, the mass hysteria, the constant fear, the rage against the ‘other.’ And, the other are our fellow citizens, victims, most of us, sliding and slipping and slurrying down the proverbial drain.
Housing management companies; i.e., apartment management companies, now property management companies. We are talking about putting people out on the streets management companies. Black Rock or Black Stone, or the top (largest) property management companies in USA are evil doers, in the words of the criminal, George W. Bush. Terrorists in our own land.
Take a look at the number of “units” these thieves “own,”; i.e., manage! National Multifamily Housing Council — 50 Largest Apartment Managers
Again, the ‘they’ in the subheading are those who look at citizens as, well, semi-useless renters, eaters, drivers, patients, breathers, breeders. UNITS as in a person’s home, shelter, abode, gathering place, roof-running water-place-to-raise-a-life-or-a-family. In the hands of management companies, who are in Gucci suits and are beholding to the devils of capitalism: money schemers, bond holders, the top echelon of this Ponzi scheme. No national red alert state by state around eviction moratorium running out, or the exorbitant rents and sickening inflated cost of houses, new or preowned? Instead, this Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum Administration is saber-nuke rattling with China and Russia. Instead, this Brokeback Administration is pushing Jab of the Month on every living mammal in the USA. But real change, real safety, real social contracts? Never in the Art of the Deal shit-hole that is the Democratic and Republican mentality, which is for us, useful idiots, mental disease!
I have dealt with some of these property management (killer) outfits. Recently, with one of my clients — homeless veteran, diabetes, amputated leg from the knee down, other chronic illnesses — I went through email-telephone-snail mail hell. Zero response about his one apartment we landed that needed some ADA addition so he could get out of the bloody apartment in his wheelchair. I’ve written about Pinnacle (number three on that list above with 172,000 ‘units’). My client had a Rotary Club and Boy Scout unit and a construction company ready to put in a sound, safe, nice pathway so he could exit and enter his apartment.
Nothing from Pinnacle after hours spent attempting a two-way communication with them. I did get an apartment manager, in the Portland apartment complex office, who was from Ukraine, and who was, again, in this shit-hole country, afraid of rocking the boat, afraid of really helping me get to the top brass. Even the top brass, via email and snail mail, did not respond. You can’t even pull the old wounded military veteran with chronic illness card to get to their heart-strings, because, they have no heart — just a big set of investment-banking-real estate accounts.
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
― W.E.B. DuBois
Michael Hudson, again, explains how messed up we are in USA with this rentier system. This system of penury, three steps to poverty hustle. And Corporate/Mainstream Media are in with this scam. Don’t get confused with the title, Super-imperialism, Michael Hudson’s book. He goes to the heart of this USA scam:
So, I am talking about even redneck Texas, Dallas, where working class folk are seeing that $1,100 a month one bedroom apartment rent jump to $1,800 in November. Just like that, oh, that Lone Star Shit Hole State. But wait, that jump is happening all over the land. Every rotten governor who dares go on TV to express their Jab-Jab-Jabberwocky and their Unvaccinated-Going-to-get-sacked-turned-away-from-everywhere-no-medical-help-no-entitlements-no schooling sick fascist soft-shoe Vaudeville Big Pharma Blue Face bullshit, well, they are the Paper-Pharma Tigers, with state legislatures as pimped out by corporations and US Chamber of Commerce shits to the point of massive infrastructure failure, pot holes as big as DMZ craters, dirty water, dirty air, zero housing for the 80 percent, no bus drivers for the kiddos. This is America, the land of the Survival of the Fittest, of Richest, or Most Connected, or Most Sociopathic!
This is what these whippersnappers in the Blue States and Red States do — privatize EVERYTHING, since we are almost useless eaters and useless breathers. Useful, to them, as they call us their “useful idiots.” Title any way you want to: “Retirees Flee City Medicare Program as Deadline Looms for Move to Private Health Plan” or, “New York City Retirees Refusing to Eat the Medicare Advantage Dogfood“
So, no rent control, no national housing plan, no holding the US Chamber of Commerce and the other 10,000 thuggery lobbying groups for the building and paving and clear-cutting industries to the people’s standards. And, yes, a few brethren send me link and story after story and link. It’s what I have been feeling and seeing since age 13. Yes, the ugly reality of kill squads, School of the Americas, in Central America. Yes, in Arizona, age 13, after years overseas, seeing the government, the administrations, and their policy of undocumented folk from US-spit upon countries and their death squads coming over the borderline, illegally. Imagine that, people as illegals, and worse, as aliens, from another planet! Media and the newspapers I worked for, I fought those terms — illegal alien. Sick sick roots of this slaver country. Look at this, 15 years ago, with the old web site, Dissident Voice: “This Land is Their Land, and We Are the Illegal Aliens.”
Here, Ferlinghetti — from that little book, Poetry as Insurgent Art!
What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it. (A voice in the wilderness!)
If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic.
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words.
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti, pp.2-3
This headline, in the context of housing crisis, job crisis and, well, the supply chain made up crisis, which Michael Hudson talks about above with Blumenthal and Norton. “Biden says US will go to war with China to defend Taiwan”!
US President Biden bluntly declared at a Town Hall meeting on Thursday that the US was committed to going to war against China in defense of Taiwan. The statement is another provocative step that undermines the basis of US-China diplomatic relations and intensifies the already acute tensions between the two countries. (source)
These are not normal human beings, any of them in these dastardly administrations — Nixon-Ford-Carter-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden. Oh, historically, it gets much much worse. Just the health care crises after crises, and get some slice of the National Health Services in Britain which my aunts and cousins and uncles in the old days used as ways to be treated with dignity for medical ailments. It’s all gone the way of dog food, Reagan/Thatcher, on down the line, Blair/Clinton, Obama/Trump/Biden. More news and analyses coming from a hip-hop guy, than anything from the Fox-MSNBC-CNN-Et Al crap:
Speaking of those great health authorities, those alphabet soup acronym junk science folk from our own FDA, get a grip on this during the planned pandemic:
That FDA, even reported on brokeback NBC: ‘Even the website of the approved product, R.J. Reynolds’ Vuse, which offers “7 Bold Colors, 3 Premium Flavors, 3 Nicotine Levels” along with sleek accessories like pretty “racing wraps” and holsters, says on top: “WARNING: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.” But the FDA claimed that with vaping, “the potential benefit to smokers who switch completely or significantly reduce their cigarette use, would outweigh the risk to youth.” Apparently the argument is: It’s OK if young people get addicted to vaping nicotine because they will now be able to buy e-cigarettes to later quit.’
You know, the FDA in cahoots with the other great Pharma Folk, the self reporting Jewish Family, a la Sackler/Purdue:
Oh, it’s on Hulu, and it is a protracted, goofy drama of the St. Elsewhere kind. SO protracted, so long, but from Macy’s book. Oxycontin. Man, that dope in the white-blue-yellow-pink pill. Talk about emblematic of Pfizer/Merck/GSK/The Lot of them!
Curtis Wright was the FDA’s deputy director overseeing anesthetics and addiction products during the time OxyContin was being approved. In this position, Wright played a key role in allowing the deceptive marketing that suggested OxyContin was non-addictive. Particular focus has fallen on a special label issued by the FDA specifically for OxyContin which read “Delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.” As depicted in Dopesick, this label was used by sales representatives to sell OxyContin as a treatment for moderate pain to skeptical doctors like the one played by former Batman star Michael Keaton. However, Purdue had conducted no actual studies to support this claim and Wright knew it. In Dopesick, FDA employees also confirm the person who approved of this label was Curtis Wright. (source)
Nah, we can’t call these people evil. We can’t call their business dealings illegal. We can’t call into question their ethics. We can’t question where they developed such sick marketing. We can’t look at their origins, their friends, their rabbis, their associations with family lines that go way back. That, my kind reader, would be, well, in the words of racists and fascists, anti-Semitic?
Well, I guess I can leave the origins stories up to the, well,
“How the Sackler family built a pharma dynasty and fueled an American calamity”
In ‘Empire of Pain,’ Patrick Radden Keefe details the humble Jewish immigrant roots of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and how it is evading justice despite being behind the opioid crisis
In the 1960s, esteemed psychiatrist/genius ad man Dr. Arthur Sackler cemented his family’s massive fortune when his marketing strategy transformed diazepam, better known as Valium, from just another drug produced by his client Hoffman-La Roche into the top-selling “wonder” drug in the United States between 1968 and 1982.
Though the Jewish-American Sackler, whose parents immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe, initially encountered antisemitism, the wealth that he brought his family helped change all that.
Along with his psychiatrist brothers Mortimer and Raymond, Sackler would see enormous success marketing pharmaceuticals directly to doctors. The family delved into philanthropy in addition to pharma, and the name once snubbed by antisemites soon adorned prestigious educational and cultural institutions, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Louvre.
Yet more stories coming from friends that define CAPITALISM, and that is the C which is the big Corrupt, Colluding, Conspiratorial, Contagious, Calamitous, Corrosive, Cancerous. That is the soft shoe here — the C-C-C-C-C-C-C of Capitalism, with those Seven Deadly Sinful C’s! And just to make a quick aside, sort of the Robin Leech, The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous detour, get a load of this set of seven deadly sinful C’s: Living: “The Super-Rich Are Forming a New Exclusive Club. For $180,000, a three-year membership includes investment opportunities, access to West Point generals, confidential support groups and private getaways.” (source, again, the 7 Sinful C’s Bloomberg News [sic])
Nah, never off with their heads!
[Tag: Richard Branson, from left, during an R360 networking tennis match with Michael Cole and Christopher Ryan, a former Tiger 21 chair in Texas and Puerto Rico and chief executive officer of GoBundance, a professional networking group. Courtesy of R360]
And these fella’s are controlling the narrative around 5/6G, Fake Green Capitalism, World Economic Forum’s “The Deplorables/Barely Useful Idiots Will Be Soylent Green” project of massive anal and biometric and cellular surveillance, and, then this bizarrely vapid story about “the only way to save the earth — read, saving/protecting/growing the billionaires’ and millionaires’ wealth, power, ego, land, families — is with, err, the billionaires’ and millionaires’ great know-how and techie future.”
Oh, Canada, the tail and hind teat of USA: “Why we must embrace geoengineering and other technologies to stop the climate crisis” by Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, University of Winnipeg. I’ll quote her, and just the two paragraphs say it all for me, and alas, while I do come from academia, albeit remedial college courses, writing courses, a la adjunct/freeway flyer, I have to say that my dealings with sustainability and green pornography/greenwashing experts over the years (yes, I ‘graduated’ from the University of British Columbia’s Green/Sustainability Summer Institute mumbo-jumbo course) has pretty much gelled the reality: most academicians are very-very much corruptible and corrupting, back to the 7 Very Sinful C’s of Capitalism:
Diplomacy aside, it’s time to do more than agree to cut emissions. Some scientists say an engineered climate recovery must be taken seriously, with aggressive and deliberate management strategies put in place. We need to cultivate citizen interest and government support for research into the development of large-scale geoengineering projects.
As a media and communications scholar, I cannot argue that one science is superior to another. My research examines how Marshall McLuhan’s thinking about technology relates to the current climate crisis. Drawing on the work of McLuhan and others, I believe there are emerging technological options of urgent interest to citizens committed to a sustainable future, and we need to pursue these rather than holding onto remnants of a new normal. (source)
It all comes down to reset after reset, the great openly brazen and powerful Very Seven Very Deadly Very Sinfully C ‘s of the Worst System for Humanity and Earth Ever Devised, Capitalism! Corrupt, Colluding, Conspiratorial, Contagious, Calamitous, Corrosive, Cancerous
So many truths, so many millions of stories, so many people dazed and confused. This is the trickster veil that the overlords of capitalism have dished out for the planet. The USA has taken it hook, line and sinker:
No one group has done more to damage our global agriculture and food quality than the Rockefeller Foundation. They began in the early 1950s after the War to fund two Harvard Business School professors to develop vertical integration which they named “Agribusiness.” The farmer became the least important. They then created the fraudulent Green Revolution in Mexico and India in the 1960s and later the pro-GMO Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa since 2006. Money from the Rockefeller Foundation literally created the disastrous GMO genetically altered plants with their toxic glyphosate pesticides. Now again, the foundation is engaged in a major policy change in global food and agriculture and it’s not good. (source)
There you have it, way before 10 a.m. PST, October 23, eight days before the CDC-Fauci-FDA approved Halloween, this blog to never end all blogs. Blots on us all, and, Plague Upon All Their Houses. Just reread, scroll back up, and you get the idea as to whose heads must roll. And it is just a short list. You’ve read about other heads that must roll in many other of my diatribes or rants. Righteous indignation? Nah, calm forward thinking starting 51 years ago when I was just a wee one.
Oh, shoot, back to the future, again:
Max Blumenthal question: “Are current politicians basing the corona measures on incorrectly established scientific principles?”
Mattias Desmet: I think so. Here, too, we see a kind of naïve belief in objectivity that turns into its opposite: a serious lack of objectivity with masses of errors and carelessness. Moreover, there is a sinister connection between the emergence of this kind of absolutist science and the process of manipulation and totalitarianisation of society. In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the German-American political thinker Hannah Arendt brilliantly describes how this process took place in Nazi Germany, among other places. For example, nascent totalitarian regimes typically fall back on a ‘scientific’ discourse. They show a great preference for figures and statistics, which quickly degenerate into pure propaganda, characterized by a radical “disregard for the facts”. For example, Nazism based its ideology on the superiority of the Aryan race. A whole series of so-called scientific data substantiated their theory. Today we know that this theory had no scientific validity, but scientists at the time used the media to defend the regime’s positions. Hannah Arendt describes how these scientists proclaimed questionable scientific credentials, and she uses the word “charlatans” to emphasize this. She also describes how the emergence of this kind of science and its industrial applications was accompanied by an inevitable social change. Classes disappeared and normal social ties deteriorated, with much indefinable fear, anxiety, frustration, and lack of meaning. It is under such circumstances that the masses develop very specific psychological qualities. All fears that haunt society become linked to one ‘object’ – for example, the Jews – so that the masses enter into a kind of energetic struggle with this object. And onto that process of social conditioning of the masses, a completely new political and constitutional organization subsequently grafts itself: the totalitarian state.
Today, one perceives a similar phenomenon. There is widespread psychological suffering, lack of meaning, and diminished social ties in society. Then a story comes along that points to a fear object, the virus, after which the population strongly links its fear and discomfort to this dreaded object. Meanwhile, there is a constant call in all media to collectively fight the murderous enemy. The scientists who bring the story to the population are rewarded with tremendous social power in return. Their psychological power is so great that, at their suggestion, the whole of society abruptly renounces a host of social customs and reorganises itself in ways that no one at the beginning of 2020 thought possible. (source)
Oh? So, this discussions can’t happen because the overlords, their masters, the Seven Sinful C’s of Capitalism, the planned resets, all of that trump us barely useful eaters, readers, watchers, walkers, drivers, patients, renters, dreamers, breathers, sleepers, consumers!
As Democrats reintroduced a bill to expand Social Security on Tuesday, cosponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) shared her personal experience with the program, emphasizing that wealthy people should contribute more.
Social Security 2100, introduced by Social Security Subcommittee Chair Rep. John Larson (D-Connecticut), would expand social security benefits and extend the depletion date by three years to 2038, after which the program will have to begin cutting benefits by 20 percent. It would give a small bump to current beneficiaries and increase the minimum benefit to 125 percent of the poverty line.
New increases would be paid for with taxes on the wealthy, applying payroll taxes to wages above $400,000. This would affect the wealthiest 0.4 percent of earners, according to the lawmakers.
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the nearly 200 cosponsors of the bill, emphasized the importance of the program and shared its impact on her own life at the bill’s unveiling. “It’s so important for us to know that Social Security is there for all of us: when we lose a parent, a spouse, or, god forbid, having an unexpected diagnosis or an accident,” she said, stressing that the program can benefit people of all ages, not just seniors.
“When I was a kid, my dad passed away due to an unexpected cancer diagnosis,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “I was the daughter of a domestic worker, and social security checks helped my family through. It’s why my brother and I were able to go to college; it’s why I felt confident while I was at college that my mom would be able to have something to eat.”
“To have that social safety net isn’t just good for us individually for peace of mind, it helps us feel like we are part of a society that respects our elders and values our vulnerable,” the lawmaker said.
Social Security is vital to preventing poverty, keeping more people out of poverty than any other program in the U.S. According to an analysis by the Census Bureau, Social Security kept 26.5 million people out of poverty in 2020. Still, policy experts say that the program, established in 1935, is in need of dire improvement and investments, as budget cuts have created delays, insufficient payouts and general service issues that have compounded over the past decades.
In 2020, the maximum federal Social Security benefit was $783 a month, or only about $9,400 a year — less than three-quarters of the federal poverty line, which is already extremely low by modern standards.
The bill is “common-sense legislation that expands and strengthens Social Security and includes particularly important provisions for unmarried caregivers, poorly compensated workers, and older people in their 80s and 90s,” Shawn Fremstad, senior policy fellow for the Center for Economic & Policy Research, told Truthout. The bill provides caregiver credits so that retired caregivers aren’t punished for exiting the workforce to take care of dependents.
Democrats plan to pay for the expansion by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $400,000, which Fremstad says “would be sufficient to fund the expansions in the bill and strengthen Social Security for the long term.”
Currently, wages above $142,800 aren’t subject to payroll taxes, which fund the program. Policy experts say that this is an egregious oversight of the bill, as people making far less than the wealthiest Americans bear more of the burden to pay into Social Security than the rich do. Because contributions are capped at that rate, millionaires can stop paying into the program as early as February each year, while the middle- and lower-classes have to pay into it every paycheck.
“Every year, when I did my taxes, I saw how much I contributed to Social Security as a waitress — thousands of dollars a year. What we want to do is make Social Security better, to expand it, to cover people like my mom, who left her job to care for my dad while he was ill,” said Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday. “And we want to do that by asking the wealthy to pay into Social Security the same way that I did when I was a waitress. It’s pretty simple.”
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is potentially facinganother court case. It’s once more over Universal Credit. The claimant in the case is having to appeal to the highest court in England. But will it listen?
Universal Credit and childcare
Nichola Salvato is a lone parent from Brighton. She’s a Universal Credit claimant who works. Under the system, Universal Credit should give Salvato her childcare costs back. But for her and potentially 500,000 other claimants, there’s a major flaw with this.
In September 2018 she began working full time as a welfare rights adviser for a housing association, and needed up to 3.5 hours childcare per day for her then 10-year-old daughter.
Although Nichola was working full time, she could not afford the £377.40 of upfront childcare costs that arose in September-October, so she had to borrow the money.
She had to borrow the money because Universal Credit does not pay childcare costs up-front. Claimants have to pay them first before the DWP gives the cost back to them. So, as Leigh Day wrote:
this situation continued in the months that followed and gave rise to what she described as a “cycle of debt where I was constantly owing childcare as well as loan providers and struggling to find the money to cover payments”.
“Overwhelmed”
The situation worsened for Salvato. Leigh Day wrote that:
By January 2019, Nichola was “becoming overwhelmed with the juggle of work, childcare, parenting and ongoing poverty”. She took as much time off as she could to minimise childcare costs and was constantly stressed and worried. Eventually Nichola had to cut her work to 32 hours, then 25.5 hours, which reduced her monthly income and increased her dependence on benefits.
So, she decided enough was enough and started a legal challenge against the DWP. Her case argued that Universal Credit should pay childcare costs upfront. The DWP said that the system was like it is to reduce “error and fraud”. But the judge agreed with Salvato. He ruled in January that the DWP had acted irrationally and discriminated against her based on her sex. Justice Chamberlain said:
It is not obvious why a system of awards based on liability to pay (evidenced by an invoice) would be any more likely to result in error or fraud than a system based on actual payment (evidenced by a receipt).
There is no evidence that the decision to make payment of the [childcare costs element] dependent on proof of payment (rather than proof that the charges have been incurred) was ever directly considered by Ministers.
But this wasn’t the end.
DWP: appealing common sense?
The DWP appealed the ruling in July. The Court of Appeal, according to Leigh Day, found:
that while the “proof of payment” rule does indirectly discriminate, the difference in treatment is justifiable and the rule is not irrational.
In other words, the DWP won. But Salvato is not accepting this. She has applied to appeal the previous Court of Appeal decision in the Supreme Court. Salvato said in a press release:
Although I’m very disappointed that the Court of Appeal did not uphold the High Court ruling, I am hopeful that that the Supreme Court will address the issue. So many of us single parents want to work but find the upfront childcare costs through Universal Credit an impossible barrier, meanwhile the government continues to support better off families with their childcare costs in advance via the tax-free childcare system.
Of course, this is not the first time claimants have taken the DWP to court over Universal Credit. Recently, a claimant won a case over hardship payments and how the DWP made people pay them back. The department has also been back in court for a third time over Universal Credit’s discriminatory treatment of severely disabled people.
The system is clearly discriminatory, and the Court of Appeal agrees that it is discriminatory, but has said the government is entitled to discriminate unless I can show that there is an easy and better way. I don’t think that is correct and I will continue my fight to get our voices heard. Affordable, accessible childcare support is fundamental to our infrastructure if the government want to achieve higher levels of employment among single mums and reduce child poverty.
Now, if Salvato’s appeal is granted, it will be down to the Supreme Court to decide if what seems to be common sense prevails, or if the DWP gets away with this alleged discrimination.
The chancellor has appeared to reject a call from footballer Marcus Rashford to extend the free school meal programme into the school holidays for the next three years.
Rejecting children
In a letter to the Sunday Times, England and Manchester United forward Rashford joined with supermarket bosses and food industry leaders to demand ministers continue providing the meals to vulnerable children, even when they were not in the classroom.
The signatories said that doing so during the earlier stages of the pandemic, after campaigning from Rashford forced a government U-turn, had been “a great success, bringing nutritional and educational benefits to children”.
Protestors hang up paper plates carrying slogans calling for the Government to extend the free school meals provision (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
They added that to go against recommendations in the National Food Strategy to extend this by three years would “both deepen and extend the scarring caused by the pandemic on our youngest citizens and ultimately our economy”.
However, Rishi Sunak told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that as other support such as the furlough scheme had come to an end, so should the provision of free school meals in the holidays. The chancellor said:
So we put in place some measures to help families during coronavirus, that was the right thing to do, and in common with the other things that have now come to an end, whether it was furlough or other things, that’s right that we’ve transitioned to a more normal way of doing things.
But we have replaced… but we have actually already acted, is what I’d say to Marcus and everyone else. We’ve put in place something called the holiday activities program, which provides not just meals but also activities for children during holiday periods for those families that need extra help.
That is a new programme, it was announced earlier this year, it’s being rolled out across the country, and I think that can make an enormous difference to people.
Rishi Sunak on The Andrew Marr Show (Jeff Overs/BBC)
Help needed
The joint letter in the Sunday Times said:
Better jobs are the route out of poverty, and the virtue of these children’s food schemes is that when working families shore up their income they can buy school and holiday meals themselves.
Until this happens, surely equality of opportunity and levelling-up begin with guaranteeing that every child in Britain can eat well – at least once a day.
It added that extending the free school meal scheme and the Healthy Start programme, which provides free vouchers to buy milk, fruit and vegetables, would cost £1.1bn a year, equivalent to 1% of the education budget and 4% of annual spending on the immediate consequences of obesity.
Rashford also previously called for the expansion of free school meal eligibility to all children aged 7-18 in all households earning £20,000 or less after benefits, and to children that are undocumented or living in immigrant households with “no recourse to public funds”.
Asked whether this would be part of his Budget, Sunak told Times Radio:
Well, I obviously wouldn’t… you wouldn’t expect me to comment on these things in advance of next week.
What I will say on that general agenda, which obviously Marcus has been passionate about and rightly ensured that we all talk about is, we acted during the crisis to put expanded support in place, that was the right thing to do.
A major report by Labour MP Jon Trickett has called for a wealth tax as part of a major overhaul of the UK’s tax system. It estimates that if the richest paid more in tax, it could raise nearly half a trillion pounds across five years.
A stark divide
The report is called The Nature of Wealth in Britain. It looks at various measures of how wealth is distributed in the UK; how our current tax system affects the richest and poorest, and what could be done to make the system fairer. A press release said that the report’s launch:
comes ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement that looks set to propose cuts to public services after the Chancellor has asked departments to find “at least 5 percent of savings and efficiencies from their day-to-day budgets.
Trickett launched the report with a video:
Gaping inequality
As the report lays out, the situation is stark.
It notes:
There are now more billionaires in the UK than at any other time in the 33-year history of the Times Rich List. And the richest 250 people have seen an increase of £106 billion in their wealth since before the pandemic.
Juxtapose this with the fact that over 11 million people have had their jobs furloughed, 14 million are living in poverty (9 million of whom are actually in work) and there has been a 33% increase in the use of food banks in the last 12 months.
To add to this, the Tory government is cutting Universal Credit, breaking an election promise by hiking up National Insurance and overseeing a huge jump in inflation.
Moreover, it notes that:
The richest people have seen their wealth increase, by £538 billion between the financial crash and just before the start of covid. Even under covid, the richest 250 increased their wealth by another £106.7 billion.
Unfairness, entrenched
The report also shows just how weighted in favour of the rich the UK tax system is. It details how:
More working families are in poverty than ever before.
Life expectancy in the poorest areas is declining. But in the richest areas, it’s increasing.
Our system of income tax unfairly favours the rich.
Meanwhile, it outlined how:
The London Stock Exchange has increased its value by over £600bn in the last year alone.
UK businesses’ cash reserves have nearly trebled to £909m since 2006.
“The UK is responsible for 558% of tax lost globally to corporate tax abuse – the second worst in Europe. Globally, only the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands are responsible for higher shares of tax loss”.
We’re the 12th most financially secret jurisdiction in the global Financial Secrecy Index. That is, we’re one of the worst countries for letting people hide their wealth.
The report also detailed that:
Corporate lobbying of government is a major problem. Only 1% of lobbyists fall under legislation.
The “revolving door” between politicians and corporations is still an issue.
10 big donors to the Tories have given over £13.6m to the party since Boris Johnson came to power. During this time, these 10 have increased their wealth by over £1.1bn.
Government outsourcing of public services to private companies equates to £3,500 per household.
So, what can be done?
A wealth tax
Trickett’s report proposes four ways to start fixing this gaping inequality:
An additional 5% tax on income over £500,000 as a one-off wealth tax. This could raise £260bn.
Another type of one-off wealth tax would be on wealth over £2m with graduated increases. It could raise £197.6bn.
An annual wealth tax on wealth over £2m with graduated increases. This could raise £22.5bn a year.
The report also proposes a “hybrid wealth tax”. It says that this would include the second tax outlined above, plus a tax on wealth people made after this. It noted that:
Over Covid, the richest 250 people, as listed in the Sunday Times, increased their wealth by £106.7 billion. If we taxed wealth increases at the same base rate of income tax (20%) it would raise £21.3 billion each year.
Closing loopholes
The report says that:
Dividends (like money from selling shares) should be taxed the same as income. This could raise £37bn in five years.
If the same was done for capital gains tax, this would raise £90bn over five years.
If tax loopholes were closed and avoidance and evasion properly clamped down on, this could raise an additional £145.5bn in five years.
Overall the report’s proposals could raise £490.9bn in five years.
Public support appears high for some sort of wealth tax. For example, as the report noted:
In May 2020 YouGov produced a poll which showed that 61% support a wealth tax for people with assets worth more than £750,000 (excluding pensions and main homes)… In October 2020 IPSOS MORI also polled people about a wealth tax, with 41% strongly supporting one.
But what could this fairer taxation pay for?
Where could half a trillion go?
The report noted that just under half a trillion in additional tax could pay for:
15% NHS pay increase (£5.1bn nominal cost).
Making the £20 Universal Credit uplift permanent (£5bn).
Plug the Social Care funding gap (£4.3bn).
Restore Sure Start funding (£1.2bn).
Local Council funding gap (£7.4bn).
Reverse education funding cuts (7bn).
Levelling up transport by matching UK wide spending on transport to London levels of spend (£19bn).
Insulating all homes, reducing energy bills and cutting carbon emissions by 10% through “Warm Homes for All” (£250bn).
Building 150,000 houses a year (£75bn).
So, will it happen? Trickett thinks it must.
Trickett: a “cycle of inequality” that needs to be broken
Trickett said in a press release:
A wealth tax would transform our public finances making money available for our neglected public services…
It is also necessary to address extreme wealth inequality. Our political system is rigged in favour of global corporations and the super-rich. Wealth is turned into political power through donations and lobbying. Political power is used to advance policies that financially benefit the elite at everyone else’s expense. It is a cycle of inequality that leads towards oligarchy and threatens our democracy.
Bringing taxes on wealth into line with those on income is both morally as well as fiscally correct. But it is also a bold policy which will appeal to both voters and the labour movement precisely because it has one of our core values, fairness, at its centre.
Now, it’s up to the political parties to act. The Labour leadership must read and adopt Trickett’s report. Then, its proposals should be tabled as an opposition day debate. Moreover, it should form the basis for Labour policy at the next election. Anything less is missing a golden opportunity to truly ‘level up’ the UK.
Featured image via the Office of Jon Trickett – screengrab
In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.
Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular agenda.
Germany has elected a ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that excludes the conservative Christian Democrats for the first time since 2000. The new government promises a $14 minimum wage, solar panels on all suitable roof space, 2% of land for wind farms and the closure of Germany’s last coal-fired power plants by 2030.
Iraqis voted in an election that was called in response to a popular protest movement launched in October 2019 to challenge the endemic corruption of the post-2003 political class and its subservience to U.S. and Iranian interests. The protest movement was split between taking part in the election and boycotting it, but its candidates still won about 35 seats and will have a voice in parliament. The party of long-time Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr won 73 seats, the largest of any single party, while Iranian-backed parties whose armed militias killed hundreds of protesters in 2019 lost popular support and many of their seats.
Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, is being impeached after the Pandora Papers revealed details of bribery and tax evasion in his sale of a mining company, and he could face up to 5 years in prison. Mass street protests in 2019 forced Piñera to agree to a new constitution to replace the one written under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and a convention that includes representatives of indigenous and other marginalized communities has been elected to draft the constitution. Progressive parties and candidates are expected to do well in the general election in November.
Maybe the greatest success of people power has come in Bolivia. In 2020, only a year after a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup, a mass mobilization of mostly indigenous working people forced a new election, and the socialist MAS Party of Evo Morales was returned to power. Since then it has already introduced a new wealth tax and welfare payments to four million people to help eliminate hunger in Bolivia.
The Ideological Context
Since the 1970s, Western political and corporate leaders have peddled a quasi-religious belief in the power of “free” markets and unbridled capitalism to solve all the world’s problems. This new “neoliberal” orthodoxy is a thinly disguised reversion to the systematic injustice of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, which led to gross inequality and poverty even in wealthy countries, famines that killed tens of millions of people in India and China, and horrific exploitation of the poor and vulnerable worldwide.
For most of the 20th century, Western countries gradually responded to the excesses and injustices of capitalism by using the power of government to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation and a growing public sector, and ensure broad access to public goods like education and healthcare. This led to a gradual expansion of broadly shared prosperity in the United States and Western Europe through a strong public sector that balanced the power of private corporations and their owners.
The steadily growing shared prosperity of the post-WWII years in the West was derailed by a combination of factors, including the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Nixon’s freeze on prices and wages, runaway inflation caused by dropping the gold standard, and then a second oil crisis after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Right-wing politicians led by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. blamed the power of organized labor and the public sector for the economic crisis. They launched a “neoliberal” counter-revolution to bust unions, shrink and privatize the public sector, cut taxes, deregulate industries and supposedly unleash “the magic of the market.” Then they took credit for a return to economic growth that really owed more to the end of the oil crises.
The United States and United Kingdom used their economic, military and media power to spread their neoliberal gospel across the world. Chile’s experiment in neoliberalism under Pinochet’s military dictatorship became a model for U.S. efforts to roll back the “pink tide” in Latin America. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened to the West at the end of the Cold War, it was the extreme, neoliberal brand of capitalism that Western economists imposed as “shock therapy” to privatize state-owned enterprises and open countries to Western corporations.
In the United States, the mass media shy away from the word “neoliberalism” to describe the changes in society since the 1980s. They describe its effects in less systemic terms, as globalization, privatization, deregulation, consumerism and so on, without calling attention to their common ideological roots. This allows them to treat its impacts as separate, unconnected problems: poverty and inequality, mass incarceration, environmental degradation, ballooning debt, money in politics, disinvestment in public services, declines in public health, permanent war, and record military spending.
After a generation of systematic neoliberal control, it is now obvious to people all over the world that neoliberalism has utterly failed to solve the world’s problems. As many predicted all along, it has just enabled the rich to get much, much richer, while structural and even existential problems remain unsolved.
Even once people have grasped the self-serving, predatory nature of this system that has overtaken their political and economic life, many still fall victim to the demoralization and powerlessness that are among its most insidious products, as they are brainwashed to see themselves only as individuals and consumers, instead of as active and collectively powerful citizens.
In effect, confronting neoliberalism—whether as individuals, groups, communities or countries—requires a two-step process. First, we must understand the nature of the beast that has us and the world in its grip, whatever we choose to call it. Second, we must overcome our own demoralization and powerlessness, and rekindle our collective power as political and economic actors to build the better world we know is possible.
We will see that collective power in the streets and the suites at COP26 in Glasgow, when the world’s leaders will gather to confront the reality that neoliberalism has allowed corporate profits to trump a rational response to the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate. Extinction Rebellion and other groups will be in the streets in Glasgow, demanding the long-delayed action that is required to solve the problem, including an end to net carbon emissions by 2025.
While scientists warned us for decades what the result would be, political and business leaders have peddled their neoliberal snake oil to keep filling their coffers at the expense of the future of life on Earth. If we fail to stop them now, living conditions will keep deteriorating for people everywhere, as the natural world our lives depend on is washed out from under our feet, goes up in smoke and, species by species, dies and disappears forever.
The Covid pandemic is another real world case study on the impact of neoliberalism. As the official death toll reaches 5 million and many more deaths go unreported, rich countries are still hoarding vaccines, drug companies are reaping a bonanza of profits from vaccines and new drugs, and the lethal, devastating injustice of the entire neoliberal “market” system is laid bare for the whole world to see. Calls for a “people’s vaccine” and “vaccine justice” have been challenging what has now been termed “vaccine apartheid.”
Conclusion
In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, “There is no alternative” to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives.
Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.
People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself.
As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher’s lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power.
It’s a question that everyone already seems to have an answer for.
“The poor are lazy.”
“The poor can’t manage money.”
“The poor don’t have the right mindset.”
These theories are anecdotal at best and downright insulting at worst. The problem with these arguments is that they are based on small sample sizesrather than empirical data. While I agree that some people are poor because of these things, there has been little experimental research done on this topic…until now.
Earlier this year researchers at the London School of Economics released a paper titled, “Why Do People Stay Poor?” that illustrated how thelack of initial wealth (and not motivation or talent) is what keeps people in poverty. The researchers tested this by randomly allocating wealth (i.e. livestock) to female villagers in Bangladesh and then waited to see how that wealth transfer would affect their future finances. As their paper states:
[We] find that, if the program pushes individuals above a threshold level of initial assets, then they escape poverty, but, if it does not, they slide back into poverty…Our findings imply that large one-off transfers that enable people to take on more productive occupations can help alleviate persistent poverty.
Their paper clearly illustrates that many poor people stay poor not because of their talent/motivation, but because they are in low-paying jobs that they must work to survive.
They are, in essence, in a poverty trap. This is a poverty trap where their lack of money prevents them from ever getting training/capital to work in higher paying jobs. You might be skeptical of these findings, but similar things have been found by experimental researchers doing random cash transfers in Kenya as well.
The fact is that money begets money. In investing we all know this to be true, but these empirical studies suggest that this is also true in the labor market. Without financial resources people find it incredibly difficult to get the skills and training to get ahead. I know this all too well as a first-generation college student who was fortunate enough to have their tuition paid for by a need-based scholarship.
And I can tell you that without that financial support there is almost no way I am here today. I know this because in the spring quarter of my junior year I didn’t have an internship lined up for that summer. I had been rejected from every one I had applied to. Luckily, my aunt was nice enough to offer me a job working in the warehouse she ran back home. If I had taken it I would’ve been paid minimum wage to move boxes while many of my peers were working at various Fortune 500 companies across the country.
However, late in the spring quarter one of my professors asked me what I was doing for the summer. I told him the unfortunate truth about the warehouse job and he immediately replied, “You are not doing that.” He then basically forced me to send my resume to a healthcare consulting firm that was run by another professor at our university. I did as he said, got the job, and spent my summer learning computer programming. It was amazing.
When I think back on it now, it was probably the most pivotal moment in my career. Without that initial nudge into a corporate role, a role that taught me my first technical skills, nothing in my career exists. I likely would have interned at my aunt’s warehouse and probably worked there full-time at a fraction of what I got paid in my first actual job out of college. But, even that result would have been incredibly fortunate because I would have had a guaranteed job coming out of college no matter what.
I only tell this story because it illustrates the immense amount of wealth/resources that were needed to change my career trajectory from one of low income to one of high income. The financial capital provided by my university, the social capital provided by my professor, and the career capital provided by my aunt were all things that most other first-generation college students wouldn’t have had access to. I am lucky to know the transformative power of wealth and how it can affect someone’s life.
I was reminded of this truth after hearing about the recent passing of famed actor Chadwick Boseman, most well known for his role in Black Panther. Boseman, who didn’t come from money, had his time at Oxford’s Drama Academy paid for by a secret benefactor who later turned out to be Denzel Washington.
Rather than summarize the power of Washington’s gift on Boseman, I’ll let Boseman’s words to Washington speak for themselves:
An offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope. A bud of faith. There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my cast, that whole generation, stands on your shoulders. The daily battles won. The thousand territories gained. The many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets through your career. The things you refused to compromise along the way, laid the blueprint for us to follow.
That is the power of wealth. Not the fancy cars. Not the private planes. Not the mansions. But the ability to change someone’s life. Think about the compounded effects of Washington’s gift on Boseman’s career and, eventually, on the world. Think about the number of young black children that will forever be inspired by Black Panther because of that gift long ago.
This is why wealth can be so powerful. Because it gives people the ability to change their world in meaningful ways. Whether that means getting a cow in Bangladesh or getting funds to pursue an acting scholarship in a foreign country, wealth is the change agent.
[Author’s note: If you are interested in learning more about cash giving and its effectiveness, check out the research from GiveDirectly here.]
A recently released research paper from the Becker-Friedman institute has challenged the consensus view that the new Child Tax Credit (CTC) program would have limited effects on employment. The authors — Kevin Corinth, Bruce D. Meyer, Matthew Stadnicki, and Derek Wu — use data from the Comprehensive Income Dataset. They find that the CTC expansion proposed by the Biden administration (and currently being debated for permanent renewal by Congress) would reduce total employment by 1.5 million and reduce poverty rates by 22 percent. This differs substantially from previous estimates, which have generally found limited effects on employment as well as larger effects on poverty reduction (usually around 40 percent).
This is a new working paper that has not been peer-reviewed. We expect other economists to question the validity of some of the papers’ assumptions (some have already begun to do so). The paper is complex and necessarily makes certain assumptions about how to model different decisions and which parameter estimates to use. While we expect that most of these decisions are reasonable, similarly reasonable modeling choices would likely yield very different estimates.
This is especially important because the significant effects the paper suggests are hard to reconcile with the observations of other countries that have created similar programs. In our previous white paper, we noted that there was no such decline in labor force participation after a similar program was introduced in Canada.
Nevertheless, it is worth taking the paper’s findings seriously as given.
A Refundable CTC Does Not Lead To An Entitlement Society
It’s first worth noting that this paper agrees with the previous literature in one crucial capacity. The paper estimates that relatively few parents (0.14 million) will leave the labor force because of the additional cash provided to parents by the expanded CTC (what economists call “the income effect”). Parents will not decide to stop working because the money provided by the CTC makes it possible for one or more parents to get by without a job. This should not be surprising: $300 a month per child is not nearly high enough to replace labor income.
If you, like Senator Manchin, are concerned that the CTC expansion will create an “entitlement society,” this paper should alleviate those concerns.
A Refundable CTC Takes the Government’s Thumb Off The Scale
Instead, the findings are driven by the “substitution effect.” The previous version of the Child Tax Credit “phased in” (such that only parents who were earning at least $24,000 a year would receive the full credit). This meant that the CTC previously operated as a subsidy for employment, effectively increasing the wages of someone who earned $24,000 to $26,000. Effectively, the government is choosing to supplement parents’ wages who decide to work rather than remain at home.
It’s worth asking whether this is the proper role for the government. While the government (or society more broadly) arguably does have an interest in helping people find work (and may choose to limit assistance for people who can work and choose not to), to claim that the government should specifically push parents into the workforce goes against many conservative principles. Some social conservatives, including Reihan Salam, Senate candidate Blake Masters, and Lyman Stone, have gone so far as to suggest that lower workforce participation by parents should be a policy objective. The Niskanen Center has previously argued that the government should largely be neutral in this decision, neither pushing parents into or away from the workforce. A fully refundable CTC achieves this goal, whereas the previous phase-in did not.
A Refundable CTC Lets Employers Phase-In
Finally, it’s worth noting that, if ending the phase-in of the CTC decreases the incentive to work provided by the federal government, there is a group that may be better suited to increasing that incentive: employers themselves.
The Becker-Friedman paper assumes that offered wages will not change in the presence of the fully refundable CTC. But if 1.5 million people are considering leaving the workforce, as the paper suggests, firms will, of course, consider how they can attract more job candidates. This may take the form of increased wages–effectively replacing the funding previously provided by the government. A result of these increased wages would be that many parents decide to keep working.
And certainly, employers may be able to come up with better solutions for attracting parents than money alone. If parents are considering leaving the workforce, businesses will look for new ways to attract them. Most obviously, this could include options such as more regular hours or limited hours that make it easier for parents to be home before and after school. That’s a pro-family policy we should all get behind.
Fiji’s opposition National Federation Party has blamed 1150 pandemic deaths on the Bainimarama government’s “shameful and despicable” ego-driven leadership.
“Stop bragging and taking the Lord’s name in vain when you have presided over the single biggest disaster and loss of lives in our country’s 51 years of independence,” said Dr Biman Prasad, a former professor of economics at the University of the South Pacific.
“Talk about issues like how to alleviate poverty that reached almost 30 percent at the time of the so-called ‘Bainimarama Boom’ but has now escalated to about 50 percent due to economic depression caused by covid-19.”
This is the message to Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama from Dr Prasad after a message posted on the Fiji government social media page this week showing the prime minister as saying the battle against covid-19 pandemic was about to end — and declaring he had proved critics wrong and was in firm control.
“This is a national leader who brags about himself and claims he will secure every Fijian from clear and present danger,” Dr Prasad said in a statement.
“The prime minister forgets what he announced at the start of the second wave of the pandemic on April 19.”
“Then, he spoke about a grave and present danger to the lives of our people and the need to comply with strict measures and enforcement of lockdowns to contain and eliminate the virus.
‘1150 citizens’ lose their lives
“Almost six months later with the virus out of control due to the PM’s egoistic and ‘My Way or the Highway’ leadership in deciding to open up containment zones, 1150 citizens have lost their lives through no fault of theirs and more than 51,200 people have so far been infected”.
The Johns Hopkins University global covid dashboard (with data supplied by the Fiji government) states 649 deaths and 51,386 confirmed cases in Fiji as at today.
“And in a bid to keep a lid on the death toll and rate of infection, the Health Ministry split the death toll into two categories as well as significantly reduced testing and contact tracing.”
Dr Prasad claimed the ministry was now announcing deaths that occurred in the last three months saying it took time to investigate and determine the cause of death.
“It is shameful and despicable that instead of sympathising with the families who have lost loved ones and offering his genuine and sincere condolences, the PM showers himself with praise for his handling of the crisis,” Dr Prasad said.
“Does he have the courage to go to each individual family, undoubtedly, still grieving the loss of a loved one, and tell them that he is in firm control and protecting them from the grave danger posed by the pandemic?”
‘From containment to containers’
It was the prime minister, his government and their “From containment to containers” policy — allowing the virus to spread freely by opening up containment zones and installing three 12m container freezers as morgues — who must be held responsible for the “needless loss of life of our citizens and heaping pain, suffering and misery on the people”.
“The nation is at the crossroads, at odds with itself, due to failed leadership. Yet, we have a PM who says he is in firm control of the situation,” he said.
“This is symptomatic of a typical dictator who thinks he or she is always right despite the fact that people are dying, poverty is increasing and people are struggling to put food on the table.
“This façade must end at the next elections,” Dr Prasad added.
On 6 October, footage emerged of secretary of state for work and pensions Thérèse Coffey singing ‘The Time of My Life’ to Tory party conference delegates. Coffey performed her enthusiastic rendition of the Dirty Dancing hit just an hour after the government’s £20 cut to universal credit came into effect.
Many took to Twitter to express their disgust at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) chief’s carefree karaoke having overseen a cut which is predicted to plunge 840,000 more people into poverty, including 290,000 children.
Having the time of her life
Sharing a clip of the unfortunate footage, Politics Home reporter John Johnson tweeted:
DWP Secretary Therese Coffey singing ‘I’m having the time of my life’ at Tory conference just an hour after the £20 Universal Cut came into force. pic.twitter.com/lspuFKGs4Q
Expressing her ‘disgust’ at Coffey’s conduct, Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana tweeted:
While 6 million families went to bed last night in fear of the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit, @ThereseCoffey, the woman overseeing the cut, was out singing "I've had the time of my life" at the Conservative Party conference. Disgusting.pic.twitter.com/t1lQhYX0ad
This is the biggest overnight cut to welfare Britain has seen. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, it will take £1,040 from around 5.5 million households across Britain each year. Highlighting this, Hertsmere Borough councillor for Potters Bar Chris Myers shared:
— Jack Meredith (He/Him/His) (@VerySocialLeft) October 6, 2021
Taking Coffey’s rambunctious rendition of the Dirty Dancing hit as a grim reflection of Tory party culture, Brendan May tweeted:
Therese Coffey singing ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ at the #CPC21 just as the benefits cut comes into force is a new low; the footage a reminder the the Tory Party is a culture free ideological crack den of unsurpassed grimness and vacuity. #ToryBritainpic.twitter.com/RDjCXXHKAP
As they slash #UniversalCredit for millions of vulnerable people Welfare Secretary Therese Coffey is belting out 'I'm having the time of my life' at the tory conference, they are the most grotesque people ever to govern this nation, beyond sickening..
The £20-a-week cut to universal credit will leave most claimants surviving off a meagre £59 per week. Comparing this with Coffey’s extravagant expenses, one Twitter user shared:
Member of Parliament for Suffolk Coastal Teresa Coffey. Has claimed more than £201,000 in parliamentary expenses between 2019 and 2020. "While having the time of her Life" she cut the Universal Credit uplift of £20 to millions of people.
In September, the Legatum Institute thinktank predicted that the £20-a-week cut to universal credit could plunge 840,000 more people into poverty, including 290,000 children. Some 5.8 million people currently claim universal credit. Nearly 40% of universal credit claimants are currently employed.
Ahead of the cut, Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell explained the devastating impact it will have on millions of households in England, Scotland and Wales. He tweeted:
While the government has withdrawn the universal credit uplift, the cost of living continues to increase. Indeed, food and fuel prices, housing costs and energy bills are set to rise dramatically. Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome shared:
Energy bills are set to soar by hundreds of pounds next year.
Meanwhile, Universal Credit has been cut by £20 a week, National Insurance contributions are up and council tax is likely to rise.
This isn't just a winter of discontent – it's years of misery under this government.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has forecast that the cut will leave 1 in 3 families living in poverty. Underlining the devastating human cost of the cut, Sultana tweeted:
If anyone says politics doesn't matter, tell them about Sophie, a single mum from Coventry, and the cruelty of the Tories' cut to Universal Credit:
“I’m terrified. How am I going to feed my child this winter? How am I going to cope? I can’t stop crying."https://t.co/1tcLqrdBZF
The government’s deliberate cut to universal credit at a time in which the poorest and most vulnerable in society need more support than ever is nothing short of inhumane.
Council tax must be raised to keep local services at pre-pandemic levels, a right-wing thinktank has said. The Institute for Fiscal Studies claims a 3.6% rise on council tax will be needed over the next four years. But it could be as high as 5%.
And the news comes as the Tory government cuts £20 from universal credit, leaving many at risk, and at a time when gas prices are extremely volatile. It also follows the recent revelations of the so-called Pandora Papers.
Regressive
On Twitter, people warned the hike would hit the poorest:
It’s not levelling up if you cut £1,000 from the poorest households, if you raise taxes for lower paid workers and if you put up council tax which makes up 5 times more of the budgets of poorer people than those of the well off.
Are SHROPSHIRE MPs aware that by increasing regressive taxes like Council Tax means the poorest in society will bear the burden disproportionately resulting in stress & mental health problems. What are you going to do about it?@OwenPaterson@DKShrewsbury@Dunne4Ludlow@lucyallan
Another pointed out council tax was already unfair:
Council Tax needs to be abolished. Why? Because it isn't based on the ability to pay and is, instead, based on property prices that were out of date when the tax was first introduced in 1993.
The pandemic has pushed up councils’ spending and reduced their local revenues, with the UK and devolved governments having to provide substantial top-ups to councils’ grant funding over the last 18 months to help them weather this storm.
Some of these pressures are likely to persist, and will come on top of underlying increases in the demand for and cost of council-provided services. And a range of reforms to councils’ funding arrangements and responsibilities are set to take effect over the next few years – or should be considered by the UK and devolved governments.
Pandemic effects
And the IFS says that up to £10bn must be raised over the next 2-4 years:
Under our central projections, English councils would need a £10 billion increase in revenues between 2019–20 and 2024–25 to maintain service levels.
The IFS suggested that the Chancellor “should consider setting a baseline amount of funding (plus principles for council tax increases), with a commitment to top this up in later Budgets (or even between Budgets) if necessary”.
Tax the rich?
One thing the IFS forecast does not seem keen on is taxing the rich. Meaning that the recommendations would place the burden on the less well-off if followed by the government.
The Pandora Papers revealed details of how the global elite evade tax. The papers raised questions about individuals like Tony Blair, as well as major Tory donors. The Guardian reported the Pandora Papers reveal Tony and Cherie Blair “saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in property taxes”.
Now more than ever, it is time for the rich to pay their way.
We’ve all heard the argument that “poverty is a choice.” The reality is that’s true — but not for the reason one might think. As former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs reminds us, “poverty is a policy choice, not a personal one.” The reality is that poverty has more to do with the policies behind how resources get distributed in a nation with more than enough to financially stabilize every family.
Across the country, Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) is transforming from a vision on the margins to a mainstream policy goal.
While stimulus checks have significantly aided families throughout the pandemic, census data show that the further we get from the last federal stimulus check dispersed in March 2021, the more families struggle to eat and pay rent. GBI proposals used to face more skepticism, even from those who are theoretically supportive of a social safety net. That was until a bold mayor put the idea to the test and produced stunning results. Mayor Tubbs championed GBI through the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), granting low-income families monthly cash payments of $500 over 24 months. The analysis revealed that the participants spent the money on basic needs, were more likely to find full-time employment, experienced less depression and anxiety, and were more willing to take risks to invest in their futures.
The real, tangible benefits of giving money directly to families who are struggling to make ends meet are simply undeniable.
Fresno has some of the highest rates of poverty and concentrated poverty in the nation. Over the past year, Fresno County had the second highest increase in rents in the country and many workers were at least $1,000 short of the monthly income needed to afford the average rent.
For many Fresno families, a GBI could literally make the difference between their rent going from unaffordable to affordable. It would address longstanding systemic racial inequities, given that Black and Latino communities carry much of the economic and social burdens of poverty. It would also create a more resilient economy and provide greater financial freedom.
Our vision for GBI in Fresno — making it the second such program in the Central Valley — could be a game changer, first and foremost for the families it serves, but also for the national understanding of how to provide a safety net and opportunities for all of our most vulnerable neighbors.
For one, Fresno’s urban and rural communities have different needs, but a shared lack of basic resources, making us unique among many current guaranteed income project locations. Second, a GBI program in Fresno would revitalize the struggling local economy as Fresno families spend more money at local businesses.
With growing local and national support combined with recent state legislation that has allocated $35 million to support local GBI programs, it is clear that this is the right next step for Fresno. Multiple local organizations have formed a coalition to advance a Fresno program, including the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission, Faith in the Valley, and the Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce. Fresno State’s newly launched Center for Community Voices will provide on-the-ground research on the program’s impact and support recipients to tell their own stories.
Solutions to poverty don’t have to be complicated. It really is as simple as giving people the money that they need to stop surviving day to day, find stable ground, and start planning for the future.
Dr. Amber Crowell is associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Community Voices at Fresno State.
Heather Brown is the chief administrative officer of the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission (EOC).
Almost 20 years ago, a police shooting left David Makara without an arm and facing jail. Inspired by the blind lawyer who saved him, he now defends others facing injustice
When the police started shooting at David Makara in his home town of Nyahururu, in Kenya, he ran before quickly collapsing. Two bullets had hit him – one in his right arm, one in his hip – but he only realised when he looked down and saw his hand dangling from his wrist and blood pouring out.
Is it too much to expect to be able to meet your basic needs and have the resources to obtain what contributes to your well-being? Is it too much to expect to be able to pay your rent/mortgage, buy nutritious food, or visit your out-of-state family? What about buying a tube of Carmex, knee socks, a large kitchen spoon, or having car repairs done? How about going to lunch or a movie with a friend? These experiences I describe are part of what creates a fulfilling life. Don’t we all deserve that?
As I turn 64 years old, I am just now learning that I am worthy of being able to meet my basic needs and more. Until recently, I didn’t know that I was supposed to have what I needed to bring me joy and pleasure. Things like basic health, safety, and loving connections with my family and friends seemed so out of reach to me. In the past year or so, I’ve realized that I have been depriving myself of what so many other people take for granted. For instance, the ability to run to the store to buy some glue to repair something in the kitchen, and not have to wait on two paychecks before doing so. Or feeling excited and able to say “yes” to a friend who asks you to join them for a night on the town or a simple dinner out.
These desires and experiences all seem so ordinary and something many people seem to be able to do — but not me. The lack of money and not feeling worthy of having what I need has kept me from being able to enjoy life’s simple pleasures all too often. I haven’t been able to fully live my life in a way that honors me. In discovering that all deserve to live a fulfilling life, I am having to learn how to embody a mindset of worthiness and abundance.
For me, a mindset of abundance includes the freedom to live a life filled with love, joy, financial resources, health, and the ability to provide self-care. The financial freedom to buy nutritious food, proper clothing, and household items for ourselves and our families should be everyone’s birthright. Having the ability to go to a health practitioner and purchase medicine when needed keeps individuals healthy. Providing our loved one with proper caregiving services and making sure our children have school supplies creates a healthy community. That is abundance.
This deprivation I’ve been living with has been extremely painful. I have so often judged and criticized myself, asking: “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why can’t I manage to get a job that pays a livable and prosperous income?” Now that I am older, I see my friends and family retiring, being able to travel, own their own homes, and spend money on what’s important to them. Disconcertingly at age 63, I only have about $30,000 in retirement funds. I have a job that mostly pays for the basics and very few “extras.” IfI were to draw social security at this age, it would only be approximately $1,027 a month — adding up to a yearly income of $12,324. That is over $500 below the poverty line.
At times, I feel ashamed and a sense of failure. That little voice in my head tells me that I don’t have what it takes to fully financially support myself. I feel afraid and hopeless as I question how I will ever be able to live a richer life in all its forms. The anxiety, guilt, and sense of defeat I have felt due to not being able to meet my basic needs with ease has resulted in physical symptoms. Grief and self-rejection make appearances often. At times, a sense of futility and not wanting to be on this planet any longer contribute to paralyzingly crippling moments.
Now, at this age, with less physical energy, a slower rhythm, and more time needing to be spent on self-care, I wonder how I will ever ‘catch up.’ I yearn to be able to take care of myself with greater freedom, dignity, to have the ability to meet my needs in a plentiful, healthy, and safe way. In Brené Brown’s book, Rising Strong, she writes about “the reckoning, the rumble, the revolution” of the self. It feels like I go back and forth between reckoning with my past, rumbling through the present, and revolutionizing my future, which I am realizing is simply and gloriously the “dance of life.”
Deep down, I know that I am supposed to be thriving rather than just surviving. My many attempts to learn about my roots of poverty and deprivation have been a struggle. I realized that I wasn’t worthy of or even aware that I was supposed to be worthy of being able to meet my needs and to have plenty of whatever contributed to my state of well-being. In order to learn, I read an excellent book called The Trance of Scarcity, by Victoria Castle, which beautifully describes how we have come to believe in the lies of scarcity.
Even with many resources to help me learn how to increase my income, at some point, I got tired of it all. At first going to financial advisors, workshops, practicing prosperity activities and affirmations was an inspiration. It eventually became draining and deepened my already existing state of depression and anxiety.
I know that I have a strong life force within me and I continue to move forward determined that I will not die in destitution. I now realize that I have a right to live with dignity. That we all have the right to experience the richness of life and all the world has to offer us. I am gradually discovering that I am worthy of having a prosperous life and that I am not alone. So many of us are on this journey to find financial freedom and stability. Millions of people are experiencing poverty of mind, body, and spirit. However, I believe this is the time in our spiritual and human evolution to examine our beliefs and actions. We must have the courage to elevate our quality of life.
It’s time to take a stand for abundance! A stand for a society and global family that thrives not only financially, but supports equity and love for one another.
I felt some hope when I learned about an idea called basic income, also known as guaranteed income, which is when a governing body provides a certain amount of money to some members of society. The main purpose of basic income is to be a powerful solution to alleviate poverty. Around the world there are many pilots and studies being conducted on basic income with much success. Here in the U.S. we have seen cash transfer programs launched during the COVID pandemic helping families weather the crisis. In many states, counties, and even cities, pilots are underway and providing data for us to demonstrate the power of cash. An organization called Income Movement is the organization that I’m most familiar with that supports basic income. I feel grateful to know that there are organizations such as this one to support an unconditional monthly income for people who are suffering financially.
If you are struggling financially, I invite you to trust your inner guidance system and know that there is nothing wrong with you, and there never has been. I believe we arehere to live full and abundant lives. If you feel moved by the idea of providing abundance to everyone through a guaranteed basic income, then join our efforts with Income Movement.Your voice is powerful, and together we can create a world where there is enough for everyone. A world where we can all thrive, not just survive.
It is not too much to ask for. We are all worthy of living lives abundant with freedom, connection, and joy.
Footballer-turned-campaigner Marcus Rashford has added his voice to the fight against the Tories’ Universal Credit cut. His intervention comes as activists plan protests and more evidence of the cut’s devastating effects has come to light.
Universal Credit chaos
The Canary has been documenting the chaos surrounding Universal Credit. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will be cutting £20-a-week from claimants in a matter of days. It will hit various people hard, including 660,000 low-paid key workers, 3.4 million children, and six out of 10 lone parent families. The cut will plunge a further 500,000 people, including 200,000 children, into poverty. Trade unions and campaign groups have expressed fury over the cut.
Meanwhile, The Canary recently reported that Citizens Advice has warned of more misery for claimants. Its research found that the cut could force as many as 1.5 million working people into hardship this winter. Citizens Advice found that two-thirds of working claimants are bracing themselves to face hardship when the Tories cut Universal Credit at the end of the month. Their financial fears include struggling to pay their bills, getting into debt, or being forced to sell belongings to make up for the shortfall in their income.
Another quarter of working claimants could face even greater difficulties. Citizens Advice found that as many as 600,000 working claimants are worried they might not be able to afford food or other basic necessities like toiletries after the reduction in their income is introduced.
Now, Rashford has intervened.
Enter Rashford
As part of a campaign with charity the Food Foundation, Rashford is encouraging people to write to their MPs and tell them to end child food poverty. You can use the Food Foundation’s online form to do that here. The letter encourages MPs to support Rashford and the charity’s plan. This includes expanding Free School Meals and funding more free holiday clubs.
On the Tories’ Universal Credit cut, Rashford told the Mirror:
Instead of removing vital support, we should be focusing on developing a long-term roadmap out of this child hunger pandemic.
He added:
On October 6, millions lose a lifeline. It’s a move that Child Poverty Action Group says will raise child poverty to one in three.
Rashford is not the only one taking action.
£20 more for everyone
Grassroots disability rights group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) is currently directing a week of action over the Tories’ governance. On Friday 24 September, it held an online rally. Speakers included filmmaker Ken Loach and disability rights activist Paula Peters. It’s also holding two protests in a matter of days. On Tuesday 28 September, DPAC is organising an “audio riot” outside Kings Cross station, in the courtyard in front of it, from 11:30am. Then, on Thursday 30 September at 5:30pm, it and other groups will be protesting outside Downing Street. You can find out more here.
On top of all this, think tank the Resolution Foundation recently issued a stark warning. It said inflation, rising energy bills, the looming rise in National Insurance, and the Universal Credit cut could leave low-income households more than £1,000 a year worse off. That’s even after accounting for increases in the minimum wage. Plus, another study has found that councils could place 1,500 more children into care each year due to the cut. And there could also be 5,500 more children on child protection plans.
The Tories: changing course?
Currently, the Tories are not budging. Transport secretary Grant Shapps indicated on TV on 26 September that nothing had changed. But the DWP and the Treasury are reportedly considering changing the rules for working claimants. This could let them keep more of their earnings, though it’ll do nothing for sick and disabled people, carers and lone parents who can’t work, among others.
However, collective action from Rashford, DPAC and others could well apply enough pressure for a last-minute Tory U-turn. Now, millions of families will wait to see if this happens.
Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao is leaving the sport that propelled him to stardom as he seeks the Philippine presidency in 2022
He is no longer fighting in the ring.
“My boxing career? My boxing career is already over,” Senator Pacquiao told actress Toni Gonzaga in Filipino on her YouTube programme Toni Talks at the weekend.
“It’s done because I’ve been in boxing for a long time and my family says that it is enough. I just continued [to box] because I’m passionate about this sport.
Pacquiao, who declared he is running for the Philippines presidency under the PDP-Laban faction of his and fellow Senator Koko Pimentel on Sunday, made it clear, however, that he was not leaving boxing altogether.
“I will just support other boxers for us to have a champion again.”
Pacquiao, boxing’s lone eight-division world champion, has long been helping Filipino boxers by way of his MP (Manny Pacquiao) Promotions headed by Sean Gibbons.
Already in the MP stable are World Boxing Organisation bantamweight champion Johnriel Casimero and International Boxing Federation super flyweight king Jerwin Ancajas.
Also in the fold is unbeaten featherweight Mark Magsayo, Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Eumir Marcial, and world title contender Jonas Sultan.
“Panahon na upang manalo naman ang mga naaapi. Panahon na para makabangon ang bayan natin na lugmok sa kahirap. Panahon na nang isang malinis na gobyerno na kung saan ang bawat sentimo ay mapupunta sa bawat Pilipino,” said Pacquiao.
(I accept your nomination as the candidate for president of the Republic of the Philippines. It is now the time for the oppressed to win. It is now the time for our nation to rise from poverty. It is now the time for a clean government where every centavo goes to Filipinos.)
In a Pulse Asia survey conducted in June, Pacquiao ranked 5th among preferred presidential candidates for the 2022 elections. He was far behind top choices Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno.
Its owner, Basil Fawlty, is a man who thinks he is always right. His attempts to cover up small problems quickly turn into major disasters.
If you are already drawing comparisons between Fawlty Towers and the current Fiji government, you would not be the only one.
The most popular of its (only 12) episodes is called “The Germans”. A group of German tourists comes to stay. Basil doesn’t much like Germans but it’s money after all. Obsessed with not offending them he instructs everybody “don’t mention the war”.
The more he tries not to mention the war, the worse it gets. By the end of the episode he is doing frog-marching Hitler impressions and his guests are asking: “How did they ever win?”
This is what comes to mind when I think of our government and ethnic population data.
The more the government tries to pretend it doesn’t exist, the more public the issue becomes.
Statistics saga
The media was treated last week to an 8pm peroration from Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. Maybe he forgot that this was way past every media company’s news deadline (the editors of the Fiji Sun, however, seemed to extend theirs so they could report the speech the next day).
The head of the Statistics Bureau was fired, marched out from his office by security personnel.
That guaranteed another cycle of bad press as opposition parties and NGOs issued statements and social media lit up.
Immediately the critics reminded us of what happens when the Attorney-General loses an argument. Vice-chancellors get deported.
The media is attacked for bias. He blasts his own lawyers for losing a court case (the “winning argument” he says they missed would be laughed out of any remotely sane court).
Why?
Comedy aside, surely the question to ask about this disaster-prone policy is “why”? I know of no other nation in the world where the government tells the people “you are not allowed to know the ethnic breakdown of people in your own country because it is bad for you”.
Those who question this policy are attacked by the Attorney-General as “obsessed with ethnicity”.
But a lot of effort and drama has gone into suppressing what is usual (and critically important) demographic information. Now it has been applied to punishing the man who made it available.
All of this seems to suggest that it is the Attorney-General, not us, who is obsessed.
“It is a big issue,” he told the media. “If you are going to start having compassion for people based on their ethnicity, then you are losing your sense of humanity and that’s precisely what has happened”.
Really? When did that happen?
When did we all decide that we would “have compassion” for only one ethnic group? We’ve barely had time to understand the data.
Mind-numbingly obvious It is mind-numbingly obvious why ethnic data is important to government policymaking and operations.
As opposition MP Lenora Qereqeretabua put it two years ago, calling us all “Fijians” doesn’t make us the same”.
New Zealand health authorities have heart disease profiles for Indo-Fijians, a tiny slice of their own society. Why? Because they are “obsessed with ethnicity”?
No, because they understand that different ethnic groups have particular physiologies, diets and even lifestyles. They use the information to save lives.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that in Fiji the take up of coronavirus vaccines is lower in the indigenous population than for other races.
If everybody had the data, NGOs and health authorities could co-operate in working out why. They could upgrade the messaging and vaccination strategies to respond.
Because as we are all reminded, no Fijian is safe until everyone is vaccinated.
In the middle of the coronavirus it took weeks for the government to even start communicating virus information in vernacular languages.
Why? Were they instructed not to be “obsessed with ethnicity”?
Affirmative action
We need to understand ethnic performance gaps in critical areas such as education and poverty, representation in business and professional life. If we don’t, how are we going to fix them?
Are we going to pretend that cultures and lifestyles play no part in these gaps? Are we going to pretend that we can’t use targeted programmes and information to close them?
Past governments – yes, those evil “past governments” which get blamed for everything bad — tried to respond to these gaps with “affirmative action” policies in education and economic support. They were not, in my opinion, very effective.
In my view they addressed the symptoms, rather than the causes, of these gaps. So (in my view) it was necessary to re-think the affirmative action policies, look critically at what had gone wrong, and re-design them.
The gaps have not gone away. But for 15 years we have not been allowed to talk about them. So that is 15 years in which we have lost the opportunity to look for new, imaginative ways to deal with the gaps.
Fiji is like every other multiracial country in the world. Race is a natural fault line.
You cannot paper it over by saying “the Constitution says we are all Fijians now”.
When things go wrong, in times of economic, social and political stress, people look for simple answers to their problems.
Sometimes they are encouraged to find those simple answers by blaming people who do not look like them or speak like them.
And that’s when things go wrong. The explosions of 1987 and 2000 are not so long ago.
Are we all trying to pretend that these things could not happen again?
The current government seems to think that warning us against racism, or arresting people who criticise Bill 17, will deal with the problem (or maybe solve their own future election problems).
Nation-building
But like everything in the stunted and short-sighted vision they have offered us for 15 years, this government doesn’t seem to understand the essence of nation-building.
Our government seems to think that a nation is built when everyone is brought under control by the government and ordered around.
So, apparently, we must all call ourselves “Fijians”. We must pretend that we are all the same.
We must not be allowed our own local governments in case they disagree with the people in Suva. We must not be allowed autonomy in the schools that in many cases our own forefathers or religious communities built.
In the midst of our worst ever health and economic crisis, non-governmental organisations, charities and private citizens should not get government support because they cannot be controlled.
Instead, government will do everything. Dial 161 and take your chances.
But nations are not built like that. Nations are built by their people, helped by (not ordered around by) their governments.
Citizens do the building
In a well-run nation, it is the citizens who do the building. It is the citizens working together, in business, in community organisations, schools, health, in advocacy for minority groups, in town and city councils, who build.
They know what their communities need and respond to those needs.
The citizens, through their councils and committees and charitable trusts, argue with and criticise and demand things from the government. Because after all, the people who run the government are supposed to work for them.
It is citizens who can come up with the ideas and demand action and support from the government to deal with the obvious ethnic differences in income and poverty levels, in education and in other critical areas of national life.
But how can they do that when they don’t have the information and are not allowed to talk about it? All we have to talk about, it seems, is what will be the next episode in our very own series of Fawlty Towers.
Richard Naidu is a Suva lawyer, media commentator and former journalist in New Zealand and Fiji. His workmates think he is a bit like Basil Fawlty. This article was originally published in The Fiji Times and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Questions have been raised about why the head of Fiji’s Bureau of Statistics was fired by the Bainimarama government this week.
Kemueli Naiqama recently published this year’s household income and expenditure survey that showed three quarters of Fiji’s poorest people are indigenous Fijians, or i-Taukei.
It is the first time ethnicity has featured in data published in the annual survey.
RNZ’s correspondent in the capital Suva, Lice Movono, told RNZ FirstUp the bureau had been “enhancing their ability to report information” and trying to be in line with sustainable development goals reporting.
“And the latest report shows that the poorest people in this country are the i-Taukei people,” Movono said.
“But more importantly that our poverty population — or the population that is living well below the poverty line — is very high.
“It would be directly opposite to the policies of this government to give information segregated according to ethnicity — it would be extremely embarrassing for a government that has been talking about producing an all time record high boom – economic growth,” she said.
Sacking defended
The Statistics Department comes under the Ministry for Economy.
The Minister, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum who is also Fiji’s Attorney-General, has defended his sacking of the country’s chief statistician.
Sayed-Khaiyum questioned the methodology used for the study and labelled it flawed.
“Poverty in Fiji is now measured by consumption, including the food grown in a family backyard, and not just income,” he said.
Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum … “Poverty in Fiji is now measured by consumption.” Image: Fiji government/FB
Sayed-Khaiyum told a media conference in Suva he had issues with the bureau’s analysis of ethnic and religious data in its 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES).
“We appreciate any independent office carrying out a proper, professional independent analysis of any data and understand the importance of reliable, timely and accurate statistics,” Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“And many may not know this or many may not delve further into this — we in fact approved this new methodology of moving away from what we call using the traditional income measure for welfare analysis — to using consumption expenditure for poverty measurement.”
New measuring yardstick
Sayed-Khaiyum said the consumption-based methodology for measuring poverty would “accurately and better assist in policy-making”.
He said the new yardstick did not just look at how much money a household earned but also at how they had access to services.
But there were many who disagreed with the attorney-general.
The University of the South Pacific’s senior lecturer in economics, Dr Neelesh Gounder, said the poverty estimates produced at all levels were reliable.
He said those not happy with the ethnic-based policy needed to target the policy and not the data.
Gounder said the survey was just the “messenger and shooting the messenger would not help.”
“Regarding data on ethnicity, there are several policy areas where ethnic-based data is relevant and required,” Dr Gounder said.
USP senior economics lecturer Dr Neelesh Gounder … “shooting the messenger would not help.” Image: RNZ/University of the South Pacific
Ethnic data important
“Ethnic data allows us to see beyond presumed beliefs and prejudices that underly ethnic groups and it seems the government wants to avoid race-based policies that may arise from ethnic data.
“Recognising diversity based on ethnicity does not necessarily mean such differences should also lead to policy based on ethnicity.”
However, the government needs to understand that it is not the census or HIES that is causing ethnic tension in Fiji, Dr Gounder said.
The leader of the opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), Bill Gavoka, said reports Naiqama was escorted out of his office were “shameful”.
“It is truly troubling,” Gavoka said.
He said the Bureau of Statistics is independent of ministers and instead reported directly to Parliament, with staff who are civil servants, but without being under ministerial control.
“The statistics they generate are independent of government and to hear that the FBoS CEO Kemueli Naiqama was unceremoniously dismissed and escorted off-premises for the report of poverty in Fiji, says a lot about the type of democracy we have in Fiji,” Gavoka said.
Independence needed
He said SODELPA wants the Statistics Bureau to have independence from any undue outside influence, especially from a government that has been hyping about a “boom” that many knew was not true.
“The collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction, and publishing of statistical information relating to the economic and general activities must be carried out without fear and SODELPA tells the Attorney-General and FijiFirst, ‘hands off’,” Gavoka said.
By exceeding the scope of data collection and ignoring fact-based methodology, the government said Naiqama had breached the terms of his contract with the ministry.
Under his employment contract, Naiqama will be paid all salary and accrued entitlements for the period up to September 15, 2021.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On 15 September, prime minister Boris Johnson began reshuffling his cabinet of senior ministers. This dramatic turn of events coincided with the parliamentary debate on the government’s proposed £20 per week cut to universal credit. Some have speculated that the cabinet reshuffle was a technique to distract the public from the government’s drastic cuts.
All change
In spite of the significant changes to the prime minister’s cabinet, people took to Twitter to point out that replacing one Tory with another is fairly inconsequential, as there is no such thing as a good Tory. Rosie Holt shared:
It’s a bit exciting wondering what new awful people will replace the old awful people isn’t it
Possibly referring to Raab’s comments suggesting that the UK should trade with nations known to violate the European Convention on Human Rights in the name of growth, David Osland said:
Dominic Raab is an outspoken opponent of the Human Rights Act. He's just been appointed justice secretary.
The dramatic turn of events coincided with a parliamentary debate on the government’s plan to cut an uplift to universal credit by £20 per week. Arguing that the prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle is simply a distraction from the Tories’ cut to universal credit, Rachel Wearmouth shared:
This reshuffle completely distracts from the vote on Universal Credit, btw, and the fact that slashing the £20 uplift is going to push people into poverty.
National secretary of The People’s Assembly Laura Pidcock added:
So many journos drooling over the reshuffle, using their large platforms to share *breaking* news with us whilst a seismic cut to Universal Credit is being made. A grotesque assault on working class people is taking place & they are largely silent on it. Utterly reprehensible.
UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter has written a letter urging the UK government to reconsider the proposed cut. He argues that it may be in breach of international human rights law and is likely to push an estimated half a million households into poverty:
— UN Special Rapporteur on poverty and human rights (@srpoverty) September 16, 2021
Sharing a video of her speech at the House of Commons debate – in which she recounted correspondence from constituents on the potentially devastating impact of the cut on their lives – Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana tweeted:
When I asked people to contact me about the impact of the £20-a-week Universal Credit cut, I was overwhelmed by the response. The messages were heartbreaking.
I can't do justice to the depth of pain and anger, but today I spoke and voted against this attack on the working class. pic.twitter.com/Z8mdQKZ5Pw
Highlighting that the £20 per week cut to universal credit will disproportionately impact poor and disabled people, Labour MP for Hemsworth John Trickett tweeted:
Disabled & poorer families are facing winter with a lethal mix of price rises & universal credit cuts.
Stripping away £20 a week from the disabled while putting their energy bills up £139 should be a criminal offence.
Setting out the impact of the planned cut coupled with the rise in national insurance tax on disadvantaged young people, Howard Beckett shared:
For an 18-20 year old the UK minimum wage went from a meagre £6.45 to a miserly £6.56 in April ‘21. A pathetic 1.7% rise. Inflation is running at 3.2%; £20 is about to be taken from Universal Credit & they face a National Insurance tax rise. Austerity for our youth is lost hope.
Summarising the government’s war on the working-class, senior economist Sarah Arnold shared:
In the next few months, low income working households face:
Rising energy bills and food costs £1040 cut to Universal Credit Up to 2.5% effective increase in National Insurance contributions#KeepTheLifelinehttps://t.co/X89zIieMxD
On 15 September, Liz Truss replaced Dominic Raab as foreign secretary. The prime minister appointed Raab justice secretary and deputy prime minister. Former education secretary Gavin Williamson, former housing, communities and local government secretary Robert Jenrick, and former justice secretary Robert Buckland lost their roles as cabinet ministers, having all faced scandals over the course of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, chancellor Rishi Sunak and home secretary Priti Patel remain in place. Other ministers, including newly appointed housing secretary Michael Gove and culture secretary Nadine Dorries, have moved positions.
Campaigners from organisations including the People’s Assembly, Black Lives Matter, the National Education Union and Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament are coming together. They’re holding a national demonstration against the government’s “corruption, cronyism and exploitation” during the Tory party conference in Manchester on 3rd October.
Accounting for government aid programs, poverty fell in 2020 to the lowest rate on record since the Census Bureau began keeping records in 2009. The dip, which happened in spite of declining median household incomes last year, shows that the direct aid from the stimulus packages was incredibly effective at reducing poverty.
While the official poverty rate rose due in part to a 2.9 percent decrease in median household incomes, the supplemental poverty rate fell from 11.8 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2020. The supplemental poverty rate takes into account more government aid than the official rate, including things like food stamps, housing assistance and the stimulus checks.
The stimulus packages passed in 2020 helped significantly in the overall poverty reduction, the Census found. The $1,200 stimulus checks alone lifted 11.7 million people out of poverty. Supplemental unemployment aid — $600 a week for much of 2020, thanks in large part to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — protected an additional 5.5 million people from experiencing poverty.
Without the stimulus payments, the Census Bureau wrote, the poverty rate would have been 12.7 percent rather than 9.1 percent. While the additional government aid helped lift millions out of poverty, Social Security still had the largest impact in 2020, lifting 26.5 million out of poverty.
The government aid worked in reducing poverty across the board: People of all ages, races, ethnicities and education levels saw a reduction, The Washington Postreports. Households headed by single moms and Black and Latinx people saw the largest declines.
The data shows the powerful impact of direct aid from the government, which was able to reverse some of the harmful effects of the pandemic on the economy, such as mass layoffs.
“What the data tells us is clear: when government responds to the needs of the working class, millions of families are lifted out of poverty,” Sanders wrote on Twitter in response to the Census report. “We must not stop here. We must pass the $3.5T reconciliation bill and invest in working families.”
To many progressives, reports such as these showing that aid in stimulus packages like last years’ bills and this year’s American Rescue Plan reduce poverty are proof positive that lawmakers should implement further direct aid measures.
“For the record, poverty dropped last year despite the pandemic — because of government aid. Lesson: Poverty is a policy choice,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on Twitter.
Experts at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) echoed Reich’s tweet, writing “The poverty rate reduction highlights how much poverty the nation and its policymakers tolerate is a choice.” EPI recommended immediately reinstating the supplemental unemployment checks, which ended nationally on Labor Day but were cut off prematurely by 26 states, nearly all of them with Republican governors.
Republicans piled onto the unemployment checks this year, blaming them for a so-called “worker shortage” that didn’t actually exist. But states that cut off the unemployment checks early didn’t find a significant increase in employment — in fact, data from the Department of Labor found that the states that stopped the unemployment checks had slightly slower job growth.
Data from Tuesday’s Census Bureau suggests that employment can have a limited effect on reducing poverty in comparison to direct relief programs. However, Republicans and conservative Democrats, have shown little interest in pursuing poverty reduction as a goal.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was among a small group of U.S. citizens who sat on milk crates or stood holding signs, across from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. We had been fasting from solid foods for a month, calling for an end to brutal economic warfare waged against Iraq through imposition of U.N. sanctions. Each Friday of our fast, we approached the entrance to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations carrying lentils and rice, asking the U.S. officials to break our fast with us, asking them to hear our reports, gathered after visiting destitute Iraqi hospitals and homes. On four successive Friday afternoons, New York police handcuffed us and took us to jail.
Two days after the passenger planes attacked the World Trade Center, U.S. Mission to the UN officials called us and asked that we visit with them.
I had naively hoped this overture could signify empathy on the part of U.S. officials. Perhaps the 9/11 attack would engender sorrow over the suffering and pain endured by people of Iraq and other lands when the U.S. attacks them. The officials at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations wanted to know why we went to Iraq but we sensed they were mainly interested in filling out forms to comply with an order to gather more information about U.S. people going to Iraq.
The U.S. government and military exploited the grief and shock following 9/11 attacks to raise fears, promote Islamophobia and launch forever wars which continue to this day. Under the guise of “counter-terrorism,” the U.S. now pledges to combine drone attacks, surveillance, airstrikes, and covert operations to continue waging war in Afghanistan. Terror among Afghans persists.
I visited Kabul, Afghanistan in September 2019. While there, a young friend whom I’ve known for five years greeted me and then spoke in a hushed voice. “Kathy,” he asked, “do you know about Qazi Qadir, Bahadir, Jehanzeb and Saboor?” I nodded. I had read a news account, shortly before I arrived, about Afghan Special Operations commandos, trained by the CIA, having waged a night raid in the city of Jalalabad at the home of four brothers. They awakened the young men, then shot and killed them. Neighbors said the young men had gathered to welcome their father back from the Hajj; numerous colleagues insisted the young men were innocent.
My young friend has been deeply troubled by many other incidents in which the United States directly attacked innocent people or trained Afghan units to do so. Two decades of U.S. combat in Afghanistan have made civilians vulnerable to drone attacks, night raids, airstrikes and arrests. Over 4 million people have become internally displaced as they fled from battles or could no longer survive on scarred, drought stricken lands.
In an earlier visit to Kabul, at the height of the U.S. troop surge, another young friend earnestly asked me to tell parents in the United States not to send their sons and daughters to Afghanistan. “Here it is very dangerous for them,” he said. “And they do not really help us.”
For many years, the United States claimed its mission in Afghanistan improved the lives of Afghan women and children. But essentially, the U.S. war improved the livelihoods of those who designed, manufactured, sold and used weaponry to kill Afghans.
When the U.S. was winding down its troop surge in 2014, but not its occupation, military officials undertook what they called “the largest retrograde mission in U.S. military history,” incurring enormous expenses. One estimate suggested the war in Afghanistan, that year, was costing $2 million per U.S. soldier. That same year, UNICEF officials calculated that the cost of adding iodized salt into the diet of an Afghan infant, a step which could prevent chronic brain damage in children suffering from acute malnourishment, would be 5 cents per child per year.
Which endeavor would the majority of U.S. people have opted to support, in their personal budgets, had they ever been given a choice? Profligate U.S. military spending in Afghanistan or vital assistance for a starving Afghan child?
One of my young Afghan friends says he is now an anarchist. He doesn’t place much trust in governments and militaries. He feels strong allegiance toward the grassroots network he has helped build, a group I would normally name and celebrate, but must now refer to as “our young friends in Afghanistan,” in hopes of protecting them from hostile groups.
The brave and passionate dedication they showed as they worked tirelessly to share resources, care for the environment, and practice nonviolence has made them quite vulnerable to potential accusers who may believe they were too connected with westerners.
In recent weeks, I’ve been part of an ad hoc team assisting 60 young people and their family members who feel alarmed about remaining in Kabul and are sorting out their options to flee the country.
It’s difficult to forecast how Taliban rule will affect them.
Already, some extraordinarily brave people have held protests in in the provinces of Herat, Nimroz, Balkh and Farah, and in the city of Kabul where dozens of women took to the streets to demand representation in the new government and to insist that their rights must be protected.
In many provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban may find themselves ruling over increasingly resentful people. Half the population already lives in poverty and economic catastrophe looms. In damage caused by war, people have lost harvests, homes and livestock. A third wave of COVID afflicts the country and three million Afghans face consequences of severe drought. Will the Taliban government have the resources and skills to cope with these overwhelming problems?
On the other hand, in some provinces, Taliban rule has seemed preferable to the previous government’s incompetence and corruption, particularly in regard to property or land disputes.
We should be honest. The Taliban are in power today because of a colossal mess the U.S. helped create.
Now, we U.S. citizens must insist on paying reparations for destruction caused by 20 years of war. To be meaningful, reparations must also include dismantling the warfare systems that caused so much havoc and misery. Our wars of choice were waged against people who meant us no harm. We must choose, now, to lay aside the cruel futility of our forever wars.
My young friend who whispered to me about human rights abuses in 2019 recently fled Afghanistan. He said he doesn’t want to be driven by fear, but he deeply wants to use his life to do good, to build a better world.
Ultimately, Afghanistan will need people like him and his friends if the country is ever to experience a future where basic human rights to food, shelter, health care and education are met. It will need people who have already made dedicated sacrifices for peace, believing in an Afghan adage which says “blood doesn’t wash away blood.”
Essentially, people in Afghanistan will need U.S. people to embrace this same teaching. We must express true sorrow, seek forgiveness, and show valor similar to that of the brave people insisting on human rights in Afghanistan today.
Collectively, recognizing the terrible legacy of 9/11, we must agree: To counter terror, abolish war.
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UN Human Rights expert 
Rising energy bills and food costs
