Poverty and inequality

Capitalism leaves people to starve

The average household of four in the USA’s top one per cent spends $3 million a year on luxuries. In famine-stricken Somalia, more than half the population of nine million live on less than $1 a day. Each one of those rich households in the USA, if it limited itself to necessities, could spare enough to double the income of almost one million Somalis. The richest one per cent in the USA — three million people — consume between them 70 times as much as the entire income (consumer spending, public services, investment, the lot) of 92 million people in Somalia and Ethiopia. The richest one per...

Agribusiness booms, millions starve

In Europe, the capitalist crisis means discomfort, stress, and humiliation for millions. In many parts of the world, it means outright starvation. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, “countries in the [Horn of Africa] are confronted with the failure of the short rains in late 2010 and negative trends that threaten the long rainy season in 2011... “The number of those requiring emergency assistance has grown from 6.3 million in early 2011 to 10 million today — a 40 percent increase — in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda (Karamoja region). The majority of the newly...

Richer than ever

According to a new report, the world’s wealthiest are getting more prosperous by the day. The annual World Wealth report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini shows that the wealth of “high net worth individuals” (HNWIs) around the world reached $42.7 trillion (£26.5 trillion) in 2010, rising nearly 10% on the previous year and surpassing the peak of $40.7 trillion reached in 2007. In Britain the wealth of the 1,000 richest individuals — as measured by the Sunday Times — was £333.5 billion in 2010. After a year of everyone being exhorted to pull together and share the burden, the wealth of this top 1...

The other America

I have harboured the usual Hollywood and rock ‘n’ roll-inspired English white boy road trip fantasies ever since my teenage years, and a couple of weeks back, I finally found myself out on Highway 61. As I approached the celebrated Interstate — top down on the bright red Mustang convertible hired for the occasion, the inevitable choice of Dylan CD blaring from the speakers — I was met by a sign reading “lane closures in both directions”. That’s not quite how I imagined it was going to be. Obvious lack of infrastructural investment was not the only thing that struck me about the state of the...

Inflation is higher for the worse-off

New research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the rate of inflation is systematically higher for the worse-off than for the well-off. Over the eleven years 2000-10, the inflation rate for the poorest 20% of households averaged 3.4%, and for the top 10% of households, 2.9%. The difference looks small, but, accumulated, means a 7.5% difference in total inflation over the eleven-year period. The general reason is that prices of things that poorer people spend most on, like food, fuel, and housing, usually rise faster than prices of, for example, electronic gadgets. The exact...

Miliband moans about the rich, bashes the poor

The “gay girl blogger” in Damascus was really a male student in Edinburgh. Labour movement activists must be wondering whether the “leader of the Labour Party” is really some dimwitted Blairite apparatchik. As the Tories launch their Workfare scheme and their slightly-modified NHS marketisation plans, Ed Miliband made a speech on 12 June... pillorying people on incapacity benefit for not getting jobs, and recommending local authorities allocate council housing not by need but by whether tenants have jobs or do voluntary work. He also said, rightly, that: • New Labour “saw responsibility as...

Teaching children to fail

Education in England is more unequal than elsewhere. Students who do well in English schools, do well by international standards. Students who do badly in English schools, do very badly by international standards. A recent OECD report* (February 2011) confirmed this: “Schooling outcomes in the United Kingdom are among the more unequal in the OECD area” [i.e. among the world's better-off countries]. Within the general inequality, poor white students suffer worst of all. White students from among the poorest fifth get an average of one fewer good GCSE pass than black or Asian students in the...

The future under Tory cuts: pauper old age

The capitalist free market means luxury for those with sharp elbows — and being trampled underfoot for those whose elbows have become frail with age. Thirty thousand old and frail people in care homes face disruption, and probably, some of them, being shunted to different places, as the country’s biggest private care homes operator, Southern Cross, goes bust. Disruption and forced moves often kill old and frail people. If they don’t kill, they leave the elderly people frailer and more confused. The plight of those 30,000 is only the top foliage of a forest in which market mechanisms grind...

Hunger amidst record crops

World wheat prices increased about 70% in the second half of 2010. Overall, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s world food price index was, by the end of 2010, as high as the peak it reached in 2008. The FAO expects it to go higher still in 2010. Food prices rose very fast in 2007 and the first half of 2008; dropped again in the second half of 2008 as the financial crisis “deflated” economies; and have been rising since early 2009, with a lull in the first half of 2010 and a sharp increase since then. Overall, food prices are about two-thirds higher now than they were at the start of...

Fallen Heros: The City in Thatchers Britian

In Thatcher's Britian the spiv is hero and the profit gouger is king. But, awkwardly for the Tories, the new captains of capitalism keep getting caught up in scandals. Click here to download pdf .

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