Poverty

Spain Is Moving To Establish Permanent Basic Income

April 13, 2020 Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider. Create! Poverty, Recession, Spain, Universal Basic Income

Spain is moving to implement a permanent basic income as a measure to help workers and families battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Nadia Calviño, the country's minister for economic affairs, told the Spanish broadcaster La Sexta on Sunday evening that the government was planning to introduce the cash handouts as part of a barrage of policies meant to help people get back on their feet. She said enacting basic income was "mostly aimed at families, but differentiating between their circumstances." Calviño didn't offer a specific date as to when basic income could be rolled out in the country. But she said the government hoped it would become "a permanent instrument." "We're going to do it as soon as possible," she said. "So it can be useful, not just for this extraordinary situation, and that it remains forever."

Half A Billion People Could Be Pushed Into Poverty By Coronavirus

April 11, 2020 Oxfam.org. Educate! COVID-19, Global South, IMF, Poverty

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could push half a billion more people into poverty unless urgent action is taken to bail out developing countries, said Oxfam today. The agency is calling on world leaders to agree an ‘Economic Rescue Package for All’ to keep poor countries and poor communities afloat, ahead of key meetings of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G20 Finance Ministers’ next week. Oxfam’s new report ‘Dignity Not Destitution’ presents fresh analysis which suggests between six and eight percent of the global population could be forced into poverty as governments shut down entire economies to manage the spread of the virus. This could set back the fight against poverty by a decade, and as much as 30 years in some regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.

This Is A Global Pandemic – Let’s Treat It As Such

April 9, 2020 Adam Hanieh, Verso Books. Strategize! COVID-19, Global South, health, Pandemic, Poverty

In the face of the COVID-19 tsunami, our lives are changing in ways that were inconceivable just a few short weeks ago. Not since the 2008-2009 economic collapse has the world collectively shared an experience of this kind: a single, rapidly-mutating, global crisis, structuring the rhythm of our daily lives within a complex calculus of risk and competing probabilities. In response, numerous social movements have put forward demands that take seriously the potentially disastrous consequences of the virus, while also tackling the incapacity of capitalist governments to adequately address the crisis itself. These demands include questions of worker safety, the necessity of neighbourhood level organising, income and social security, the rights of those on zero-hour contracts or in precarious employment, and the need to protect renters and those living in poverty.

These Migrant Workers Did Not Suddenly Fall From the Sky

April 5, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! COVID-19, Global Recession, Hunger, India, Poverty

Madness engulfs the planet. Hundreds of millions of people are in lockdown in their homes, millions of people who work in essential jobs – or who cannot afford to stay home without state assistance – continue to go to work, thousands of people lie in intensive-care beds taken care of by tens of thousands of medical professionals and caregivers who face shortages of equipment and time. Narrow sections of the human population – the billionaires – believe that they can isolate themselves in their enclaves, but the virus knows no borders. The global pandemic driven by the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus holds us in its grip; even as China seems to have bent the curve of infections, the charts for the rest of the world are forbidding: the light at the end of the tunnel is as dim as it has ever been.

Six Quick—But Very Important—Points About Coronavirus And Poverty In The US

March 12, 2020 By Bill Quigley, Commondreams.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Inequality, Poverty

In the United States, tens of millions of people are at a much greater risk of getting sick from the coronavirus than others. The most vulnerable among us do not have the option to comply with suggestions to stay home from work or work remotely. Most low wage workers do not have any paid sick days and cannot do their work from home.

MLK And The Black Misleadership Class

January 19, 2020 Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democratic Party, Martin Luther King, militarism, Poverty, Racism

The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is commemorated each year at thousands of events in literally every U.S. city, yet the martyred human rights leader’s political philosophy is totally absent from the agenda of today’s Black Misleadership Class, a grasping cabal of hustlers and opportunists that have grown fat and infinitely corrupt through their collaboration with “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” Their “freedom train” was the Democratic Party, the half of the corporate electoral duopoly that allowed colored folks to ride as first-class passengers – as long as they didn’t question the schedule or the destination. The budding Black misleaders hopped on board the Democratic Party express to the boardrooms of corporate power at about the same time that Dr. King was making his definitive break with the evil “triplets’” infernal machinery, including both corporate parties.

Operation Relentless Pursuit Brings Terror To Seven Cities

January 16, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. Educate! Drug War, Operation Relentless Pursuit, Police abuse, Poverty, Racism

Clearing the FOG co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese interviewed Jacqueline Luqman of Coffe, Current Events and Politics in Luqman Nation about the Department of Justice's new Operation Relentless Pursuit. The initial phase of the program, which costs $71 million, targets seven cities, four of them majority black, with more money, police equipment, and federal law enforcement to supposedly combat crime. Luqman explains what the impact of the program will be on poor and black communities and what would be a more effective approach to crime. Listen to the full interview plus recent news and analysis, including what the corporate media isn't telling you about Iran and Iraq, on Clearing the FOG.

Safety Net Hospital Sues Poor Patients For Unpaid Bills

December 25, 2019 Blake Farmer, AP. Educate! Healthcare, Hospitals, Medical Debt, Poverty

Nashville, TN - Nashville General is the city-funded, safety-net hospital. For a patient without insurance, this is supposed to be the best place to go. But its emergency room has been taking more patients to court for unpaid medical bills than any other hospital or practice in town. A WPLN investigation finds the physician staffing firm that runs the ER at Nashville General sued 700 patients in Davidson County this year — roughly the same number as all the other hospitals and physician staffing firms combined. They include uninsured patients like Sonya Johnson, a social worker and single mother from Antioch. Between a nonprofit clinic and General Hospital, Johnson had figured out how to manage her health problems even though she was uninsured until recently.

Harvesting The Blood Of America’s Poor: The Latest Stage Of Capitalism

December 4, 2019 By Alan Macleod, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, Poverty

For much of the world, donating blood is purely an act of solidarity; a civic duty that the healthy perform to aid others in need. The idea of being paid for such an action would be considered bizarre. But in the United States, it is big business. Indeed, in today’s wretched economy, where around 130 million Americans admit an inability to pay for basic needs like food, housing or healthcare, buying and selling blood is of the few booming industries America has left.

US The Only Country That Measures Poverty By Fifty Year Old Measure

November 9, 2019 By Shawn Fremstad, Cepr.net Educate! Income, Income inequality, Poverty

For over half a century, the United States has measured income poverty by comparing a family’s income to a standardized dollar amount (a “poverty line”) that varies by family size. For a family of four, this poverty line was initially set at $3,104 in 1963. The current official poverty line — $25,701 for a family of four in 2018 — is simply the base-1963 poverty line adjusted for nothing but inflation over the last 55 years. Today the United States is the only country in the world that measures present-day poverty by using a poverty line set over half a century ago and since then only adjusted for inflation.

Economics Of Poverty, Or The Poverty Of Economics

October 18, 2019 Staff, Anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Economics, New Economy, Poverty

As every year, mainstream economists lined up to laud the choice. Dani Rodrik declared it “a richly deserved recognition.” Richard Thaler, who won the award in 2017 (here’s a link to my analysis), extended his congratulations to the Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer and to the committee “for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later.” While Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate, refers to it as “a very heartening prize—evidence-based economics with a real social purpose.”

The 1% Rules, The 99% Lets Them!

October 6, 2019 Ralph Nader, Nader.org. Strategize! Free Speech, Hunger, Poverty, Wall Street

There has never been more access to food – domestic and imported – yet hunger is an ongoing problem everywhere. In the U.S. alone, 16.5 million children go to bed hungry and 20% of community college students are experiencing “food insecurity.” Never have there been more communications technologies, yet it is harder to get through to people personally than fifty years ago. Never have people been able to use their right to free speech so unencumbered, yet a torrent of lies are now spread so freely and are often unchallenged. Never have there been higher corporate profits, yet staggering amounts of poverty and near poverty remain along with stagnant wages. Never have there been more medicines to alleviate pain, yet far too many of these pain killers have caused massive fatalities and addictions.

Medicare For All Would Cut Poverty By Over 20 Percent

September 14, 2019 Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project. Educate! Health Care, Medicare for all, New Economy, Poverty, Single-Payer

The Census released its annual income, poverty, and health insurance statistics earlier this week. The summary report shows that 8 million of the nation’s 42.5 million poor people would not be poor if they did not have to pay medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenses like deductibles, copays, coinsurance, and self-payments. Medicare for All (M4A) virtually eliminates these kinds of payments, meaning that these 8 million people (18.8 percent of all poor people) would find themselves lifted over the poverty threshold if M4A were enacted. This headcount poverty measure actually understates how significant MOOP expenses are to poverty in this country. According to this same data, in 2018, the total poverty gap stood at $175.8 billion.

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