Poverty

How China Strengthened Food Security And Fought Poverty

June 4, 2022 Joe Scholten, Multipolarista. Create! China, Cooperatives, Food Security, Poverty

The Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing supply-chain crisis, and high rates of inflation around the world have led to rising food prices and fears of famine. These cascading and interlocking problems have pushed governments to prioritize economic self-sufficiency and food security. China is leading the way in this struggle. Beijing has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, and simultaneously fight poverty, with a multi-pronged approach that combines state-funded agricultural cooperatives, stockpiling of nonperishable staples, a crackdown on waste, and government investment in new technologies. While the United Nations warns of “the specter of a global food shortage,” the Chinese government has provided countries with an alternative model to meet the needs of their people.

25 Issues Of Increasing And Serious Concern In India

May 10, 2022 Bharat Dogra, Popular Resistance. Educate! India, Poverty, Privatization, Worker Rights

There is increasing worry that in some areas of critical importance the situation in India has been deteriorating steadily during the last eight years or so. As India is home to about 18 per cent of people in the world, this is clearly a matter of urgent concern. Hence a review of these disturbing trends is urgently needed with a view to suggesting suitable remedial actions for checking this deterioration. Inequalities have been increasing recently to record levels. According to the World Inequality Report, after years of significant reduction of inequalities in the post-independence period, inequalities are coming back to their colonial levels in recent times. This report tells us that the bottom 50% have only 6% of the wealth, while the top 1% have 33% of the wealth. The bottom 50% have only 13% of the income, while the top 1% have 22% of the income.

L.A. County To Bring High-Speed Internet To Poor Black, Latino Areas

May 4, 2022 Robin Urevich , Capital & Main. Create! California, Internet Access, Municipal internet, Poverty

Post-pandemic, there is near universal agreement that fast reliable internet is as essential as electricity or water, but the debate over who should provide it and how is still heated. Big telecom companies have long fought to keep government out of their business: Barriers to municipal broadband are in place in 18 states, making it hard for localities to establish their own networks, thanks to industry lobbying. Even in California — where legislators lifted a restriction on public broadband in rural areas in 2018 — publicly owned networks are still rare. Now, however, $65 billion in broadband funding included in last year’s federal infrastructure bill has changed the dynamic, fueling a nationwide rush by state and local governments to connect residents to the internet.

COVID-19: The Poor People’s Pandemic

April 17, 2022 People's Health Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, health, Mortality, Poverty

Soon after the first pandemic wave subsided, COVID-19 turned from the “great equalizer” to a poor people’s pandemic in the United States, shows a recent report published by the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC). The report brings a detailed analysis of how the pandemic affected poor and low income communities in the US, asking if their experiences are being taken into consideration at all, regardless of whether we are looking at pandemic response or post-pandemic re-building. The Poor People’s Pandemic Report is focused on the data and lived experience of people in the 1,000 poorest counties in the US, shining a light on the intersections between poverty and the pandemic. Some of the counties highlighted in the report have a very small population, which means they are not included in the official Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports.

Gains Of Nicaraguan Women During The Second Sandinista Government

February 18, 2022 Stansfield Smith, Popular Resistance. Create! Nicaragua, Poverty, Sandinista Revolution, Women

Women, particularly those in the Third World, often find themselves with limited ability to participate in community organizations and political life because of the bondage poverty and their traditional sex role imposes on them. On them falls sole responsibility to care for their children and other family members, especially when sick; they maintain the home, cook the meals, wash the dishes, the clothes, bathe the children, clean the house, mend the clothes. This labor becomes unending manual labor when households have no electricity (consequently, no lights, no refrigerator, no labor-saving electrical devices), and no running water. The burden of this work impedes the social participation, self-expectations, and education of the female population.

The Terrible Fate Facing The Afghan People

February 13, 2022 Vijay Prashad, People's Dispatch. Educate! Afghanistan, Poverty, Sanctions, US Imperialism

On February 8, 2022, UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) Afghanistan sent out a bleak set of tweets. One of the tweets, which included a photograph of a child lying in a hospital bed with her mother seated beside her, said: “Having recently recovered from acute watery diarrhea, two years old Soria is back in hospital, this time suffering from edema and wasting. Her mother has been by her bedside for the past two weeks anxiously waiting for Soria to recover.” The series of tweets by UNICEF Afghanistan show that Soria is not alone in her suffering. “One in three adolescent girls suffers from anemia” in Afghanistan, with the country struggling with “one of the world’s highest rates of stunting in children under five: 41 percent,” according to UNICEF.

How Targeting Programs To Poor People Leaves Out Poor People

February 8, 2022 Jim Pugh, In These Times. Educate! Child Tax Credit, Democrats, Means Testing, Poverty

Less than one year ago, the United States government enacted one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in modern history. The Child Tax Credit (CTC), originally established in 1997, was expanded through the American Rescue Plan to provide families with children substantially larger payments, delivered monthly, while making low-income families eligible for the full benefits. This expansion changed the face of child poverty in the United States, lifting over 4 million children above the poverty line—a decrease in poverty of more than 40% — and decreasing food insufficiency for families with children by an estimated 26%. Unfortunately, despite its transformative impact, the expansion of the CTC is now at risk of being lost.

How US Meddling Split Sudan

February 3, 2022 T J Coles, The Grayzone. Educate! Oil, Poverty, Sudan, US Imperialism

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences. Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan. When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, when Western corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.” The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement.

A Program For A Future Society That We Will Build In The Present

January 14, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Poverty, Transformation

In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender. ‘Multidimensional poverty’ is a much more precise measurement of poverty than the international poverty line of $1.90 per day. It looks at ten indicators divided along three axes: health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance), and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets). The team studied multidimensional poverty across 109 countries, looking at the living conditions of 5.9 billion people.

We Know The Silver Bullet To Ending Poverty And Destitution

January 14, 2022 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Poverty, Universal Basic Income

Here’s how the world should operate in simple terms: A certain country or region or city or township or Hobbit hole tries something in order to help their society or group or hovel — if it works, other places then do it. If it doesn’t work, other places don’t do it. It’s like when you were a kid and you saw your brother slide down the banister and rack himself on the newel post — You then thought, “Maybe that activity is not for me.” But if he didn’t nail himself in the jewels, you probably thought, “I think I’ll try that.” That’s how the United States government should work, but it doesn’t. For-profit healthcare, corporate personhood, the drug war, funding terrorists overseas that we call “moderate rebels,” etc. — all of these things have been tried, they fuckin’ suck every time, and we keep doing them.

US Isn’t Prepared For Climate Disasters That Push People Deeper Into Poverty

December 6, 2021 Marina Lazetic and Karen Jacobsen, The Conversation. Create! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Hurricanes, Poverty

Despite years of preparations, New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell said there was no time to issue a mandatory evacuation order as Ida rapidly intensified into a powerful Category 4 hurricane. She urged city residents to “hunker down.” Mass evacuations require coordination among multiple parishes and states, and there wasn’t enough time. In several surrounding parishes, people were told to evacuate, but in low-lying and flood-prone areas, many residents couldn’t afford to leave. Hurricane Ida became the most destructive storm of the busy 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, which ended Nov. 30. It was one of eight named storms to hit the U.S. as the season exhausted the list of 21 tropical storm names for only the third year on record.

Student Loan Payments Resume Soon, But Working Borrowers Aren’t Ready

November 18, 2021 Ayelet Sheffey, Business Insider. Educate! Higher Education, Pandemic, Poverty, Student Loans

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.

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