We have never had to look far to see glaring evidence that the capitalist economic system has failed the people of this world. There has been those continuing wars all for resources, wealth and power for the few. Poverty is endemic in large swaths of the planet, abject poverty and deprivation are part and parcel of the lives of millions of families and individuals. Now with this pandemic it is obvious that the capitalist system had in no way prepared for such an event, even although the experts in that field had been warning for years that it was an absolute necessity. I suppose they hadn't worked out how quite to turn into a money making exercise since it had a social service aspect.
Now the predicted pandemic has truck and the abysmal handling of it by forewarned but unprepared states across the globe is obvious. The result being a flood of avoidable deaths and a steep rise in poverty across the world. On top of the pain and stress of losing loved ones, no country will escape the rise in poverty and deprivation. There is no doubt that the disastrous outcome of this pandemic can be laid at the feet of the economic system that puts the economy and profit for the few ahead of the health and well-being of the people. The only reason for continuing this greed driven exploitative economic system can only be insanity, sanity surely must prevail and bring an end to this cancerous economic system that blights large swaths of humanity.
The following extracts are from AP News:
-----With the virus and its restrictions, up to 100 million more people globally could fall into the bitter existence of living on just $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank. That’s “well below any reasonable conception of a life with dignity,” the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty wrote this year. And it comes on top of the 736 million people already there, half of them in just five countries: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Congo and Bangladesh.------
----India is struggling with one of the world’s largest virus caseloads and the effects of a lockdown so abrupt and punishing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the poor to forgive him. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has surpassed India with the most people in extreme poverty — roughly half its citizens. And Congo remains one of the world’s most crisis-ridden countries, with outbreaks of Ebola and measles smoldering.-----
Read the full article HERE:Even China, Indonesia and South Africa are expected to have more than 1 million people each fall into extreme poverty, the World Bank says.
“It’s a huge, huge setback for the entire world,” Gayle Smith, president of the ONE Campaign to end extreme poverty, told The Associated Press. Smith, a former administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, called the global response to the crisis “stunningly meager.”------
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