Coronavirus: We're Going Back To The 1930's Great Depression Era

- Warning from History 
Coronavirus: We are going back to the 1930's - Worst economic crisis since the depression

In the UK we have NEARLY 9 million workers furloughed unable to work on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Recent figures from the government's independent economic forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, show that the cost of the government's efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic is expected to hit £123.2bn. The OBR expects annual borrowing to equal 15.2% of the UK economy, which would be the highest since the 22.1% seen at the end of World War Two.

Poverty stricken areas are at a greater risk of those dying from Covid-19. Areas with the highest levels of deprivation pay the heaviest price in terms of death count. The impact of poor diet low wages, unemployment and benefit sanctions had left those in disadvantaged areas more vulnerable to the virus. A review into black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) deaths from coronavirus has exposed that black men and women are more than four times more likely to suffer a coronavirus-related death than white people in richer areas.

The coronavirus pandemic will turn global economic growth "sharply negative" this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Kristalina Georgieva said the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  She forecast that 2021 would only see a partial recovery. Lockdowns imposed by governments have forced many companies to close and lay off staff. Earlier this week, a UN study said 81% of the world's workforce of 3.3 billion people had had their place of work fully or partly closed because of the outbreak.

Kristalina Georgieva added: "In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression. Her comments came as the US reported that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits had surged for the third week by 6.6 million, bringing the total over that period to more than 16 million Americans. The US Federal Reserve said it would unleash an additional $2.3tn in lending as restrictions on activity to help contain the coronavirus had forced many businesses to close and put about 95% of Americans on some form of lockdown.

A reminder of the 1930's from those Marching to London on the Jarrow Crusade

Last Jarrow marcher dies aged 96

In OUR video above Con Shiels talks about his experience - Con died Boxing Day 2012, he was the last survivor of the Jarrow March, a famous protest against unemployment and poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s.


Carrying an 11,000-name petition, they marched to demand help from the government after the closure of their shipyard.
Con Shiels, who was 20 at the time, joined his father and other protesters for the final part of the marathon 300-mile journey.

In 2020 -

• Four out of five jobs affected by virus globally
• Global economy will suffer for 'years to come'

UK-based charity organisation Oxfam warned that the economic fallout from the spread of Covid-19 could force more than half a billion more people into poverty. By the time the pandemic is over, the charity said, half of the world's population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty. 

Child poverty is rising ‘inexorably’ and we predict that we will have over 7 million children living in poverty in the UK by 2022 due to current economic chaos caused by the tories in response to covid 19. Before the coronavirus pandemic the Child Poverty Action Group was projecting 5.2 million  by 2022.

Before the Coronavirus Pandemic 

• 47% of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty. Lone parents face a higher risk of poverty due to the lack of an additional earner, low rates of maintenance payments, gender inequality in employment and pay, and childcare costs

• Children from Black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to be in poverty: 45 per cent are now in poverty, compared with 26 per cent of children in White British families.

On Thursday, following marathon talks, EU leaders agreed a €500bn (£440bn; $546bn) economic support package for members of the bloc hit hardest by the lockdown measures.

The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, warns that the pandemic posed "the most severe crisis" since World War Two. It said the outbreak was expected to wipe out 6.7% of working hours across the world during the second quarter of 2020 - the equivalent of 195 million full-time workers losing their jobs.

Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that the global economy would take years to recover. Secretary general Angel Gurría said that economies were suffering a bigger shock than after the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001 or the 2008 financial crisis.

The current regime within the Department for Work and Pensions on harassing claimants back to work using the Work Capability Assessments needs to be scrapped. The Work Capability Assessments fails to take into account the long-term impact of covid 19's secondary impact diseases upon the unemployed and those workers who may become unemployed in the future. The Work Capability Assessments has contributed to the deaths of more than 100,000 benefit claimants in recent years - directly or indirectly many have been persecuted and suffered under this regime.. it has to stop!

We can't wait and accept the old guard within the IMF to correct things - Only a Socialist Plannned Economy can get Britain out of this mess!

We need to lift people out of hunger, poverty, sickness and ignorance.  Our planet's eco-system must be rescued. Even under wasteful and destructive capitalism, the productive forces exist that could, if planned and utilised to meet human need instead of maximising capitalist profit, ensure sufficient food, nutrition, health care and education for all.

Never before in history have the rapid advances in science and technology provided such opportunities for the all-round development of every human being. 

But while it has proved possible, from time to time, to curb capitalism's tendencies to crisis, pandemic deprivation unemployment and war, those tendencies have always reasserted themselves because they arise from the nature of the capitalist system itself.  The capitalist economic cycle produces gluts, crises, cut-backs, redundancies and then shortages before beginning all over again.

We can not allow economic crisis to allow a busness as normal mentality. The anarchy of the capitalist economy in general militates against society's need for planned, balanced, equitable and sustainable development across countries, regions and the whole world. Nonetheless, the experience of social-democratic policies and the attempts so far to build socialism – albeit in very different conditions to those in Britain – provide some valuable lessons.

They demonstrate, for instance, that public ownership, economic planning, collective provision and the redistribution of wealth can provide substantial economic, social and cultural benefits to the mass of the population, even when these are restricted, distorted, exploited and subverted by monopoly capitalist interests. Experience also indicates that unless such policies are mobilised as the basis from which to make deeper inroads into capitalist economic and state power, they will prove to be partial and temporary.  Their weaknesses and inadequacies will then be used to discredit any alternative to private capitalist ownership, the 'free' market and social inequality.

After centuries of capitalism, the first attempts to build a socialist society arose fewer than 100 years ago in conditions of world war, in less developed societies facing the advanced, hostile and powerful forces of imperialism. Both the achievements and the failures of these pioneering socialist systems have to be considered in this context, and lessons learnt accordingly.

For as long as capitalist ownership of the economy exists, whether or not the so-called ‘free market’ is dominated by monopolies, its operations will produce crisis, destruction, inequality and waste on an enormous scale.

Capitalism's drive to maximise profit leads it to turn every area of human need – food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, sex, leisure – into a market for the production and sale of commodities for profit at the expenses of more damage to the enviroment. 

Capitalist competition invariably means unnecessary duplication, takeovers, 'rationalisation', closures, asset-stripping, commercial secrecy, excessive packaging and large-scale contrivances of style and fashion – all of which represent a waste, limitation or destruction of society's productive resources.  Whole economic sectors have developed – advertising, property management, business consultancy – that perform little or no useful function in society, except to promote the interests of monopoly capital and, ultimately, to transfer income to it from the working class and intermediate strata.

Only public ownership of the economy's major sectors and enterprises – the economic essence of socialism – can restart the UK economy out of this pandemic and put an end to monopoly power and fundamentally change the basis on which economic decisions are taken. Pointless and wasteful competition and duplication would be eliminated. The development and deployment of society's productive forces would be planned in order to meet people's real needs and aspirations. Jobs, houses and vital or useful goods and services would be created as the primary purpose of planning and production, not as the incidental consequence of maximizing profits for shareholders.

In particular, public ownership is the only viable basis on which energy and public transport can be planned and developed in an integrated way, to combat global warming and climate change while ensuring renewable power supplies.

Unemployment in the United States and Britain 'may be worse than in the Great Depression'

Unemployment in Britain and the US look set to surpass the levels reached during the 1930s Great Depression within months as the coronavirus crisis crushes the global economy, a former Bank of England official has warned.

In a stark forecast as job losses mount around the world, David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the US and a member of the Bank’s interest rate-setting monetary policy committee during the 2008 financial crisis, said unemployment was rising at the fastest rate in living memory. Writing in Guardian the economist said recently that UK unemployment could rapidly rise to more than 6 million people, around 21% of the entire workforce, based on analysis of US job market figures that suggest unemployment across the Atlantic could reach 52.8 million, around 32% of the workforce.

“There has never been such a concentrated business collapse. The government has tried to respond but it has no idea of the scale of the problem it is going to have to deal with. We make some back-of-the-envelope calculations and they are scary,” he said.

Making the assessment alongside David Bell, an economist at the University of Stirling, the former Threadneedle Street policymaker said the collapse in activity amid Covid-19 and the accompanying rise in unemployment looked to be at least 10 times faster than in the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis.

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government continued discussions with big business in a bid to restart capitalism mapping out a “mass return to work.” He plays Russian Roulette with peoples lives in catching and spreading the virus. From the start of this pandemic he has proved himself to be an habitual liar. His Herd Immunity agenda, enabled the highest death toll per head of population. Many of those who have been mentally, emotionally and financially tortured for decades will have paid the ultimate price..... dying at home alone from covid 19.  There will be NO 'Business As Usual' when this pandemic is over!  

We can not continue pretending every-things OK.... there is an alternative...

Social ownership of economic property puts an end to the exploitation of the working class including the unemployed working class, whereby surplus labour is performed for the benefit of the capitalist class.  

When there is social ownership, surplus labour takes place to meet the needs and aspirations of the working class and society as a whole. This will have to mean that workers and their representatives are fully represented in the economic and political spheres of decision-making, ensuring that surplus labour is not exploited for the benefit of a privileged class or group.

Since society first became divided into classes, the ruling class of the time has used the oppression of sections of the exploited classes to maximise exploitation and reinforce its rule. Under capitalism, the oppression of women, black workers and other groups has reaped super-profits and helped ensure the reproduction of existing class relations economically, ideologically and politically – not least by fomenting or perpetuating divisions within the working class itself.

Such oppression is sustained by sets of prejudicial ideas and assumptions, for example those of sexism and racism. These ideologies apply across class boundaries, affecting members of the oppressed group in every class, although their impact is felt most severely by those in the exploited classes.

Back in 2006 Tony Benn gave an interview on Socialism in Britain

Putting an end to capitalist property relations and the exploitation of labour would remove the material basis for social oppression. No class in society would gain from the super-exploitation of any section of the working class, or have the means by which to secure it.  The reorientation of priorities in production to meet the needs of the people would further reduce the scope for conflict over scarce provision, whether of jobs, housing, public services or essential goods.
 
The experience of socialism confirms that prejudice and discrimination on grounds of gender, nationality, sexual orientation, age etc., can survive the abolition of capitalism, at least for a period, weakened but not altogether eliminated.  But socialism furnishes the material basis, and therefore the potential, to bring all forms of social oppression to an end.  
 
With the abolition of capitalism, the most powerful forces for the perpetuation of racist, sexist, homophobic and other reactionary attitudes are disarmed, leaving the forces of socialism with the responsibility to consign them to the rubbish heap of history, promoting a culture of equal rights and liberation instead.

As we navigate many unchartered territories we must embrace alternatives - A Socialist Plannned Economy would get Britain out of this economic, political and pandemic crisis.

Your sincerely
Chairman

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants

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