alanjjohnstone
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Is this a sign that the consensus you allude to, is about to finish?
“the government could think a bit further outside the box and turn insolvent airlines, oil companies, and banks into public utilities. It could require them to serve the people and the economy rather than just maximizing the short-term profits of their shareholders.”
Is this going to be a new movement for nationalization and state-control and government ownership for America. Has “free enterprise” now failed in the minds of its citizens?
“If the biggest and most powerful countries are struggling, how is Gaza supposed to cope?” says Ayman al-Halabi, a doctor at the laboratories run by Gaza’s health ministry
Some of us may be forgiven for a touch of schadenfreude when we read that Rand Paul was the first US senator to contract coronavirus.
He voted against a House-passed bill last week that provided more than $100bn to boost testing for the coronavirus and guarantee paid sick leave for millions of workers. He also was the only Republican senator who opposed an earlier bill authorizing $8.3bn for initial response to the coronavirus.
The only regret is that he was a symptomless carrier of the virus
Cuba has one of the highest ratios worldwide of physicians per capita even when excluding those doctors abroad
A 52-strong brigade has sent an emergency contingent to Italy.
This is the sixth medical brigade Cuba has sent in recent days to combat the spread of the new disease abroad. It has sent contingents to socialist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua as well as Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.“In a time of crisis, the Cuban government, the Cuban people … have risen to the occasion, they have heard our appeal and they have responded,” Jamaican Health Minister Christopher Tufton said on Saturday upon greeting 140 Cuban medical professionals at Kingston international airport.
Britain also thanked Cuba last week for allowing a British cruise ship that had been turned away by several Caribbean ports to dock on the island and for enabling the evacuation of the more than 600 passengers onboard.
Meanwhile Cuba, which is known for its disaster preparedness, is stepping up measures at home too to stem the coronavirus contagion. Twenty-five cases have been confirmed so far. Thousands of doctors and medicine students are also going door-to-door monitoring their local communities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51982005
<i>The government will pay the wages of employees unable to work due to the coronavirus pandemic, in a radical move aimed at protecting people’s jobs.</i> <i>It will pay 80% of salary for staff who are kept on by their employer, covering wages of up to £2,500 a month.</i>
Who are capitalism’s key workers?
There are a few categories we may well take exception to the inclusion of some but most are what socialists would say are performing socially useful work.
Health and social care
Frontline health and social care staff such as doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, as well as support and specialist staff in the health and social care sector. In addition it includes those working in supply chains including producers and distributors of medicines and personal protective equipment.
Education and childcare
Nursery, teaching staff and social workers.
Key public services
Those required to run the justice system, religious staff, as well as those responsible for managing the deceased, and journalists providing public service broadcasting.
Local and national government
Administrative occupations essential to the effective delivery of the Covid-19 response or delivering essential public services, including payment of benefits.
Food and other necessary goods
Those involved in the production, processing, distribution, sale and delivery of food.
Public safety and national security
Police, support staff, Ministry of Defence civilian staff and armed forces personnel, fire and rescue staff, and those responsible for border security, prisons and probation.
Transport
Those who will keep air, water, road and rail passenger and freight transport modes operating during the Covid-19 response.
Utilities, communication and financial services
Staff required to keep oil, gas, electricity, water and sewerage operations running. Staff in the civil nuclear, chemical and telecommunications sectors. Those in postal services and those working to provide essential financial services.From our comrades in the WSPUS
Tulsi Gabbard dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race on Thursday and immediately threw her support behind Joe Biden.
“I know that he has a good heart”
Dismissing the conspiracy theories that COVID-19 was a bioweapon
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18314818.coronavirus-not-bioweapon-created-lab-scientists-say/
Can we expect a bounce-back effect in CO2 emissions?
Yes, the problem is the rebound effect when things get back to normal. China is going to start up again very quickly. There’s a real risk that the decrease in CO2 emissions that we’ve seen in recent weeks will be offset as soon as the recovery takes place. This is what happened in 2008 with the financial crisis. Chinese emissions fell in 2008 and started to rise again in 2009. I fear that this will be the same, that when we take stock of China’s CO2 emissions over the year 2020 there will be no real decrease.
There are two ways of looking at it. Either the glass is half empty – we’ve spent money on fighting the coronavirus, so we won’t be able to do it for anything else – or the glass is half full. This shows that in the case of a real emergency, the states – France and Europe – have the means to act.
The perfect storm
So as best I can tell this morning we now have:
– A pandemic crisis
– A supply chain crisis
– A demand crisis
– A labor market crisis
– An equity market crisis
– An oil price crisis
– A brewing bond market crisis
– A developing currency crisis
– A potential housing market crisis— Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) March 18, 2020
Some commentators share your analysis, Marcos
“A favorite strategy of those – like Bernie Sanders – whose proposals are attacked as being socialist is to respond by denouncing billionaires as benefiting, via government subsidies, from so-called “corporate socialism” or “socialism for the rich.” Socialism is thus equated with government subsidies rather than with an alternative vision of society. While the privately owned banks and corporations are attacked for their hypocrisy and their special advantages, there is no assertion that such icons of capitalist power should cease to exist. Similarly, the target of attack, in Sanders’ rhetoric, is not the capitalist class but rather the “billionaire class.” Capitalism as such escapes the blame. At the same time, full socialism (i.e., dissolution of the capitalist class and socialization of its holdings) is attacked as being inherently undemocratic. In this sense, when Sanders calls his socialism “democratic,” what he’s telling us is that it remains embedded within basic capitalist institutions.”
However, i think the author is also a but confused on what he means by “full public ownership”
Not all bad news for the progressives in the Democratic Party
“Marie Newman…supports progressive proposals such as Medicare for All and a $15-per-hour minimum wage…Newman’s victory echoes the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…”
The North Sea oil and gas industry is in a “paper-thin” position as global oil markets plummet towards 18-year lows amid the UK’s economic emergency.
An industry trade body said investment in the ageing oil basin, which supports about 250,000 jobs in the UK, was expected to slump by almost a third because of the market collapse.
Large oil companies are expected to axe their spending plans to weather the latest market rout, which threatens to halve the revenue from the barrels of oil they produce.
