Series: Corruption during the pandemic! Human lives, what does it matter? (episode 18)
Brazil, Brasilia-DF
SUPER RICH, RICH, MIDDLE CLASS, POOR, MISERABLE: the new division of the world economic pyramid
The super rich represent close to 1% (one percent) of the world population, the rich close to 10%, below is the middle class that comprises the next 20% of the world population. So, 10 + 20 = 30%.
From this mathematical operation that deals with approximate numbers, 70% (seventy percent) of the world population remains. Know that these 70% share together poverty and social and economic misery.
Therefore, juridically, socially and economically, as I have explained in previous articles, these 70% are poor and destitute, and the latter have recently come to be designated as “extreme poor”.
The World Bank says that extreme poverty is living on less than $1.90 (less than two US dollars) a day, already pointing out in its October 2020 report that between 9.1% and 9.4% of the population global is in such a situation. In my book “Del Alarmismo apocalíptico a la ressurección social y económica -Mundo utópico, mundo distópico” (released in Spain, Portugal and Brazil, by Publish way, and Lisbon International Press, 2020) I detail this scenario in countries like China India, where this reality is fully known internally, but hidden from the rest of the world.
The fact is that on April 9, 2020, the Forum magazine reproduces an article with excerpts from a report by the British non-governmental organization OXFAM, which in turn uses data developed by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), King’s College London and Australian National University, in which he quotes:
“Oxfam, a world organization that works to combat poverty and inequality, released a report (…) on the coronavirus crisis and its impacts on the world population. According to studies, half a billion people could be driven into poverty after the crisis. (…) the impacts of the pandemic on world economies can lead from 6% to 8% of the world population to reach poverty levels. “This could represent a decade-long setback in the fight against poverty – in some regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, this fight could be set back by up to 30 years. More than half of the global population could be in poverty after the pandemic”, calculates the organization (…) According to Oxfam, around two billion people work informally in the world, and only 20% of unemployed people receive unemployment insurance benefits and the like”. (Fonte: https://revistaforum.com.br/coronavirus/mais-da-metade-da-populacao-mundial-deve-estar-na-pobreza-apos-a-pandemia-diz-estudo/)
In October of the same year (2020), just 6 months later, the newspaper Estadão reproduced excerpts from the same report, citing that “The World Bank estimates that extreme poverty around the world will grow in 2020 for the first time in more than 20 years, problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”, also saying that “The new coronavirus is expected to drive an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty worldwide this year, with the total number affected by the problem reaching up to 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction”.
Know that in this same report, published every two years, the World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$ 1.90 a day, estimating for 2020 that this group of extreme poverty will represent between 9.1% and 9.4 % of the world population. The report on “Shared Poverty and Prosperity” even pointing to a chaotic scenario says that “This should represent a regression from the rate of 9.2% in 2017” and states that “if the pandemic had not occurred, the expectation was of a retreat in the extreme poverty to 7.9% of the world’s population in 2020.”
It is in this play on words that people, many of the middle class already being dragged into the abyss of poverty and misery, are proposed to believe that even increasing, poverty and misery are decreasing.
What do the reports have in common? They estimate a percentage between 7 to 10% of the world population falling into the extreme poverty range, that is, into the economic misery range, even though institutes, rich and super-rich are avoiding using this terminology.
Before the pandemic, we had 7.9% of the world population living in social and economic misery, something close to 590 million people. With the current forecast, it is estimated that something close to 740 million will be living in the range of social and economic misery.
What can we expect from such a world? How many Jean Valjean can show up? Can crime increase exponentially?
What are people whose stomachs scream for food capable of? And if they go into a bakery and steal a loaf of bread, what our law will do to such Jean Valjean, the same as it does to politicians who subtract millions from the public coffers that should be used in public policies to appease hunger, the lack of paid employment, the lack of public security, the lack of housing, the lack of good conditions for public education, the lack of hospitals?
Do you think the state and the laws that the politicians you elect will have equal weight for the miserable and the poor, the rich and the super-rich?
To be continued next Saturday.
If you want to understand in depth what corruption with public money is, the causes, consequences, if you want to learn how to profile the corrupt and know who and who are corruption’s allies, and, finally, what are the tools to fight it, purchase the “Encyclopedia Corruption in The World”, by www.judivanvieirabooks.com
