Daily Archives: November 10, 2020

2020-11-10: News Headlines

The Canary (2020-11-10). Redundancies hit record high as hundreds of thousands lose jobs. thecanary.co More people were made redundant between July and September than at any point on record, according to new official statistics. It comes as the pandemic laid waste to large parts of the economy. | Hard times: | Around 314,000 redundancies were registered during the three months according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This figure is up by 181,000 from the quarter before. The data suggests that unemployment in the UK reached 4.8% in the three months to September. It's an increase of 0.7 percentage points on the quarter before, and 0.9 percentage points from a year ago. | Meanwhile, around 33,00…

Don Fitz (2020-11-09). How Do Medical Students Get More Experience in the US than Cuba? counterpunch.org What It Has To Do with Inequality During the last 10 years I have written multiple articles documenting how Cuba has better medical practice and education than the US. To be honest, I have known for a long time that there is an area of medical training where medical students in the US get considerably

Dean Baker (2020-11-09). Labor Market Rebounds, But Can It Survive Rising Infection Rates? counterpunch.org The number of multiple job holders stands at 17.8 percent below its year-ago level. The labor market continued to rebound from the spring shutdown, adding 638,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell another percentage point to 6.9 percent. This still leaves the number of jobs 6.6 percent below the February level. The jobs gains were broadly

_____ (2020-11-08). Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobless People Are Being Asked To Repay Benefits. popularresistance.org Ahmad Ghabboun broke into a sweat. It was a late night in August and he had just discovered an unexpected $14,990 debt posted to the online portal he uses to access his account with Washington state's unemployment agency. Since May, he had been receiving payments every week through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, newly established by Congress to support freelancers like him. The benefits replaced the paycheck he could no longer earn after the pandemic had grounded his work delivering packages for Amazon Flex and driving the occasional shift for Uber.

The Lancet (2020-11-07). [Editorial] COVID-19 in Latin America: a humanitarian crisis. thelancet.com Latin America has some of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world. Why? For outsiders, much of the discussion of COVID-19 in Latin America has focused on Brazil and the errors of President Jair Bolsonaro. But the region as a whole is facing a humanitarian crisis borne out of political instability, corruption, social unrest, fragile health systems, and perhaps most importantly, longstanding and pervasive inequality—in income, health care, and education—which has been woven into the social and economic fabric of the region.

Staff (2020-11-07). COVID Needs Are Urgent, But Many Cities Are Prioritizing Police Funding Instead. truthout.org We are in the midst of a global pandemic that has produced a massive economic crisis, in which millions are struggling to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, in many mid-sized cities — including Houston, San Diego and Pittsburgh — police funding continues unabated, even as funding for crucial programs is cut. | Chicago is another prime example. In this city, tens of thousands of people are facing severe hardship, unemployment and housing insecurity, and winter is coming. The City…

Dan Corjescu (2020-11-07). War, Peace, Wealth, and Recognition. dissidentvoice.org Is the world making more love than war these days? And if so why? It's a question that three great contemporary intellectuals have either indirectly or directly wrestled with in their life's work. The first of our intellectuals is Francis Fukuyama. In his celebrated debut book The End of History and The Last Man, Fukuyama …

_____ (2020-11-07). The Corporate Dictatorship Of The Very Rich. popularresistance.org I heard friends praising Bill Gates' philanthropy a while ago; it still surprises me how people respond to billionaires. The wealthy improve their image financing self-serving projects they present as "serving others" but few question their motives or suspect them of hidden agendas. Most take billionaires at face value and forget how they made their fortunes. | Gates is a monopolist who crushed others in the process of building Microsoft. At least, J.D. Rockefeller (the first) made it a bit easier for us, he was blatant enough to call competition a "sin" and built Standard Oil monopoly trying to protect its privi…

WSWS (2020-11-07). US jobless rates falls but long-term unemployment up sharply as millions remain out of work. wsws.org More than seven months since the start of the pandemic only about one half the 22 million jobs lost earlier in the year have been recovered as the upsurge of new COVID-19 cases is likely to hammer service and retail jobs.

Elise Gould (2020-11-06). Thanks to GOP, Next President Inherits a Devastated Economy With Millions Out of Work. commondreams.org Policymakers cannot ignore the economic devastation happening to workers and their families across the country. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_special_coverage/public/views-article/thumbs/unemployment_sanders_coronavirus_1.jpg