THE last few years have seen hard times for many people across the globe. The cost-of-living crisis is a worldwide phenomenon, but we should remember that for many across the globe the crisis is a permanent way of life.

This is not to diminish the hardship many are now experiencing. I just want to point out that more than being a temporary state of affairs, for large parts of the planet, hardship — or rather the most gut-wrenching forms of poverty imaginable — has been made even worse by the current crisis.

The latest figures from the World Bank say that 9.2 per cent of the planet, some 719 million people live in extreme poverty and survive on less than $2.15 a day.

The United States, the so-called land of the free and home of the brave, has an astonishing 11.6 per cent of the population, or 37.9m people, living in poverty.

This is nothing but shameful in a country content to pour billions of dollars into military spending, of which Ukraine still only accounts for a relatively small proportion.

The priorities of the US were illustrated in the recent debt ceiling deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They chose to prioritise massive increased military spending while cutting welfare programmes for the country’s most needy.

The figures I have used to describe the extent of world poverty are based on income and the ability of an individual to meet basic needs.

But the situation gets even worse when you look beyond income and include other key indicators, such as access to health and education.

Some 1.2 billion people in 111 of the around 180 recognised nations of the world are regarded by the United Nations as living in poverty.

Anyone reading this should pause here for a moment and take in the figures I have just shared.

This is an astonishing proportion of the people of the world at any time, but even more so when one considers there are more than 3,311 billionaires globally. While the poor get poorer, billionaires just get richer. 

According to figures from Oxfam earlier this year, during the global pandemic and the cost of living crisis years, $26trn, or 63 per cent of all new wealth, was gobbled up by the richest 1 per cent.

At the same time $16trn (37 per cent) went to the rest of the world put together. 

A billionaire gained roughly $1.7m for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 per cent. 

The figures show that during this period billionaires have got richer by around $2.7bn a day and over a quarter of them live in the US. 

This comes as the number and wealth of billionaires have doubled over the last 10 years. 

I wrote about this a few weeks ago but it is worth repeating that while food production costs are generally down, you and I are paying more at the shops. It’s clearly a bumper harvest time for the billionaires.

Oxfam’s report shows that 95 food and energy corporations more than doubled their profits in 2022 and things appear to be moving in the same direction this year. 

These corporations made $306bn in windfall profits, and paid out $257bn (84 per cent) of that to already rich shareholders. 

The Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, trousered over $8.5bn in profits over the last year. 

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of a number of major energy corporations, saw his wealth soar by $42bn (46 per cent) in 2022 alone. 

At the same time, at least 1.7bn workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages and where women and girls, in particular, make up nearly 60 per cent of the world’s hungry. 

The folks at the World Bank — hardly renowned for their concern of people facing hardship, their “structural adjustment” policies having condemned many into crisis in the first place — say we are probably seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since World War II.

Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, than on healthcare. 

Three-quarters of the world’s governments are planning public-sector spending cuts.

These cuts include the healthcare and education that so many across the globe already struggle to access in the first place by around $7.8trn over the next five years. 

And yet the richest people on the planet continue to rake in the cash.

Every monetary figure I have mentioned in the article has been in US dollars. This is because the US dollar is currently the world’s reserve currency, meaning that most trade and financial transactions across the world, including for food and oil, are carried out in dollars.

I doubt I’m the only one who can easily connect the existence of so many billionaires in the US with the pre-eminence of the mighty dollar.

With all of this evidence we can still continue to live under the illusion that small policy tweaks will end the hardship of large swathes of the global population or we can choose to tackle the problems in front of our eyes.

The capitalist system is designed on the basis of making some people richer while exploiting others in their labour or pillaging the commodities they live on.

This means piecemeal tinkering around the edges will not solve the problems faced by billions of people.

There are many strategies that can and should be implemented to shift the paradigm in favour of the world’s poorest.

Just one of these is the creation of a new world reserve currency to loosen the iron grip that the US settler regime holds over the rest of the planet.

Alleviating the astonishing levels of poverty across the globe and the scandalous accumulation of wealth by the already unimaginably wealthy few requires bold and decisive action.

That is why we should support the establishment by the Brics nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — of a new reserve currency to disrupt the hegemony of the planet’s rich nations and the billionaires who buy and control their governments.