Comrades,
Hooly Dooly...here it comes...mass unemployment, widespread poverty, and food insecurity.
Never mind the New World Order or the clear and present danger to the Miracle of Democracy....The States is shattered. Monthly US unemployment figures are due out later today, and according to the NYT, it's expected 30 million jobs will be gone. Vanished. The worst month during the last recession was 800,000 jobs lost. And the worst ever on record was two million in September 1945, and that's only because there were that many men coming home from war with no work to go to. Did I read right - 30 million?! Yes I did. Real unemployment in many states - mostly in the God forsaken south - is now widely thought to be at least 25%.
Found myself quite taken aback on seeing roughly 30-40 folks in the queue at the Marrickville Centrelink when I went by this morning, and with socially acceptable distancing it snaked around the block....here's just the start.
And this in an area full of yuppies that's been gentrified-to-fuck. WTF?
In the meantime, the cascade of horrors knows no end. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says food prices fell 4.3% in Feb, all of it driven by lack of demand. Sugar was down a whopping 19%, vegetable oil 12%, with cereals, dairy and meats taking smaller hits....deflation here we come. Yet another classic hall mark of the Great Depression. Economic growth dies in the arse, it feeds into more unemployment, and upends stability in the food chain - not for weeks, or months, but years. In other words, unmitigated woe.
Did rather like this paste-up seen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this week - replicating the slogans on health & hygiene posters seen in that city during the 1918-19 Spanish Flu Pandemic.
