A United Nations report released on 8 April states that coronavirus and the shutting down of the global economy to deal with it could push half a billion more people into poverty. This represents about an additional 8 percent of the entire population becoming impoverished.
Even if the lower end of the estimated range is reached, the global level of poverty will increase for the first time since 1990, according to analysis published by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.
Some 80 percent of those falling under the poverty line due to the reaction to COVID-19 will most likely be in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Confirming what Gerald Celente and the Trends Journal have been stating for well over a month, Christopher Hoy, co-author of the U.N. report, said the economic crisis caused by policies of political leaders around the world is “potentially going to be even more severe than the health crisis.”
Andy Sumner, professor at King’s College in London, and another co-author stated that researchers were not expecting “the sheer scale of the potential poverty tsunami that could follow COVID-19 in developing countries.”
The United Nations’ International Labor Organization added its estimate of some 35 million more people being out of work than before the coronavirus.
Even in the United States, the richest nation on the planet, the devastating economic fallout from shutting down the economy is becoming clear. With more than 90 percent of all Americans under restricted orders, over 16 million unemployment claims have been initiated as of 9 April.
According to a Financial Times-Peterson poll, about half of American adults say they would be without any income at all if unable to work because of illness.
The poor are feeling the brunt of the economic shutdown.
Half of all Americans do not have enough savings to cover two weeks of living expenses. According to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies working with the Poor People’s Campaign, 140 million Americans cannot come up with $400 if needed. And 34 million American workers do not have even one day of paid sick leave (even though most of the developed industrial countries offer it).
Echoes of The Great Depression
Across the nation, aerial videos of miles-long lines of cars waiting for food at food pantries are becoming popular online. More than a million viewers have clicked onto drone footage of a long, winding line of cars leading to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.
Last Friday, thousands of cars were videotaped lined up at the San Antonio Food Bank. Its president, Eric Cooper, said, “We have never executed on as large a demand as we are now.”
Last Thursday, a food pantry in southern California had a line of cars over a mile and half waiting for free groceries.
In Van Nuys, a region of Los Angeles, hundreds of people wearing trash bags to protect themselves from the rain were seen waiting for food during a one-day free food giveaway.
In Omaha, Nebraska, a food pantry that usually serves around 100 people a day had about 1,000 show up.
The chief executive of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, confirming he had never seen such long lines said, “Crazy pretty much sums it up.”
Feeding America, the largest network of food banks in the U.S., has projected close to a $1.5 billion shortfall over the next six months.
TREND FORECAST: The worst is yet to come. Again, the same breed of politicians who take nations to wars with no exit strategies have launched the economically deadly COVID-19 War with no exit strategy.
The “Greatest Depression” has begun. Poverty, homelessness, and helplessness will rapidly accelerate in the months and years ahead.
Unlike the Great Depression, when people had more hands-on skills and worked the land, in this hi-tech, “ask Siri/ask Alexa” world of little self-reliance, many will be dragged down rather than fight back to reach higher levels.
