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For the World Bank, while the fortunes of a few billionaires grew this year, more than 115 million people were thrown into extreme poverty (who receives up to R $ 10 a day). (Brazil 247, 10/11/20) The richest people in the world saw their fortunes grow by more than 27% in the months of the pandemic. Playing on the stock and commodity exchanges, these super rich earn the misery of billions of workers, who are thrown into unemployment, have their wages lowered to the maximum and barely manage to survive in the face of rising world food prices and the loss of their fundamental rights. According to the World Bank, this will be the first time since the 1998 financial crisis that poverty will increase in the world. The number of hungry people in the world will double this year and “Latin America is experiencing one of the worst scenarios in the world” (Jamil Chad, UOL, 10/10/20). In Brazil there are 13.88 million living in extreme poverty. This situation has worsened since the 2016 coup. It is significant that in this context of increased poverty and hunger, the United Nations World Food Program - WFP, won the Nobel Peace Prize. For economist Daniel Balaban, Brazilian representative at WFP, the “regression of social policies ”In Brazil it turned on the yellow light, with more than 5% of the population facing severe food insecurity, that is, they are on the verge of starving. (BBC and G1, 10/10/20) For the vast majority of the world's population, the idea that capitalism has made some progress is a cruel fiction. While a few live discussing the desire to own the latest iPhone, the majority of the population lives between slavery (there are 40.3 million slaves in the world), unemployment, hunger and extreme misery. Inequality in the world is greater today than at the beginning of the 19th century. Brazil is the seventh most unequal country and the second with the highest concentration of income. (UOL, 2/20/20 and G1, 12/9/19). According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), there are 3.3 billion workers in the world. Of these, 2 billion are informal workers. Almost half a billion people are working less hours than they would like or do not have access to paid work. The pandemic accelerated inequality and made informal workers drop their income by 60%. (UN News, 6/19/20). In fact, capitalism no longer provides human development. He's an obstacle to that. The creative and revolutionary potential of science and technology is restrained by capitalism, which redirects much of this development to artifacts of war and destruction.
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