epidemic – Page 23 – Desdemona Despair

Distribution of major tax cuts for the rich across OECD nations, 1965-2015. This figure visualizes the resulting binary variable that picks out years in which taxes on the rich were reduced substantially. In total, we identify 30 country-year observations where taxes on the rich were significantly reduced. Governments enacted major tax reforms in all countries in our sample and across the whole observation period. Many countries implemented major tax cuts for the rich in the late 1980s. Furthermore, the identification of tax cuts is also in line with previous studies that have focused on income tax progressivity (Rubolino and Waldenström, 2020) or on overall tax progressivity single specific countries (Saez and Zucman, 2019). For instance, echoing these authors’ findings, we find two major reforms that reduced taxes on the rich in the US: 1982 (First Reagan Tax Cut) and 1986/1987 (Second Reagan Tax Cut). Graphic: Hope and Limberg, 2020 / LSE

December 25, 2020

Tax breaks for the rich don’t boost the economy – “Our research shows that the economic case for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak”

16 December 2020 (LSE) – Major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality but do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment, according to new research by LSE and King’s College London. Researchers say governments seeking to restore public finances following the COVID-19 crisis should therefore not be […]

Shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors from 2020 through 2022. This animation shows the shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors-from 2020 through 2022. It reflects projected debt service payments on external debt to official bilateral creditors (TDS, current US$, millions). Debt service to official bilateral creditors will impose a heavy burden for years to come. Graphic: World Bank Group

December 24, 2020

2020 Year in Review: The global economic impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts

By Paul Blake and Divyanshi Wadhwa 14 December 2020 (World Bank Group) – This time last year, concepts such as “lockdowns,” “mask mandates” and “social distancing” were unknown to most of us. Today they are part of our everyday language as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of our lives. Through the following […]

Map showing highest-impact disasters in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic (over 250,000 people affected). The map shows only a snapshot of disasters that took place from the beginning of the month when the epidemic was declared (March 2020) for a six-month period. More than 100 disasters occurred during this period and affected over 50 million people. There were also a number of ongoing crises, including measles in DRC and droughts in parts of east and southern Africa. Graphic: IFRC

December 24, 2020

Red Cross faced record number of climate-related disasters in 2020 – “This year has tested the resilience of tens of millions of people to breaking point”

KUALA LUMPUR, 16 December 2020 (IFRC) – In a record-breaking year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has responded to more climate-related disasters across Asia Pacific than any other time this century so far. The IFRC has already responded to 25 climate-related disasters in the Asia Pacific, including floods, typhoons, […]

Projected geographical shift of the human temperature niche. (Top) Geographical position of the human temperature niche projected on the current situation (A) and the RCP8.5 projected 2070 climate (B). Those maps represent relative human distributions (summed to unity) for the imaginary situation that humans would be distributed over temperatures following the stylized double Gaussian model fitted to the modern data (the blue dashed curve in Fig. 2A). (C) Difference between the maps, visualizing potential source (orange) and sink (green) areas for the coming decades if humans were to be relocated in a way that would maintain this historically stable distribution with respect to temperature. The dashed line in A and B indicates the 5% percentile of the probability distribution. Graphic: Xu, et al., 2020 / PNAS

December 17, 2020

Broken societies put people and planet on a collision course, says UNDP – “No country in the world has yet achieved very high human development without putting immense strain on the planet”

NEW YORK, 15 December 2020 (HDRO) – The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis facing the world, but unless humans release their grip on nature, it won’t be the last, according to a new report [pdf] by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which includes a new experimental index on human progress that takes into account countries’ […]

The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020 - a record drop according to researchers at the University of East Anglia, University of Exeter and the Global Carbon Project. It means that in 2020 fossil CO2 emissions are predicted to be approximately 34 GtCO2, seven per cent lower than in 2019. Emissions from transport account for the largest share of the global decrease. Those from surface transport, such as car journeys, fell by approximately half at the peak of the COVID lockdowns. Total CO2 emissions from human activities - from fossil CO2 and land-use change - are set to be around 39 GtCO2 in 2020. Video: UEA

December 12, 2020

COVID lockdown causes record drop in carbon dioxide emissions for 2020

11 December 2020 (UEA) – The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020 – a record drop according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA), University of Exeter, and the Global Carbon Project. The fall is considerably larger than previous significant decreases […]

Cumulative change in U.S. jobs since before the pandemic, 6 December 2020. Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Graphic: Ella Koeze / The New York Times

December 6, 2020

U.S. job market slowed further in November 2020 – “We’re going to have a few of the toughest months of this pandemic, and there will be a lot of scars left to heal”

6 December 2020 (The New York Times) – The American economic recovery continues to slow, stranding millions who have yet to find a new job after being thrown out of work by the coronavirus pandemic. The latest evidence came Friday when the Labor Department reported that employers added 245,000 jobs in November, the fifth month in a […]

Average daily CO2 emissions from 5 February to 6 May 2020 (red area) and average of the previous years during the same period (grey area) for three European cities. The dark grey horizontal bars cover periods of official lockdown, while the light grey bars indicate periods of partial lockdown or general restrictions (for example, school closures, reductions in personal contact, mobility constraints). Data: Integrated Carbon Observation System, 2020. Graphic: WMO

December 5, 2020

Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite COVID-19 lockdown – “The COVID-19 pandemic is not a solution for climate change”

GENEVA, 23 November 2020 (WMO) – The industrial slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has not curbed record levels of greenhouse gases which are trapping heat in the atmosphere, increasing temperatures, and driving more extreme weather, ice melt, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The lockdown has cut emissions […]

Aerial view of mass graves in Manaus, Brazil, 22 April 2020. Photo: Sandro Pereira / Fotoarena / Folhapress

December 4, 2020

U.N. warns 2021 shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe – “The worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations 75 years ago”

By Michelle Nichols 4 December 2020 NEW YORK (Reuters) – Next year is shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe and rich countries must not trample poor countries in a “stampede for vaccines” to combat the coronavirus pandemic, top U.N. officials told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday. World Food Programme (WFP) chief David […]

Wildfires light up a hillside behind the Bidwell Bar Bridge on 9 September 2020, as the Bear Fire burns in Oroville, California, in this photo taken with a slow shutter speed. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

December 1, 2020

Photo gallery: In 2020, AP photographers captured a world in distress

By Jerry Schwartz 1 December 2020 (AP) – Behold, a world in distress: A 64-year-old woman weeps, hugging her husband as he lay dying in the COVID-19 unit of a California hospital. A crowded refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, engulfed in flames, disgorges a string of migrants fleeing this hell on Earth. Rain-swept protesters, enraged […]

New deaths from COVID-19 per day, normalized by population, for Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Data: Johns Hopkins University CSSE. Graphic: 91-Divoc

November 29, 2020

Graph of the Day: Covid-19 daily deaths in Sweden, compared with neighboring countries

29 November 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – Much has been made of Sweden’s tacit “herd immunity” policy, and people have argued both for and against its effectiveness. Now the data are in, and we can safely make a judgment about it, and the similar policies used in various other countries, like the UK, the US, and […]