in the hands of a militant police force what has happened to the wealth of billionaires shops being looted co-author of billionaire bonanza 2020 omar attempt of about how billionaires are profiting off a pandemic while millions have the broader goal is more coming up in today's going underground but 1st against the backdrop of protests against oppression in the u.k. mirroring the full scale uprisings taking place in the united states the british government's crude a virus response still appears to be falling well short of what is needed with over 60000 deaths and rising while health experts on the alarm on another arguably anemic contact tracing system so is it any wonder that some who have campaigned their whole lives for equality and now looking for a way to not just recover from grown a virus but to reform the entire system so tragedies on this scale can never happen again one of those campaigners is lord john bird founder of u.k. homeless charity magazine the big issue he has introduced a bill into palm and that aims not only to limit the effects of coronavirus on future generations but to revolutionize society in the manner of climate that is

945 government that suited the creation of the n.h.s. he joins me now via skype from cambridge in england thank you so much for coming back on lord john birt i'm going to ask you obviously given that you've a campaign about the big issue the name of your magazine all your life it seems the government was able to solve the big issue overnight when it came to a pandemic does this mean that all these years it was a political decision to have homelessness in this country. it was a political decision it was a decision made in the late 19th fifty's and the 19th sixty's can still not allowing people to be on the streets because of the laws which were cool vagrancy laws which were victorian and made it look as though you were being very hard and tough on the poorest people who ended up on the street sure nobody was allowed to sleep rough argues a rough sleeper time so i know all about that what happened was 'd the laws were

not changed but people politically different needs to know we're not going to bring people of spirit we're not going to take them to call rough treatment for pegging we're going just going to completely ignore it but the problem was they didn't replace it with anything else so what looked like a very liberal well intentioned of look let's not punish the poorest among us they killed them and since then we've had many many deaths on the streets we've had an increasing amount of people on the streets so the oberst spill of the any chance has the people with problems of ended up on the streets or mental institutions were closed so that happened children coming out to care in the community look who authorities care often ended up in the streets people who served in the armed forces and the producers and what it was was the streets became a place where people said let's just ignore it let's just not actually engage and

lead the pandemic some people realize of course that every speck to your position in the social hierarchy the printing order if if you are ill you are ill and you could cross on to something else so suddenly the government wakes up to the reality that every last one of those human beings who are on the streets are a baby or a vector or vulnerable person who could be parsing disease on to other. so. but of course before they found this on so temporarily will get on to what the government's doing those pandemic already preparing to but surely and out of lords canteen if you said that to any of the lords of any persuasion labor liberal democrat or conservative they would completely refute it was a political decision what do they tell you none of these labor liberal democrat tories that they've never said that they deliberately allowed homelessness i don't

know as a warning to people to get on their bikes. well i don't know if it was that kind of on your part it wasn't kind of you if you don't if you don't participate in society and become prosperous then this is what can happen to you but what it was it was the liberalism it was the blindness of shame of so human rights abuse to stop people sleeping on the streets when really the biggest human rights abuse was the elect people on the street and people like me who'd been brought sweepers beggars who'd been in the prison system pain and all the problem martin problems of modern post-war britain. are people like me was how i know we shouldn't be allowing people on the streets we should be providing them every party the labor party the conservative party all of the parties have construed to see it

as a question of well people should have the right to stay on the streets and i. would have died on the squeeze the young boy and the young men. decided but i won't decided that i would not allow that action. and as you intimate there average life expectancies are horrendous on the streets here in britain but you call it a human rights abuse britain has so often seen fit to want to make other countries in its own image here saying that money for all these war is a country where a parody taking china to task for hong kong there was a there was a mismatch between british foreign policy and british home policy about homelessness. oh there's been a mismatch since hundreds of years i mean it sir isn't it interesting that the government of her wilson was handing over places to the americans and clearing out

people from those little islands and so you have these kind of that's her worst and the great socialist so you've always got this kind of we are we are progressive and very apt to reopen seeds and unfortunately many many empires have been like that and britain is no different from the united states and is no different from other countries that have been incredibly were actually in africa or another i mean africa was one of the running souls of modern life because even though these kind of oppressions were happening over 200 years we're still paying the cost of those. of those come situations i don't want to get too locked into this i can talk about history and because i'm a i'm a next i'm an ex racist guy the next anti semites i'm the next whatever and when i

got out having to go out of poverty and got out of crime when i got out i started to look very very seriously at the quality of the society that was around me and i've always found it very lacking and the very fact that you know they allow a kind of underclass of people not have a full life is is quite incredible boris johnson who certainly the british prime minister would certainly refute any. hug him and bit rough sleeping and homelessness was this political his government has pledged 236000000 for rough sleeping and the question is i suppose what do you make of accusations that his government stripping out any waiting for deprivation out of distributing emergency cash for councils if we look at the harsh reality the harsh reality is that mr johnson's government was the 1st government. frightened super

lawyers to bring those people indoors now we have to keep those people in goals we cannot decamped back onto the streets and that's one of the pursed campaigns i got involved in. once we cope in 19 a curfew it started but the next big thing and this is the one that really frightens me i have dealt with on average of between 2 with private 1000 people a year in the united kingdom nearly 30 years 229 years what i'm looking at now is probably in the region of 9 haarp a 1000000 people according to the local government association a whole 1000000 people you imagine a house a 1000000 people and 800000 of those coming and saying i want to sell the big issue so what i'm doing aren't forming alliances and she recession alliance which looks 1st of all banging all objections not consists months of the labor party and saying

to years until the come we the economy are records i'm also calling for the creation of a great government bank which will mark prop the barack leases in the bank. and i and i and and and the mogul just can't be paid what we've got to avoid is people becoming homeless because if you become homeless and your family breaks up then you enter the most expensive part of the british system which is the social intervention system which will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds rather than treat people our home our children our children's children moving out on the streets and that will take 50 years to sort out so what we've got to do is keep people in work so we've got to create work so the job creation schemes that we need to work on and we need to work on keeping control in the homes so. not directed

unfortunately should say though that what you're proposing is actually quite mainstream in the united states joe biden is supported ensuring oh well that's very mainstream. mainstream aids you can advocate the problem is deliver the radical thing is you can advocate something the revolution resort is actually might this government policy and do it with regard to taking over foreign peoples homes and such things like that those are very very ideological things the problem with ideology is you then immediately shatter are an enormous amount of energy that goes into fighting the ideological point and having been through many ideological points are can tell you you can use all your energy it's a pen or having a disagreement with your landlord and going to court and spending millions of

pounds and running at the end of the day that neatly you or your landlord or better or so i don't want to go down the ideological thing i don't want to do it european corban and go and play to the galleries what i want to do is do to liberate none of the political parties have ever delivered to the poorest among us ok well i think we're probably did i was playing to any gallery or john but i'll stop you there more from john byrne after this break plus heads we win tails we when we investigate how if you're a billionaire coronaviruses maybe hundreds of millions of dollars even if more than a $100000.00 of you killed tens of millions are now out of work some of them on american streets running by bandits and u.s. army division played a part in killing millions in vietnam all of them are coming i'm about to i'm going underground.

best's drugs were at her cocaine as were 4 bucks for dia under 30 to everybody use cocaine crack cocaine you can smoke it this is worth 15 very. 20. 2 this is about a $15.00 bet and people smoke this one bigger 2nd this way you can find these drugs thing any city in the united states that you walk along as you want to get it about the. make money. and that's what i do every day. know what's a clip of she will know you. but the way it's always ok it was

a. moment. but not something you need to mute immediately what's happened today they can put us in the mood at the. smithsonian bashing the capital. city they say yes. yes well. welcome back i'm still here with a big issue found a lot should those who have just proportionately suffered from coronavirus those in work i mean you take in low skill jobs you were beaten man road sweeper delivery man should the government compensate those people is that the t.s.s. a union is suggesting for the transport workers and compensate and they just of. or where your going very pleased somebody is thinking along these lines god bless

you carry on our can't count very reason i'm a very simple home educated educated person educated in the streets as a street thug an underclass person who got into the middle classes educated themselves became a socialist and a revolutionary and tried desperately hard to talk about what i know the thing is that there's so much ideological crap going all around at the moment this show many bradley core ideas but the simple thing is if we can stop people. and we can give them some kind of work then we have harper 1000000 people grieving to sell the big issue because it's the only way to ok well some people have said there is ideology or play that boris johnson old etonian school the eton with.

educating is children till september because it is government supported while state school pupils have to go back to school this month. i mean is your future generations bill does it address education in that way what has been termed a class war in education in this country there are not many people white men who ever get into a position of anybody listening to them and what i'm saying is what i have observed i went to a catholic roman catholic school after the 2nd world war it was cold at a secondary modern school and what it was was it was a sign of writing off the last parts of the under under the un skilled and the semi skilled working classes and what they did was they dumped those people like rained out the top 11 percent the people the germy call them comes from they took the 11 percent who put them into the into the grammar schools so they created the

social divide if you actually look at the history of british education system the 2nd world war what you'll see is 35 percent of our children are failed school and because the school. and take report jobs they're the people who took up the enemy if you go into the christian system people like me who filed school ended up in the prison system we are the long term unemployed we are the people who are ill we are people who are the work in corps and it's largely because all of the stuff about whether it's the public school system or whether it's the comprehensive system or whatever whether it's the socialist system or the conservative system every one of those lots of people have been elected down the british unskilled working class and not help them out into a more skilled situation the fact that britain was a closed imperialist nation they thought that what they would do is they would just

in this middle class or way impose on the working class these people what was best for them and what was best for them was to lead them to stew i can introduce you to . who have not recovered from the 2nd world war who are now the poor 3 generations . well just finally then the future generations will recommence many initiatives former british chancellor george osborne says we may need austerity in response to this pandemic far from the kind of investment you're talking about we need for the city of london to prosper a huge reduction in our debt to g.d.p. ratio would you say to those who support our policy. well mr osborne. mr osborne other people who. are responsible for many many of the.

transgressions that were made in the name of austerity i tend to agree with stiglitz and other people who say that the cost to posterity is greater than what it saved so actually what you have is you have posterity austerity which takes generations and generations the worker austerity is too expensive we can't afford to waste money and what mr osborne should do i don't know i know very little about him i've never met him or i would say is austerity is the worst thing that you can do now we have to do what we did in 19 ports in order to remain. as an alternative to naziism in europe we have to start spending money put generations and generation so therefore the 2nd world war was not only got 55 years of the 2nd world war the last. world war that's happened and we are going to have

to dig deep and borrow and borrow and borrow and get ourselves into a situation where in 50 or 60 years time we can sell k. we paid for the corona caracas that came in 2020 and mr mr. mr osborne unfortunately this is what happens when you get people who are in incredibly privileged positions in society not just people who are never was sharper from the results of their the accuracy of their policies never stops. well we invite george osborne now an editor like you of a london although your editor of an international paper he's the editor of a london paper lord john birt thank you thank you very much. well as us protesters demand justice from an arguable racist capitalist to lead from l.a. to new york billionaires with businesses from london to moscow have been allegedly

profiteering from the pandemic joining me now from boston is co-author of the institute for policy studies report billionaire bonanza 2020 wealth windfalls tumbling taxes and pandemic profiteers omar ok thanks so much omar for coming on i know there's been protests in boston i'm not sure how they've been there around you but on your report you begin it by saying a billionaire's disproportionately impact us politics culture and the economy itself they have a huge influence over society there one of the things that we said in the report is that inequality in america is a preexisting condition and this statement really reflects the fact that when there are there is a convulsion in the economy or some type of social problem it does not necessarily impact everyone equally at least not at 1st so in fact households and group with the least amount of resources will be often be disproportionately hit will not be

able to recover as easily and we saw that and 2008 billionaires are able to recover and exceed their wealth and within a couple of years and that has not been the case for the median household how well have a amazon's jeff bezos or stares those the lone musky bomber shareholder in microsoft how well are they done at a coronavirus they've done very well so i mean for us the most obvious profits year has been just days owes his wealth has increased it's like it's mind boggling and he started off the year with $115000000000.00 in. net worth but when that report was released it was a $140000000000.00 as of this morning it was close to $150000000000.00 and so that is like basically a $35000000000.00 increase within 56 months and that is actually larger than the g.d.p. of iceland and i think this is because the pandemic is playing to all of amazon strengths. their large corporation they have

a massive wealth so they have the resources to weather the initial hit while small businesses closed up shop and all this is happening at the expense of worker safety amazon refuses to say how many people are out how many of their workers are sick and they fire those who are concerns so and they're reversing hazard pay so basis it's literally making billions of dollars while risking the last of his workforce and hasn't one other person that you know that has made the news recently is this person a man arness garcia. you know he's someone who's being currently sued by his shareholders for using a coronavirus as a way to do some inside insider training trading and his wealth has increased over 4000000. march 18th well they all deny wrongdoing jeff bezos then presumably the great his income boost may be personal in world history it did you get the coverage in the washington post owned by jeff bezos and the report. we have

not at least not that i've seen fortunately the coverage. in the print i mean stream press and at least the print media has been really good so we've been in roaders business as side or c.n.n. have not seen anything on washington i'm sure it's a coincidence but you know that's the point the billionaires claim they are great philanthropist they donate private planes to help in this pandemic and in fact they have been their great source of soccer during this coronavirus pandemic and in fact philanthropy in general has increased over. the last few years but what is unique about it is that it's more top heavy which means that most of the given is done by the wealthy yes and that's because they can pay less in taxes and i think this differs from the donations that you and i would make to like you know a nonprofit or homeless shelter when the rich do and they do it for that you know tax write offs and sometimes some of the money sometimes the money that they donate

is actually not dispersed and this is usually done through a donor advice funds so for example they can put in $100000000.00 into that fund and then get an immediate tax write off and theoretically that money can sit there in that fund indefinitely and it never reaches desired destination basically as you say that would harp of every dollar is at the expense of taxes the democratically accountable to go to social services in any case these tax breaks is also a wealth transfer from the bottom to the top so well and up happening is that you know when you give. tax break or are cut their taxes what did it do with their money the right wing usually argues that they invest that money into like the productive sectors of the economy but you know we have noticed that you know they often just invest in financial instruments and speculative behavior and off the government usually ends up borrowing money from the people they should be

taxing and and that and any government repays that that that loan that they get from the burning through taxation through from everywhere every day people could in the working class a middle class well if we put entirely legitimate tax havens to one side you explain that before trying taxes on the president like the bush's clinton obama taxes paid by billionaires have gone down by around 80 percent between 192018 yeah absolutely and that is like one of the. most staggering. that to 6 that we actually had. and this is unfortunate because the number of households that we have here that have 0 or negative what they're actually increasing so that 37 percent of african american families and there are 3 percent percent of hispanic families have 0 or negative wealth and that just does goes to show that you know a rising tide is not lift all boats and you know

a decrease in taxes does not actually mean it's better for the economy as a home and that was before trump what do you think billionaires one term joe biden because he's had apparently 100 billionaires donate to his campaign versus now and be able to you know lower their taxes i think that that the main issue that you know for the billionaire class that main issue that they want is to not have their wealth threatened by any. means so therefore their party going are pressuring him to make sure that taxes are not racing if they're going to report is available online just very briefly it not only itemize and explains all of this it does suggest ways out of this you're an emergency millionaire 10 percent income tax surtax and also a pandemic profiteering oversight committee i understand. yes all the. damage assuming your income surtax is basically a tax that could be that would be placed on people who make over $2000000.00

a year which is basically just one percent of the population and that surtax can be kept in place what's pandemic we've estimated that we can raise over $600000000000.00 in 10 years and if we can combine this with other taxes which is like a well tax or more progressive the state tax i think it will help expand opportunity by funding education health care and like other new initiatives like the green new deal and i think that congress should establish a pandemic profiteering committee and enact an excess profits tax because the problem with any economic crisis that large corporations disproportionately benefit because their competition goes out of business or they exploit the crisis by raising prices not according to supply and demand principles so that revenues that can be raised from that can be can be given to those who are in need or more of amber thank you thank you very much thank you that's over the shoulder we're back on wednesday 135 years to the day the statue of liberty

a blazing with the inscription we are tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free a right to your car until then and wash your hands and join me on the road were following up on you tube twitter facebook instagram and so. we're told the civil unrest in the united states and beyond is about systemic racism we're told western institutions and values are inherently flaunting the other. night to really explain the real evidence of social breakdown what is really in play here is an ideology and ideology they demand an absolute submission. geysers financial survival bill they say money to develop. climate change is easy this is a central plank support diagram is the problem right now so you stop to. make

your home and blow our brains out at any given time we can really do with the thing actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people. war and legally get away with. all the fire crawls still. all the trouble to the point it's hollow ploy to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist there's a biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse also than the people who destroyed the world trade center.

us movement against racism is taking hold in europe with some protests turning ugly over the weekend because demonstrators clashed with police looters targeted schools . very minneapolis' heckled for refusing to defund or dismantle the police so the u.s. officials increasingly pound to pressure. the protestors. and also a german police come in for criticism after it's revealed a new identified suspect in a tourist missing girl 'd case dating back to 2007 has actually been known to them .