What kind of a society picks the middle of a pandemic, when the financial crisis is causing poverty and destitution to rise exponentially, as the moment to impose a 20 percent tax on the cost of essential and mandated masks?
Just in time to coincide with the renewed national Covid-19 lockdown in England, the government has ended the waiver on VAT for PPE equipment like face masks and gloves, raising prices.
This 20 percent sales tax, originally suspended back in May, is being slapped back on from 1 November at a time when everyone is being ordered to wear masks in shops and on public transport.
Whilst millionaires continue to dodge taxes with impunity, ordinary workers are subjected to just one more mean-spirited drain on their tightening budgets.
The one up side to the present suffering is that both the economic and health crises are providing fresh examples every day of how inequality and poverty are hard wired into the capitalist system.
Increasingly, life is teaching the working class that the present system is entirely unable to cater to even their most basic needs, never mind being able to provide them with a life of meaning and dignity.
