In May a man in London died from silicosis caused by cutting kitchen worktops (i, 5 November).

The toxic dust produced by doing this work in small workshops with poor safety procedures has caused a number of other cases, mostly among migrants who have little choice but to work in such conditions. Stone slabs are popular in kitchen revamps, but they have given rise to serious health and safety concerns. Australia has banned engineered stone after nearly six hundred stonemasons have been diagnosed with silicosis since 2015.

The reason behind this is of course profit. Profit for the employer from selling the products, profit which is reduced by taking sensible safety precautions.

Loathsome, monstrous, bigoted, demagogic, sociopathic are among the words used to describe the man who has just won the American election. But it appears that that is what the majority of the Americans who took part in the election wanted and voted for.

What will Trump do? Many fear he will establish a dictatorship taking draconian measures, Mussolini or Hitler style, against all ‘progressive’ forces while promising to cure all ills. Such a prospect is dispiriting for socialists and is aeons away from the world society we advocate.

But we would not have supported the ‘lesser evil’ of a Harris victory and we believe that the well entrenched capitalist democracy in the US will prevent Trump riding roughshod over all opposition.

The row about ‘reparatory justice’ for colonial slavery has rolled round again. Estimates of potential costs for using that expensive word ‘sorry’ vary from billions to tens of trillions. Up to 20% of UK wealth is slavery-related, but today’s rich beneficiaries certainly won’t be giving up their landed estates. Instead they insist that any reparations come out of ‘public money’.

Since ‘public money’ ultimately comes from capitalist profits, this amounts to a plan by the slaveholder descendants to spread the reparation cost across the entire owning class – like sharing a restaurant bill among 10 people, when only two of them ate.

Don’t feel sorry for the capitalists though. They all get rich through our wage slavery. Socialists don’t want reparations for that. We want revolution.

According to a recent World Bank report, global poverty reduction has more or less come to a standstill, with 2020–30 ‘set to be a lost decade’. One person in twelve in the world is in extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 per day).

Two-thirds of the extreme poor live in sub-Saharan Africa, where in addition nearly everyone who is exposed to an extreme weather event will struggle to recover from it.

If current developments continue, it will take decades to eradicate extreme poverty. This in a world that wastes massive resources on wars and all the paraphernalia of the money system, where producing enough for all is achievable now.