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WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One Million Homeless and Overrun By Mexico’s
Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
The class dynamics of the stock market bull run
24 August 2018
With the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers approaching, the US stock market this week recorded its longest-ever bull run, defined as a period in which the market has continued to rise without experiencing a fall of 20 percent.
Since its low point on March 9, 2009, the S&P 500 has risen by 323 percent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has risen 611 percent and the Dow Jones is up around 300 percent. The rise in the S&P since 2009 represents an increase in financial wealth of some $18 trillion, the vast bulk of which has flowed to an upper stratum of society.
But rather than expressing the strength of American capitalism, these increases could well be likened to a phenomenon well known in the 19th century—the rosy colour that appeared in the face of a victim of tuberculosis. The spectacular rise of American financial markets since their nadir in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 is a visible expression not of health but rather of disease: in the form of financial parasitism.
The economic origins of the boom lie in the measures taken by the US government and financial authorities in response to the financial meltdown of 2008. The Bush and Obama administrations orchestrated, to the tune of trillions of dollars, the bailout of the banks, whose financial speculation, in many cases involving outright criminal activity, had brought on the most serious crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Like all systemic crises, the breakdown of 2008 evoked a class response. The ruling elites and the state determined that in order to protect and expand their own wealth and power, the working class would be made to pay for the crisis. This was the underlying dynamic of all the measures that were adopted as the ruling class used the crisis to enrich itself beyond its wildest dreams.
While millions of families lost their homes and millions of workers lost their jobs and then were forced into lower-paid positions when they eventually found work, the financial elites enjoyed a bonanza.
The initial injection of hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of the banks and finance houses was followed by the flow of trillions of dollars into the financial system via the program of “quantitative easing”—the purchase of financial assets by the US Federal Reserve that saw its balance sheet expand from $800 billion to more than $4 trillion—and the lowering of interest rates to historic lows.
The stock market boom is, as David North put it in his opening report to the party’s fifth national congress last month, “the institutionalization of a political-economic system in which the stock exchanges, with the full support of the state, serve as the medium for the transfer of wealth, on a massive and unprecedented scale, to the corporate-financial oligarchy.” It was an expression of the decline in the economic and global position of US capitalism.
This can be seen in the change in the composition of the leading companies that dominate the financial indices. Before the eruption of the financial crisis, the most valuable companies were ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft and AT&T. Now the four most valuable firms are the technology giants Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft, with Facebook in fifth place, while giants of the past, such as IBM and major industrial corporations like General Motors, lag well behind.
It is symptomatic of the transformation of American capitalism that one of the most profitable activities of the tech giants is devising new methods of harvesting data on consumers’ social activities and spending habits, turning that data into saleable commodities. They see further avenues of growth in partnering with the repressive apparatus of the state, building weapons of war and helping the intelligence agencies censor political speech on the Internet.
Another key indicator of the growth of the financial parasitism that underlies the stock market boom is the ever-increasing use of share buybacks by major corporations to boost the value of their stock.
This activity has received a boost through the corporate tax cuts carried out by the Trump administration. On Thursday, in response to the escalating political crisis in the US, Trump directly pointed to his role in boosting the market in an interview on Fox.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “if I ever get impeached, I think the market would crash.” This would result in everybody becoming “very poor,” with a reversal of numbers in “that you wouldn’t believe.”
The official mantra, embraced by both parties, is that corporate tax cuts will boost investment, thereby creating an expansion of jobs and an increase in wages in a so-called “trickle-down” process.
The opposite is the case. Instead of a “trickle down,” the tax measures have produced an upward flood of wealth for the corporate and financial oligarchy at the heights of society. Share buybacks comprise a significant component of the back-to-back quarters of growth in earnings per share of S&P 500 companies this year, and it has been estimated they will top $1 trillion by December.
But state-backed financial parasitism is not the only cause of the stock market surge. Another critical factor has been the role of the trade union apparatuses in the suppression of the class struggle. This process, which developed at least from the early 1980s in parallel with the rise of financial parasitism, was accelerated in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.
In line with its boost to the banks and finance houses, the Obama administration organised the “restructuring” of General Motors and Chrysler, with the collaboration with the trade union bureaucracy. It initiated major cuts in wages and social benefits through the implementation of measures such as the notorious system of two-tier wages that has now spread throughout American industry. These measures in turn created the conditions for the development of the new systems of super-exploitation devised by Amazon and other major corporations.
As a result, while the stock market has soared to new heights, wages and working conditions have been on a continual downward trend. Two recent social statistics underscore the impact of this process. In 2016, as a result of growing social inequality, life expectancy in the United States fell for the second year in a row—the first time this has happened in decades. Since 2008, the number of US drug overdoses has grown by 80 percent, hitting 72,000 last year.
The stock market rally is the outcome of an ongoing and ever-deepening offensive by the ruling class that will literally stop at nothing in order to expand its wealth. Accordingly, the working class must develop its own independent class response.
There is no basis for reform of the parasitic and destructive profit system. It must be overturned and replaced with a higher form of socio-economic organisation in which the wealth created by the labour of millions is used to meet human needs. The resurgence of the class struggle in the US is the beginning of this process. Its further development depends above all on the extent to which it is politically armed with a socialist program and perspective and on the building of the necessary revolutionary party to lead this struggle.
Nick Beams
By Terence P. Jeffrey | August 22, 2018 | 8:49 AM EDT
52.1% of Kids Live in Households Getting Means-Tested Government Assistance
U.S. Capitol building (Screenshot)
Will they be called The Welfare Generation?
Today, they are Americans under 18 years of age growing up in a country where the majority of their peers live in households that take "means-tested assistance" from the government.
In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them — or 52.1 percent — resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.
These included the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.
The Census Bureau published its data on the number and percentage of persons living in households that received means-tested government assistance in its Current Population Survey Detailed Tables for Poverty.
Table POV-26 indicates there were approximately 319,911,000 people in the United States in 2016. Of these, 114,793,000 — 35.9 percent — lived "in a household that received means-tested assistance."
That does not mean every person in the household received the aid themselves, only that one or more persons living in the household did.
When examined by age bracket, persons under 18 were the most likely to live in a household receiving means-tested government assistance (52.1 percent), while those 75 and older were least likely (18.8 percent).
But Americans in all the age brackets up to age 44 analyzed by the Census Bureau were more likely to be living in a household that received means-tested government assistance than the overall national rate of 35.9 percent.
For those 18 to 24 years old, the rate was 40.1 percent; for those 25 to 34, it was 36.8 percent; and for those 35 to 44, it was 37.4 percent.
For those 45 to 54, it dropped down to 30.6 percent — below the 35.9 percent overall rate.
But even when the Census Bureau excluded the school lunch program from its calculations, the percentage of those under 18 who lived in a household receiving means-tested assistance (44.8 percent) exceeded the percentage in any other age bracket.
Twenty years ago, in 1998, according to Census Bureau data, only 36.9 percent of Americans under 18 lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance. In 2008, the percentage broke 40 percent for the first time. In 2013, it broke 50 percent for the first time.
America has now seen four straight years — 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 — during which a majority of those under 18 lived in a household taking means-tested benefits.
The Census Bureau data indicate that people living in intact families are less likely to be on government assistance than people living in broken families. Nonetheless, the government-dependency rate is still high for intact families that have children under 18.
There were approximately 192,838,000 people living in married-couple families in the United States in 2016, according to Table POV-26. Of these, 56,690,000 — or 29.4 percent — lived in households that received means-tested government assistance.
Yet, 41.1 percent of the children under 18 in married-couple families lived in households receiving means-tested assistance (and 34.2 percent received means-tested assistance even when the school lunch program was excluded).
Among children under 18 in families where a male householder was living without a spouse, 64.1 percent were in households on means-tested government assistance (54.8 percent excluding the school lunch program).
Among children under 18 in families where a female householder was living without a spouse, 78.0 percent were in households on means-tested government assistance (69.8 percent excluding the school lunch program).
Among children under 6 years of age living in families where a female householder was living without a spouse, 81.8 percent were in households on means-tested assistance (77.7 percent excluding the school lunch program).
America's prosperity is ultimately and inextricably tied to America's culture. If we want to see the former flourish, the latter must also.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com.
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