OBAMAnomics for the
rich:
Crony Capitalism,
Economic plunder by Wall Street, Bottomless Bailouts and Wider Open Borders to Keep
Wages Depressed and Profits up.
The
stupendous run-up on the global stock exchanges and vast increase in the
personal fortunes of the financial oligarchy have depended on the
relentless downward pressure on workers’ wages and conditions.
This is a class conscious decision by the
central bank executives, who understand that investors tend to make far more
money when the sword of mass unemployment and poverty is kept swinging over the
heads of workers.
After a decade of falling pay, US Federal Reserve acts to stop “wage inflation”
28 September 2018
The US Federal Reserve lifted its base interest rate on Wednesday,
raising it above two percent for the first time since the US central
bank began its low-interest-rate regime after the global financial
crash of 2008. Explaining the rate hike, the Fed’s Open Market
Committee said it was closely monitoring and would quickly react
to “indicators of inflation pressures and expectations.”
raising it above two percent for the first time since the US central
bank began its low-interest-rate regime after the global financial
crash of 2008. Explaining the rate hike, the Fed’s Open Market
Committee said it was closely monitoring and would quickly react
to “indicators of inflation pressures and expectations.”
The talk about inflationary pressures is a code word in ruling
circles for the fear of rising wages. As Financial
Times commentator John Authers noted in a recent article,
“[W]age inflation is central to the Fed’s reaction function.”
circles for the fear of rising wages. As Financial
Times commentator John Authers noted in a recent article,
“[W]age inflation is central to the Fed’s reaction function.”
The stupendous run-up on the global stock
exchanges and vast increase in the personal
fortunes of the financial oligarchy have depended
on the relentless downward pressure on workers’
wages and conditions.
exchanges and vast increase in the personal
fortunes of the financial oligarchy have depended
on the relentless downward pressure on workers’
wages and conditions.
Mass unemployment, home foreclosures and the spread of
poverty during the Great Recession were used as a hammer to
restructure class relations in the United States and around the
world and destroy social rights and protections won by workers
over generations of class struggle. While governments of every
stripe handed out trillions in “economic stimulus” packages to
the financial speculators and corporations responsible for the
crash, the watchwords for the working class were austerity,
“labor flexibility” and the poverty-level wages and precarious
employment associated with the so-called Gig Economy.
poverty during the Great Recession were used as a hammer to
restructure class relations in the United States and around the
world and destroy social rights and protections won by workers
over generations of class struggle. While governments of every
stripe handed out trillions in “economic stimulus” packages to
the financial speculators and corporations responsible for the
crash, the watchwords for the working class were austerity,
“labor flexibility” and the poverty-level wages and precarious
employment associated with the so-called Gig Economy.
The Obama
administration’s restructuring of the auto industry, carried out with the full
support of the United Auto Workers union, slashed the wages of new hires in
half, abolished the eight-hour day and vastly expanded the use of temporary
part-time workers. This became the template for an assault on every section of
the working class. Similarly, the IMF-backed structural adjustment programs
imposed on Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries by various governments,
including the so-called Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), robbed
pensions, raised retirement ages and sold public assets to pay off the banks.
Since 2008, the real
income for 90 percent of wage earners has been frozen in the US. Average annual
raises have ranged from 2 to 3 percent a year since the beginning of 2013,
which was at or below the rate of inflation. The rise of the last decade is
even lower than the 4 percent increases in average hourly earnings before the
2007–2008 collapse and well below the 7 to 9 percent annual rises of the 1970s
and 1980s. Adjusting for inflation, wages of American workers today have the
same purchasing power as they did in 1978, according to the Pew Research
Center, which said hourly earnings in real terms peaked 45 years ago, in 1973.
Due to the shifting of
health care costs from the employers to workers under Obama, whatever meager
wage increases workers achieved were more than eaten up by rising medical
costs. Over the past nine years, employee out-of-pocket spending for a family
of four in the US increased 69 percent in the form of higher co-pays and higher
deductibles, along with a 105 percent employee premium contribution growth,
according to a CNBC comment by health care executive Keith Lemer. The
percentage of family income spent on health care rose from 8 percent in 2008 to
12 percent in 2015, adding to a de facto cut in real wages.
With official
unemployment levels hitting record lows, however, employers have been forced to
slightly increase wages over the last several months to attract labor. The
Labor Department reported earlier this month that average hourly earnings were
up 0.4 percent in August from the previous month and 2.9 percent from a year
earlier, up from an average annual increase of 2.7 percent recorded in July.
In real terms, last month’s
average hourly earnings rose by only 0.2 percent points above the inflation
rate. Nevertheless, this princely sum—the highest average wage hike in nine
years—was enough to set the alarms off and provoke the US Federal Reserve to
come out with both guns blazing to stop wage “inflation.”
This is a class
conscious decision by the central bank executives, who understand that
investors tend to make far more money when the sword of mass unemployment and
poverty is kept swinging over the heads of workers. This was made clear in
recent note to investors by a financial analyst for Charles Schwab. “Statistics
dating back to 1950 show that when the unemployment rate was below 4 percent,
as it is now, stock market returns were quite low,” analyst Liz Ann Sonders complained.
“Conversely, when unemployment was at its highest, the stock market did very
well—delivering returns that were nearly four times as high as when
unemployment was plumbing the depths.”
Whatever the
internecine battles being waged within differing sections of the corporate and
political establishment—from the degrading spectacle in Washington to the
internal conflicts in the UK and Germany—every faction of the ruling class and
its political representatives are united in their fear and hatred of the
working class. In country after country, they are sharpening the weapons of
state repression, encouraging right-wing and fascistic forces and beating the
drums for war.
Over the last decade,
the world’s corporate and financial elites have relied on the trade unions to
suppress the resistance of the working class to wage-cutting and austerity and
facilitate an historic transfer of wealth to the top. But this artificial
suppression of class struggle has only guaranteed that its reemergence will be
all the more explosive. Throughout the world, social and class conflict is
erupting to the surface through an increase in strikes and the growth of
anti-capitalist sentiment among workers and young people.
In the US, the wave of
teachers' strikes earlier this year were
followed this month by educators' strikes in the states of
Washington and Pennsylvania, a near unanimous vote by Los
Angeles teachers to join the strike wave, and a walkout by hotel
workers in Chicago. More than 8,000 hotel workers in other states
have voted to walk out, as have 30,000 steelworkers who voted
unanimously to authorize a strike at US Steel and ArcelorMittal.
followed this month by educators' strikes in the states of
Washington and Pennsylvania, a near unanimous vote by Los
Angeles teachers to join the strike wave, and a walkout by hotel
workers in Chicago. More than 8,000 hotel workers in other states
have voted to walk out, as have 30,000 steelworkers who voted
unanimously to authorize a strike at US Steel and ArcelorMittal.
Fiat Chrysler workers
have voted to walk out in Kokomo, Indiana, and so have University of Michigan
nurses. There is also deep opposition to the sellout deal signed by the
Teamsters covering 230,000 UPS workers, who are currently voting on the
contract. Amazon workers are speaking out against brutal conditions.
The major obstacle to
the unification of the working class is the unions, which are blocking strikes
and, if they break out, doing everything they can to isolate and defeat them.
This is compelling workers to find new means to wage their struggles. The
Socialist Equality Party in the US and its sister parties around the world are
encouraging and assisting workers in forming rank-and-file factory and
workplace committees to take up the responsibilities long ago abandoned by the
corporatist unions, including waging a fight against speedup, unsafe
conditions, victimizations and the constant erosion of wages and benefits.
The struggle to unify
and defend the interests of the working class means rejecting the reactionary
program of economic nationalism of the unions and their subordination of
workers’ needs to the profits and prerogatives of the giant corporations and
banks. Instead, it means building a powerful political movement of the working
class to fight for international socialism, the expropriation of the capitalist
class, and the reorganization of economic life to meet human needs, not private
profit.
Jerry White
OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON AMERICA -WHY WALL STREET,
ILLEGALS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS and the 1% LOVE HIM, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE
SHAFT TO PAY FOR HIS CRONY CAPITALISM
CEO pay is higher than ever, as is the chasm
separating the rich and super-rich from everyone else. The incomes of the top 1
percent grew more than 11 percent between 2009 and 2011—the first two years of
the Obama “recovery”—while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent actually shrank.
Meanwhile,
Obama is pressing forward with his proposal, outlined in his budget for the
next fiscal year, to slash $400 billion from Medicare and $130 billion from
Social Security… AS WELL AS WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED
APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
THE RISE TO
POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent'
and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew
Research Center
The larger
fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as
the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION
DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more
debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had
the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s
terms, 95% of the wealth created went to
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
PATHOLOGICAL LIAR BARACK OBAMA MOCKS TRUMP
Obama orchestrated the greatest transfer of wealth to the rich in
U.S. history!
THE WALL STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
SERVING BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under
Obama than Bush.
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election
in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with
the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare
programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW
MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black
capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three
strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the
world.”
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