THE ENTIRE REASON FOR OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NON-ENFORCEMENT, AND NO E-VERIFY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED. IT WORKS!
ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS FOR AMNESTY AND WIDER OPEN BORDERS!
Desperate to ensure profits, capital has gutted the living
standards of the working class while engrossing the coffers of
those at the top through financial parasitism.
“The multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, sanctioned with the nearly unanimous support of Congress in late March, produced massive growth in the wealth of the oligarchy. On Tuesday, Forbes published its latest update on the wealth of American billionaires, reporting that the wealth of the richest 400 people has reached a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion from a year ago.”
Study finds 90 percent of Americans
would make 67 percent more without last four
decades of increasing income inequality
25 September 2020
A new study from the RAND Corporation, “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018,” written by Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards, provides new documentation of the profound restructuring of class relations in America over the last 40 years.
The study, which looks at changes in pre-tax family income from 1947 to 2018, divided into quintiles of the American population, concludes that the bottom 90 percent of the population would, on average, make 67 percent more in income—every year (!)—had shifts in income inequality not occurred the last four decades.
In other words, any family that made less than $184,292 (the 90th percentile income bracket) in 2018 would be, on average, making 67 percent more. This amounts to a total sum of $2.5 trillion of collective lost income for the bottom 90 percent, just in 2018.
Furthermore, the study concludes, that had more equitable growth continued after 1975 (a date they use as a shifting point), the bottom 90 percent of American households would have earned a total of $47 trillion more in income.
Given that there were about 115 million households in the bottom 90 percent of the US in 2018 population (out of a total of 127.59 million in 2018), that would mean that each of these households would, on average, be $408,696 richer today with this lost income.
To reach these conclusions, the authors break down historical real, pre-tax, income into different quintiles of the population (bottom fifth, second fifth, third fifth, fourth fifth, highest fifth). Looking at the period between 1947 and 2018, they divide the years based on business cycles (booms and busts of the economy).
Their data quantitatively expresses the restructuring of class relations that began at the end of the post-WWII boom. Facing intensified economic crisis, automation, and global competition, the US ruling class undertook an aggressive campaign of deindustrialization, slashing wages and clawing back benefits won in the previous period by explosive struggles of the working class, while simultaneously funneling money to financial markets, expanding the wealth and income of both the upper and upper-middle class.
As the data shows, while the bottom 40 percent of American households made significant percentile increases to their income, relative to the top 5 percent, for the 20 years between 1947 and 1968, in the 40 years from 1980 to the present, this trend was reversed. In 1980-2000, the bottom 40 percent of the population experienced a net income gain significantly below that of the top 5 percent. It must be noted that because these are percentile increases, the absolute differences between the gains of the rich versus the poor is far larger.
Furthermore, not included in this data is wealth. In the last 40 years, and especially the last 10 to 20 years, the stock market has become the principal means through which the top 10 percent of the population has piled up historic levels of wealth.
Significantly, the data from 2001 to 2018 shows a sharp slowdown in income gains for all sections of American society as per capita GDP growth slowed and US capitalism experienced a historic decline. However, while the income of the top 5 percent of the population may have only grown by about 2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the wealth of the top percentiles of the population exploded. For example, according to data from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, the wealth of the top 1 percent of the population increased from almost $20 trillion in the first quarter of 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis, to almost $33 trillion at the beginning of 2018.
By using the data, the authors come up with a set of counterfactual incomes based on what would be the different income brackets in 2018 without a shift in income distribution. The top 1 percent, instead of making on average $1,384,000 would make $630,000. The 25th percentile, instead of making $33,000 would make $61,000.
The authors of the study also make several other important observations by breaking down their data on the basis of location, education, and race.
For example, they note, “Racial income disparities below the median have declined over the last four decades. This has primarily occurred because White men in the bottom half of the income distribution are earning the same or less than in 1975.” In other words, for the bottom half of the population, the bulk of the working class, there has been greater parity between sexes and races in terms of pay as white men’s pay stagnated and pay for other sections of the working class slightly increased.
While black men in the bottom 25th percentile of the population only increased their income from $27,000 in 1975 to $30,000 in 2018, black men in the 95th percentile, the upper-middle class, increased their pay from $65,000 in 1975 to $128,000—effectively doubling it.
Regarding education, they note: “Because incomes for those without a college degree have not increased more than inflation over the last forty years, education is frequently touted as a solution to rising income inequality. However, even for college graduates, incomes failed to grow at the rate of the overall growth of the economy. Thus, the economic value of a college degree may largely be in avoiding the negative outcomes felt by those who do not have one. …”
This saliently expresses what a college degree has become for most Americans: a necessity to avoid extreme poverty but in no way a guarantee of a well-paying, stable job.
The authors also note that “Incomes in rural areas have neither kept pace with the growth in broader economy nor with urban and suburban areas,” due to “a decline in the economic health of rural areas.”
The stark class divide expressed in the report is not the outcome of a single politician or for that matter a specific party. Rather, it is the policy, collectively, of the entire ruling class, as American, and indeed global, capitalism entered a period of profound and protracted crisis. Desperate to ensure profits, capital has gutted the living standards of the working class while engrossing the coffers of those at the top through financial parasitism.
“The
multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, sanctioned with the nearly
unanimous support of Congress in late March, produced massive growth in the
wealth of the oligarchy. On Tuesday, Forbes published its
latest update on the wealth of American billionaires, reporting that the wealth
of the richest 400 people has reached a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion
from a year ago.”
The Civil War Election
9 September 2020
The US presidential election is now eight weeks away. The
campaign between Trump and Biden is pitting an administration that is making an
increasingly open appeal to violence and police state repression against a
Democratic Party campaign that, as always, offers no genuine alternative to the
drive toward authoritarianism and war.
The Trump administration is utilizing the election campaign
in an attempt to build up a right-wing, fascistic movement on a ferociously
antisocialist basis. Trump has followed up his praise of Kyle Rittenhouse, who
murdered two protesters and injured a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin last month,
with calls for vengeance directed against opponents of police violence.
At his press conference on Monday, the president hailed the
killing of protester Michael Reinoehl by US Marshals last week. “If somebody is
breaking the law, there has got to be a form of retribution,” Trump declared,
condoning extrajudicial reprisals from his supporters. The same day, he
retweeted a statement from right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza declaring that
political unrest would lead to the “rise of citizen militias around the
country”—that is, fascistic vigilante organizations like Patriot Prayer,
responsible for terrorizing protesters in Portland, Oregon.
As noted, Trump is not
running for president; he is running for Führer. His campaign seems to be
modeled on Hitler’s bid for German chancellor in 1932. Using language that is
unprecedented in American history, Trump is seeking to create conditions,
regardless of the outcome on November 3, in which he will emerge as the leader
of an extra-constitutional, right-wing movement.
There is no doubt that if Trump wins, he will immediately
escalate the suppression of democratic rights and implementation of police
state forms of rule.
Under these conditions, the argument of the Democratic
Party is that all opposition to Trump must be directed behind the election of
Biden. For workers to allow their struggles to be subordinated to the electoral
considerations of the Democratic Party, however, would be a fatal political
error.
Trump did not emerge from nowhere. He expresses in the most
unvarnished form the essentially fascistic, antidemocratic impulse of the American
ruling class as a whole. That Trump is not some sort of demon unleashed from
hell is revealed in the fact that the growth of authoritarianism and fascism is
a universal phenomenon, from Brazil and India to France and Germany.
The working class must direct its opposition to the
underlying disease of which Trump is an expression. What are the conditions
that are fueling this crisis?
First, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the
catastrophic state to which capitalism has driven society. It is an extreme
expression and product of the subordination of everything to the profit
interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy.
The ruling class has effectively adopted a policy of “herd
immunity,” allowing the virus to spread without restraint. The back-to-work
campaign, spearheaded by Trump but implemented by both the Democrats and
Republicans, has already led to an enormous surge in the death toll, which is
now approaching 200,000 people. The University of Washington now estimates that
the number of deaths by the end of the year could rise to above 400,000.
Second, alongside the health impact of the pandemic is a
deepening social and economic crisis for millions of people. Despite the
back-to-work campaign, there are more than 11 million fewer jobs now than
before the pandemic hit. It is six weeks since Congress allowed federal
unemployment benefits to expire, throwing millions into poverty. The number of
Americans facing hunger this year is projected to increase by 45 percent, to
more than 50 million.
The
multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, sanctioned with the nearly
unanimous support of Congress in late March, produced massive growth in the
wealth of the oligarchy. On Tuesday, Forbes published its
latest update on the wealth of American billionaires, reporting that the wealth
of the richest 400 people has reached a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion
from a year ago.
Third, the deepening economic, social and political crisis
increases the danger that the ruling class will see war abroad as a means of
resolving its problems at home. Trump is making aggressive moves in the South
China Sea as part of its offensive against China, while the Democrats, if they
come to power, are committed to an intensification of the conflict with Russia
and war in the Middle East.
To downplay, let alone deny, the fact that the Trump presidency is metastasizing rapidly into a right-wing authoritarian regime, with distinctly fascist characteristics, is to close one’s eyes to political reality. The old refrain, “It can’t happen here”—i.e., that American democracy is eternally immune from the cancer of fascism—is hopelessly out of date. The very fact that a thug like Trump ascended to the White House testifies to the terminal crisis of the existing political system.
These processes have only intensified over the past year,
vastly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s fascistic rhetoric is
an attempt to beat back a growing social movement of the working class against
the policies of the corporate and financial oligarchy.
The Democratic Party, however, represents another faction
of the same oligarchy. Its appeal is to dominant factions of the military and
the intelligence agencies as the arbiters of political power to whom it will
turn if Trump refuses to leave office. Its main aim is to suppress any form of
social opposition that threatens the interests of the ruling elite.
Over the past week, Biden has denounced protests over
police violence, attacked socialism, and made clear that he will run his
campaign on the most right-wing basis possible. In the final stages of the
election, the Democrats are attempting to revive their anti-Russia campaign to
ever more explicitly target left-wing opposition within the United States as
the work of “foreign adversaries.”
Biden presents himself as the “man in the middle” under
conditions of a developing civil war situation. His campaign offers nothing to
address the social catastrophe confronting masses of people. The Democrats’
open embrace of militarist violence—welcoming as part of their “coalition” the
leading architects of the Iraq war—even allows the fascistic Trump to posture
as an opponent of the “military-industrial complex.”
The Democrats are above all opposed to
raising any issues that undermine the economic and financial interests of the
ruling elite. An indication of the social policies that a Biden campaign would
pursue if in office was given in an article published in the Washington
Post on Monday. Referring to the economic proposals released by the
Biden campaign—consisting of milquetoast reforms that were the product of
discussions with the “Sanders-Warren” wing of the party—the Post wrote:
But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden
campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda.
“They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren
people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’” said one investment banker,
referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-mass.). The banker,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that
message was conveyed on multiple calls.
The Democratic Party, for all its denunciations of Trump,
makes no mention of the essentially fascistic character of the policies he is
pursuing. It should be recalled that even though Trump lost the last election
by three million votes, the immediate response of the Democratic Party was to
offer its collaboration. The election, Obama said, was an “intramural
scrimmage” between two sides of the same team.
If the Democrats were to lose on November 3, or even if they were to win, the response would be no different. They would immediately offer an olive branch to Trump and the Republican Party.
The ability of Trump to attract and maintain a following is
largely a product of the inability of the Democrats to offer anything to
address the social crisis. In the end, the actual differences are marginal,
focused above all on foreign policy. The fact that the contest is even close,
under conditions of mass death and social devastation, is an indictment of the
Democratic Party. It is incapable of making a popular appeal precisely because
of the class interests that it represents.
The strategy of the working class cannot be guided by the
arithmetic of an election, but the logic of the class struggle.
The Socialist Equality Party and our election
campaign—Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice
president—direct all of our attention to the growth of working class
opposition. The election must be seen not as an end, but as part of a broader
process. This will prepare the working class for whatever outcome—whether it is
Trump or Biden in the White House or whether it is the direct intervention of
the military.
There is already growing opposition in the working class.
Teachers and parents are mobilizing against the efforts to reopen the schools
amidst the raging pandemic. Educators and students have begun to fight against
the dangerous reopening of colleges and universities, including a strike that
began yesterday at the University of Michigan by 1,000 lecturers and graduate
students.
There is seething anger among autoworkers, Amazon workers,
transportation workers, service workers and other sections of the working class
to the back-to-work campaign and the effort by the corporations to use the
pandemic to increase exploitation. A “winter of discontent” is brewing with
millions out of work and facing poverty and eviction.
This is combined with the continued protests over police
violence and racism, sparked in late May by the murder of George Floyd. While
fueled by the unending epidemic of police violence, the protests have given
expression to deep social anger and a desire among millions of workers and
youth to fight back.
The struggles of different sections of the working class
must be organized and united through the formation of independent factory,
workplace and neighborhood safety committees. The fight of teachers against the
back-to-school campaign must be connected with the fight of students against
the reopening of the universities, the fight of workers against the horrific
conditions in the plants, the fight of the unemployed against social
devastation, and the fight of the youth against police violence.
At issue in every struggle is the question of political
power: What class rules and in whose interests. The only solution to the crisis
is one that is directed against the capitalist system. A massive diversion of
social resources away from the bailout of the rich and the financing of
militarism and war is required. The wealth of the oligarchs must be seized, and
the gigantic corporations and banks turned into public utilities to create the
conditions for a globally coordinated program to save lives.
The fight against the pandemic is not primarily a medical
question. As with every great problem confronting the working class—social
inequality and poverty, war, environmental degradation and dictatorship—it is a
political and revolutionary question, which raises the need for the working
class to take power in its own hands, overthrow capitalism, and restructure all
of society on the basis of social need.
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