Trump breaks off talks on pandemic stimulus bill
One day after his return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received millions of dollars’ worth of medical care for his COVID-19 infection at taxpayer expense, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he was breaking off talks on a new stimulus bill until after the November election.
In a series of tweets, he wrote: “Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bail out poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19. We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith.
“I am rejecting their request, and looking to the future of our Country. I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business.”
Trump went on say that he had asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “focus full time” on confirming his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, the far-right judge whose pre-election confirmation will virtually ensure that an eventual ruling on the election outcome will be favorable to Trump. Senate Republicans plan to hold a confirmation hearing for Barrett next Monday.
Trump’s announcement is a savage attack on the working class under conditions of a worsening pandemic, a rising tide of permanent layoffs—on top what were already near-Depression levels of unemployment—soaring hunger and tens of millions of looming evictions and home foreclosures.
The move is consistent with Trump’s escalation of plans to carry out an election coup d’état, refusing to recognize the results of the election if, as seems increasingly likely, they go against him, mobilizing his fascistic supporters inside and outside the police and military, and turning to a stacked Supreme Court to validate a stolen election and a de facto presidential dictatorship.
He is not basing his strategy on election polls, but rather on the drive by the most right-wing sections of the corporate-financial oligarchy to authoritarian rule.
In this civil war conspiracy, he is relying above all on his supine and complicit political opposition, the Democratic Party. The Democrats, the presidential campaign of Joe Biden and the media aligned with them seized on Trump’s COVID-19 illness to wish him a speedy recovery and rapid return to his “duties,” which center on prosecuting his homicidal “herd immunity” policy in the pandemic, stoking military confrontations around the world, and plotting a coup to overturn the Constitution and violently crush mounting social opposition at home.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been holding sporadic and desultory talks with Trump’s treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on a new stimulus bill, issued a lame response on Twitter to Trump’s announcement, writing: “President Trump has shown his true colors: walking away from coronavirus relief negotiations and refusing to give real help to poor children, the unemployed, and America’s hard working families.”
In fact, the Democrats colluded with Trump and the Republicans to allow the expiration of the $600-a-week federal unemployment supplement on July 31, reducing the income of millions of workers by two-thirds or more. This followed their near-unanimous support for the CARES Act passed in March, which has provided some $6 trillion in handouts and virtually free credit to the Wall Street banks and major corporations. Unlimited cash infusions by the Fed have fueled a massive rise on the stock market, which has boosted the wealth of America’s billionaires by $845 billion during the pandemic.
In August, Trump enacted a temporary, six-week $300 boost in jobless pay by executive order, but that is rapidly running out. Meanwhile, last week’s Labor Department employment report showed that nearly 700,000 workers dropped out of the workforce in September.
Non-farm payrolls rose by just 661,000 jobs, less than half of the number in August and the fourth monthly decline since June. The number of workers considered permanently unemployed because there are no jobs for them to return to rose to 3.8 million. This is an increase of 2.5 million since February.
The ranks of long-term unemployed out of work for 27 weeks or more increased by 781,000 to 2.4 million. These workers have exhausted their 26-week limit on state unemployment benefits, and another five million laid-off workers will reach this limit over the next two months.
Just over the past several days, US corporations have announced more than 100,000 new layoffs. These include at least 40,000 airline jobs, 45,000 cinema jobs, 28,000 Disney resort and theme park jobs, along with 280,000 education jobs.
What is unfolding in the United States—and around the world—is a social catastrophe that promises to exceed even the devastation of the years of the Great Depression. In the US, 10 million people have already lost their health insurance as a result of being laid off.
Food banks have seen the volume of food distribution soar by nearly 80 percent. A survey taken by the US Census Bureau in August found that 10.5 percent of adults, or 22.3 million people, said they could not afford to adequately feed their families, up from 18 million in March.
Bloomberg recently published a report on hunger in the United States that found that 50 million Americans, about one-sixth of the entire population, will struggle to afford enough to eat this year. This is up by 45 percent year-on-year.
Ranks of long-term jobless soar as US unemployment aid dries up
a day ago
The number of long-term jobless workers in the United States continues to rise with millions of workers being forced to fend for themselves as the US Congress refuses to provide any aid to protect them against hunger, poverty and homelessness.
Last week’s job report from the US Department of Labor showed that a staggering 695,000 workers dropped out of the workforce.
The number of long-term unemployed out of work for 27 weeks or more increased by 781,000 to 2.4 million. These workers have exhausted their 26-week limit on state unemployment benefits, and another five million laid-off workers will reach this limit over the next two months.
At the end of July, Congress allowed the $600-a-week federal supplement to state benefits to expire, reducing weekly income in many cases by two-thirds or more over the last two months.
While Trump promised a $300-a-week Lost Wages Assistance benefit for six weeks, the funds allocated for this totally inadequate program have quickly dried up, with at least nine states announcing they have ended paying the additional benefit.
Congress has shown no interest in restoring any jobless benefits and the issue has hardly rated a mention in the corporate media, let alone by Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The issue of extending jobless benefits was not raised a single time during the debate last week.
Under these conditions, hunger is rising. In August, the Feeding America network food banks distributed an estimated 593 million meals, an increase of 64 percent from a typical pre-pandemic month. Meals on Wheels America, another charity, reported that their food programs were serving an average of 77 percent more meals and 47 percent more high-risk seniors in August than they were on March 1.
An analysis released last week by Feeding America projects a 6 billion to 8 billion meal shortfall over the next 12 months. The total need for charitable food over the next year, Feeding America estimates, will reach 17 billion pounds, more than three times last year’s distribution.
A recent survey taken by the US Census Bureau in August found that 10.5 percent or 22.3 million adults say they cannot afford to adequately feed their families, up from 18 million in March.
This situation is being worsened by a new round of mass layoffs, including from airlines, entertainment companies and aircraft manufacturers, which received billions in CARES Act money and tax cuts. Over the last few days alone, corporations have announced almost 100,000 new layoffs.
Last Thursday, United, American and other major US airlines began laying off 32,000 flight attendants, pilots and other airline workers after the expiration of the temporary prohibition on permanent job cuts which was contained in the CARES Act’s $24 billion bailout of the airlines. On Monday, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said all employees would have to take a 10 percent pay cut by Jan. 1, 2021, to avoid permanent job cuts.
This week Cineworld, the world’s second-biggest cinema chain, is closing its US and United Kingdom theaters, laying off 45,000 workers, including nearly 40,000 at 536 Regal theaters in the US. This follows the announcement by Disney last week that it is laying off 28,000 of its 100,000 employees at its US parks and resorts.
Department store chain JCPenney will close 149 stores and cut 15,000 jobs ahead of the holiday shopping season as part of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy.
Another 280,000 workers lost jobs last month in local and state education, as new austerity measures were imposed even as teachers and students were forced back into unsafe schools.
The American ruling class is seeking to use mass unemployment and the threat of poverty as bludgeons in its drive to herd workers back into unsafe factories and workplaces in order to further enrich the financial oligarchy. This is the policy not only of Trump and the Republicans but the Democrats on the federal, state and local levels. That is why the cutoff of jobless benefits has received bipartisan support.
A record $31.5 trillion hoarded by corporate oligarchs
According to the Wealth-X World Ultra Wealth Report 2018, 255,810 “ultra high net worth” (UHNW) individuals with a minimum $30 million in wealth now collectively own $31.5 trillion, an increase of 16.3 percent between 2016 and 2017.
In other words, a group of oligarchs equal in number to the population of Plano, Texas or Nottingham, England own more than the poorest 80 percent of the world—some 5.6 billion people.
The figures of wealth concentration are hard to fathom:
* In North America, the total number of UHNW individuals rose 9.5 percent to 90,440 and their wealth rose 13.1 percent to $11 trillion.
* In Europe, the UHNW population rose 12.8 percent to 72,570, with a total wealth of $8.8 trillion, up 13.5 percent.
* In Asia, there were 68,970 UHNW individuals in 2017, an 18.5 percent increase from 2016. Their wealth shot up 26.7 percent during this period to $8.4 trillion.
* By 2022, the UHNW population is expected to increase to 360,390 people, whose combined wealth “is projected to rise to $44.3 trillion, implying an additional $12.8 trillion of newly created wealth over the next five years.”
* Those 22.3 million people with a net worth over $1 million own a combined $91.7 trillion, almost triple the combined wealth of the poorest 90 percent of the world’s population.
The Wealth X report makes clear that the rise in wealth concentration is the product of deliberate policies enacted by governments all over the world. It credits loose monetary policy—market liberalization in China, tax reform and corporate deregulation in India, and massive tax cuts for the wealthy in the US—that the report notes were “aimed squarely at providing generous exemptions to corporations and the ultra wealthy.”
In Volume 1 of Capital, Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, wrote: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.”
Under capitalism, the wealth of the super-rich comes from the exploitation of the international working class.
* Half the world lacks access to healthcare and 100 million people are forced into extreme poverty each year due to healthcare expenses (World Health Organization, 2017).
* 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity (Rockefeller Foundation, 2017).
* 2 billion people use a drinking water source that is contaminated with feces (World Health Organization, 2018).
* 8.6 million people die each year from lack of healthcare or poor quality healthcare ( The Lancet, 2018).
* 750 million adults do not know how to read or write (UNESCO, 2017).
* By 2020, 1.6 billion people will lack access to secure, adequate housing (World Resources Institute, 2017).
* 50.5 million children under the age of 5 are “wasting” due to malnutrition (World Bank, 2018).
* 850 million people suffer from “chronic undernourishment” (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2016).
* 4 billion people do not have internet access (UNESCO, 2017).
Even in the most advanced countries of Europe and North America, the working class faces increasingly precarious conditions dominated by declining life expectancy, greater incidences of suicide and drug/alcohol abuse, growing student debt, declining wages and cuts to social programs. In the United States, home to roughly one third of the world’s ultra-wealthy individuals, some 69 percent of people have less than $1,000 in total savings.
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