“People can hardly afford to eat”: US inflation continues to hammer workers
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Annual price increases for US consumer goods remain at their highest level in nearly 40 years, according to the latest inflation data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Prices for items in the Consumer Price Index rose 8.5 percent in the 12 months ending in July, down slightly from the 9.1 percent rate reported in June, but still the second-largest yearly increase since December 1981.
Food prices in particular have surged in recent months. The BLS’ overall food index rose 10.9 percent year-over-year in July, while the cost of food at home increased 13.1 percent, the biggest increases since May 1979.
Amid a heat wave which has blanketed much of the US this summer and broken records in a number of regions, electricity costs rose 15.2 percent compared to last year, increasing by 1.9 percent over the last month alone.
The cost of shelter also pushed higher, with rent rising 6.3 percent nationally since 2021, with increases far greater in many major metropolitan areas, forcing large numbers of young people to live with their parents, and threatening others with eviction and homelessness. In California, 1.5 million households are behind on their rent, according to Census Bureau data released in late July.
Although the cost of gasoline, which is more volatile, fell somewhat from June, down 7.7 percent, it remained 44 percent higher than a year ago. The national average price for a gallon of gas is hovering near $4, compared to $3.18 in 2021.
The Biden administration and sections of the corporate media nevertheless seized on the latest data to claim that inflation is easing and that a corner being turned, with Biden misleadingly asserting that the BLS report showed “zero percent inflation in the month of July—zero percent.”
In a two-minute appearance, Biden painted a fantastical picture of a booming economy, but the reality facing masses of workers is one of increasing desperate struggle for daily existence. According to a separate BLS release Wednesday, real average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory employees fell 2.7 percent year-over-year in July.
Rampant inflation and price-gouging by the corporate giants have fueled the growth of working class struggles over the last two years, both in the US and internationally. The trade unions, which have sought to impose company-friendly contracts with sub-inflation raises, have faced a growing rebellion of rank-and-file workers, with workers’ overwhelming rejection of union-backed contracts an increasingly common phenomenon.
“I have not bought chicken in months. Honestly, I can’t afford it”
Workers who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Wednesday consistently described lowered living standards and a scramble to adjust to higher prices, while voicing outrage over the soaring profits being reaped by corporate America.
“I have cut back to twice a month instead of every week grocery shopping,” a veteran worker at the General Motors Wentzville Assembly plant near St. Louis said. “I haven’t been traveling as much as I usually do. We still haven’t got a cost of living raise in over 10 years.” Cost-of-living adjustments (COLA)—almost universally eliminated with the assistance of the pro-corporate trade unions in recent decades—have been demanded with increasing forcefulness by workers in contract struggles over the last two years, provoking nervousness on Wall Street.
A worker at Dana Inc., an auto parts maker, in Pennsylvania said that they still face a high cost of living despite the relative decrease in gas prices. “Things are going down a few pennies here and there, but our wages are still being eaten up.”
In 2021, Dana workers across the US voted by 90 percent to reject a contract offer that included low wage increases and forced them to increase their contributions to health care. Workers organized a rank-and-file committee in order to oppose the sellout agreement being pushed by the unions. Despite the near-unanimous rejection, Dana workers were kept on the job by the United Steel Workers and United Auto Workers bureaucracies.
The Pennsylvania worker explained to the WSWS that second-tier workers at their plant had been promised retroactive pay increases for the month and a half in which they were kept at work after the previous contract had expired, but that they have still received nothing. “Our rep has told us the UAW is adamant about giving us this back pay, but they say we have to wait at least five to six more months before we get a definite answer.”
An auto parts worker in Indianapolis reported to the WSWS: “They say that inflation has eased up, but it’s unnoticeable. I’m still struggling too hard. At the first of the year, a four pack of drumsticks was $3 and change, now it’s $11 and change. I have not bought chicken in months. Honestly, I can’t afford it.
“I’m living on lunch meat and cheese. I can’t afford a decent meal that I cook at home. I used to buy a can of chili for $2 and a box of spaghetti. Now chili is five bucks, and that meal is out of reach. Cabbage is almost too much. People can hardly afford to eat.
“Gas went up. Water went up. When they have to make improvements to the storm drains, the bill you pay for sewage doubles and triples. ASE is the utility company for both water and gas. I am hardly ever home, but my electric bill jumped from $20 a month to 50 some dollars a month.
“The average person cannot go on vacation. Fuel went up. The airlines went up. There is no break for nobody, nowhere. It’s happening everywhere.”
A worker at the Lear Seating auto parts plant in Hammond, Indiana, told the WSWS that the previous contract pushed through by the UAW in 2018—after two massive votes against it by workers—was wholly inadequate to keep their wages up with inflation. “Definitely not enough, for sure. People are picking up any overtime they can get. With all the layoffs people want more secure work.”
As throughout the auto industry, the UAW has worked with Lear to impose a divisive tier system, with so-called “sub-assembly” workers making less than those categorized as “just-in-time.” Workers “have been fighting the union over this,” the worker said, “but they are okay with it.”
“They don’t want us to be able to tread water anymore”
Workers at the grocery chains themselves, facing poverty wages with few benefits, are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. A Kroger worker in Indiana said, “They don’t want us to be able to tread water anymore. Duke Energy is raising everyone’s bill for no reason in my area.”
This year, workers at Kroger have been engaged in a two-front battle against both the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), which keeps workers divided via numerous separate local contracts. At Kroger stores in Indianapolis and more recently in Columbus, Ohio, workers also voted to reject UCFW-backed sellout agreements which would keep them mired in poverty.
“It’s ridiculous,” said another Kroger worker in Indiana about inflation, “especially on things you can’t cut back on much, like groceries. I went to Aldi [a discount grocery chain] a few weeks ago for the first time in ages, and found their prices not that much cheaper. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better as people have less and less to spend on basically anything but the bare necessities, which will then affect jobs overall. I am thinking about asking for extra hours, but it’s hard on me. I hate doing six days and 10 hours, it’s almost too much.”
“The oil companies are raking in the money while the average person can’t get by”
A worker at agricultural equipment giant John Deere in Illinois told the WSWS that the claims that inflation is easing are “ridiculous,” explaining, “The oil companies are raking in the money while the average person can’t get by. It’s all about big corporations and big companies.”
In 2021, workers at Deere carried out a courageous five-week-long strike, twice voting down a UAW-backed contract which failed to meet their demands for major wage increases and the restoration of previous concessions, including retiree health insurance. As at Dana, Deere workers launched a rank-and-file committee in order to break through the information blackout imposed by the UAW.
A retired Deere worker in Iowa described trying to cope with rising prices on a fixed income, saying, “It’s bad. Raises are being lost to inflation. I only drive to town every couple weeks for groceries, supplies. Shop more at discount grocers, eat out less. Made our vacation closer to home. Basic stuff. A grocery cart full at Aldi’s used to cost $50. Now it’s $100.”
KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED IS MADE EASY BY FLOODING AMERICA WITH 'CHEAP' LABOR ILLEGALS!
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Wall Street's RECESSION WARNING: "Big Layoffs are Coming"
One of the leading investors is Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google. He is now an investor who wants to maximize his supply of cheap, controllable, skilled labor. In 2013, he helped form the secretive FWD.us lobby group which consists of wealthy West Coast investors, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
Even as Inflation Cools, Inflation Adjusted Wages Are Still Down From A Year Ago
The easing of inflation in July meant that American workers actually saw average hourly wages rise when adjusted for inflation.
The Consumer Price Index was flat with June while the average hourly and weekly wages climbed 0.5 percent. As a result, real or inflation-adjusted wages rose significantly for the first time this year.
That’s a big improvement over May, when real hourly and weekly wages fell 0.6 percent, and June, when hourly wages fell 0.8 percent and weekly wages fell 0.9 percent.
Compared with a year ago, however, inflation-adjusted wages are still down. The real average hourly wage is down three percent compared with a year ago. The real weekly wage is down 3.6 percent.
The July monthly figure is good news for workers but it may worry Federal Reserve officials. Just as the July jobs figures indicated, the rise in real wages shows demand for labor is red hot. Businesses are likely to try to pass on higher labor costs to prices and increased real wages may translate into increased real demand for goods and services, supporting inflation at a higher level than the Fed would like.
What’s more, the rise in real wages and the economy adding 528,000 workers to payrolls in July was accompanied by a slight decline in the labor force participation rate. This indicates that even plentiful jobs and rising pay are not drawing Americans into the labor force. That could hold back the economy’s ability to grow output, which would add inflationary pressure.
Many economists had been sanguine about a wage-price spiral precisely because wages had not kept up with prices. A lasting decline in real wages creates a downward pressure on inflation, as consumers cut back on spending or trade down to cheaper items. Now the reverse may be getting underway.
Biden’s Handlers Released 324 Unvetted Afghan Evacuees on Terror Watchlist Into the U.S.
It's all going according to plan.
Biden’s catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad enough in itself, diminishing America’s standing in the world and projecting an image of weakness that has encouraged and emboldened enemies of our nation worldwide. The fallout from it, however, could be incalculably worse. A Defense Department (DoD) whistleblower has revealed that 324 of the Afghans whom U.S. forces brought to the United States as the disaster in Afghanistan was unfolding appeared on the department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL), which includes terrorists, and yet were admitted into the country without being vetted. No one who has been watching the spreading dumpster fire that is the Biden administration could possibly be surprised.
Senators Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) have called upon the DoD to investigate. On Thursday, they wrote to DoD Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell about their “concern over new allegations raised by a Department of Defense (DoD) whistleblower. This information may show the Biden Administration’s failure to vet those evacuated from Afghanistan was even worse than the public was led to believe. The following allegations demand an immediate investigation by your office.” There should indeed be an investigation, but in these days of the hyper-politicization of everything and concomitant wokeification of the government bureaucracy, a genuinely illuminating investigation is about as likely to happen as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis getting the Democrat nomination for president in 2024.
Epoch Times reported Friday that “the BEWL identifies individuals whose biometrics have been collected and determined by analysts to be threats or potential threats to national security, including known suspected terrorists.” But instead of stopping those who appeared on this watchlist, the whistleblower contents that “White House and DoD officials instructed agency personnel to ‘cut corners’ and not conduct full fingerprint tests on the evacuees at staging bases in Europe, ‘in order to promote the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan.’”
The whistleblower also charges that “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff were authorized to delete old biometric data at their discretion.” Really, what could possibly go wrong? Hawley and Johnson point out, with admirable understatement, that this is a “troubling development that could threaten national security and public safety.”
Yeah, it could. And as it was all initially unfolding, Joe Biden was doing what he does best: lying. Sensitive to criticism arising from the importation of unvetted Afghans in the U.S., Biden declared in September 2021 that “planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases and transit centers around the world. At these sites where they are landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.” State Department spokesman Ned Price added: “Before anyone who is evacuated from Afghanistan comes to this country, they undergo a rigorous vet. Unless and until they complete that vet they will not be in a position to come to the U.S.”
In reality, however, there appeared to be a concerted effort to bring unvetted Afghans into the United States. At least 82,000 Afghans were brought to the U.S. without being vetted. In October 2021, Senate Republicans noted in a memo, accordingto the Washington Examiner, “senior officials across the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, and Justice described a disastrous screening and vetting process.” Immigration officials accepted uncritically what Afghans said about who they were, without making any effort to check their stories. According to the Examiner, “the large majority of people, approximately 75%, evacuated were not American citizens, green card holders, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders, or applicants for the visa.”
Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) had been given to Afghans who aided U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed that “of the 60,000 Afghans who have entered the U.S., nearly 8,000 are either U.S. citizens or residents, while about 1,800 are SIV holders, having obtained visas after assisting the U.S. military.” That meant that 52,000 of the 60,000 Afghans who had come into the country were not U.S. citizens or SIV holders. In November 2021, Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) stated that only 700 of the 82,000 Afghans now in the U.S. were SIV holders.
The Examiner noted that Biden’s reception of these Afghans “violated long-standing U.S. government policies for handling refugees.” This was a deliberate decision: “Refugees are to be screened and vetted before being admitted to the U.S. through an extensive process that includes multiple interrogations. Rather than follow the protocol, the Biden administration instructed federal law enforcement and military officials handling the evacuations and processing to adhere to less stringent standards.”
Hawley confronted FBI director Christopher Wray about all this Thursday. According to Epoch Times, “Wray wasn’t able to give a clear answer about the FBI’s efforts to track down and interview the 324 Afghan evacuees.” Once again, no one should be surprised. Clearly this is all going the way the Leftist elites want it to go.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a ShillmanFellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 25 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Afghan Migrant Suspected of Killing Four over Islamic Religious Dispute
A Muslim migrant from Afghanistan has been charged in the killings of two other immigrants and is the suspect in yet two more killings, which are thought to be motivated by an Islamic religious dispute.
Muhammad Syed, 51, had been living in Alberqerque, New Mexico for roughly five years before the killings.
He had previously faced multiple domestic violence charges that were ultimately dismissed.
Police have found that Syed, a Sunni Muslim, was motivated at least in part by an “interpersonal conflict,” thought to be related to his daughter’s marriage to a Shiite Muslim.
Three of the four victims all attended the Islamic Center of New Mexico, a Shiite Mosque.
President of the Mosque Ahmad Assed said that he was aware that the religious dispute might have been a motivating factor in the killings but noted that one of the four victims was a Sunni Muslim.
The New York Times reported that “police found several guns at Mr. Syed’s home and one in the car he was driving, and believed two of the weapons were connected to the killings of one man on July 26 and another on Aug. 1.”
Tahir Gauba, a director of the Mosque, said that “the last two weeks have been nothing but nightmares,” commenting on the arrest of the suspect when he commented “Tonight the Muslim community will sleep in peace.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com
U.S. Labor Productivity Suffers Biggest Crash Ever Recorded, Labor Costs Soar Most Since 1982
Productivity crashed over the past year as the economy added workers at a rapid clip even as economic output grew slowly, data from the Department of Labor showed on Tuesday.
The productivity of the business sector fell 2.5 percent compared with a year ago, the largest decline ever recorded in data going back to the first quarter of 1948, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. The decline comes from a 1.5 increase in economic output and a 4.1 percent increase in total hours worked.
Productivity declined at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter. That’s a less rapid decline than the 7.6 percent contraction recorded in the first three months of the year but slightly below economist expectations for a 4.5 percent decline.
The economic output of the business sector fell 2.1 percent and hours worked increased 2.6 percent.
The data does not include work done on U.S. farms or in the public sector.
nit labor costs jumped 10.8 percent in the second quarter of 2022, reflecting a 5.7-percent increase in hourly compensation and a 4.6-percent decrease in productivity. Economists had forecast labor costs to be up by 9.3 percent. In the first quarter, unit labor costs were up 12.6 percent.
Unit labor costs increased 9.5 percent over the last four quarters, the largest four-quarter increase in this measure since a 10.6-percent increase in the first quarter of 1982. Unit labor costs are the ratio of hourly compensation to labor productivity. Increases in hourly compensation tend to increase unit labor costs and increases in productivity tend to reduce them.
The decline in productivity came from the services sector, which is still rebounding from the pandemic. Manufacturing sector labor productivity increased 5.5 percent in the second quarter of 2022, with a 4.3 percent increase in output and a 1.1 percent decline in hours worked. In the durable manufacturing sector—which produces goods meant to last three years or more—productivity increased 6.1 percent, with a 6.0-percent increase in output and a 0.1-percent decrease in hours worked. Nondurable manufacturing sector productivity increased 5.4 percent, as
output increased 2.6 percent and hours decreased 2.6 percent. Total manufacturing sector productivity increased 0.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
The manufacturing sector’s output is now 3.6 percent above its prepandemic level. Hours worked in manufacturing remain 1.3 percent below the fourth-quarter 2019 level. The manufacturing labor productivity index is 4.9 percent higher than in the fourth-quarter 2019, corresponding to an annual labor productivity growth rate of 1.9 percent during that period.
Unit labor costs in the total manufacturing sector decreased 0.5 percent in the April through June period. Hourly compensation rose 4.9 percent but productivity rose 5.5 percent. Compared with 12 months earlier, unit labor costs were up 4.4 percent.
Job Openings Plunge as Employers Pull Back From Hiring
The number of job openings in the United States fell sharply in June as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, gas prices hit record highs, inflation soared, and growth in consumer spending slowed.
There were 10.7 million postings for job openings on the last business day in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday, down from an upwardly revised 11.3 million a month earlier.
Economists had been expecting 11.1 million jobs in the June report on the government’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS. The sharper than expected decline indicates that demand for labor has plunged faster than economists expected.
The Federal Reserve has been trying to cool off the labor market by raising interest rates. In mid-June, the Fed hiked its interest rate target by 0.75 basis points, the largest increase since 1994. Tighter financial conditions can slow business expansion, lowering the demand for workers. Fed chairman Jerome Powell has said he would welcome a decline in job vacancies as a sign that the Fed’s efforts to tame inflation are working.
Gallup Shows Rising Opposition to Immigration
Seven-out-of-ten Republicans favor reduced illegal and legal immigration, and GOP voters are evenly split over whether immigration is good or bad for the nation, according to a new Gallup poll.
“Republicans’ Desire for Less Immigration Has Surged Since 2020 … The mounting desire for decreased immigration in recent years has been driven mainly by Republicans, whose preference for reducing immigration is [at 69 percent,] up 21 points since June 2020, when 48% expressed this,” Gallup reported on August 8.
Opposition to migration has nudged up among Democrats and independents, said the survey, which showed “a five-point increase among independents, to 33%, and a four-point increase among Democrats, to 17%.”
The GOP’s growing skepticism about migration reflects the growing polarization since 2o12 when a growing share of “woke” Democrats began to embrace migration. Gallup reported:
In 2008, at the end of the George W. Bush administration, 46% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats wanted immigration decreased — a seven-percentage-point difference. By 2009, that gap had widened to 17 points, and it has since stretched to the current 52 points.
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