TYSON HAS LONG BEEN IDENTIFED WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Tyson Foods Faces Boycott After Firing 1,200 Americans, ‘Would Like to Employ’ 42,000 Migrants - AND BIDEN - MAYORKAS - SCHUMER HAVE USHERED OVER THE BORDER 15 MILLION TO PICK FROM.
This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied.
No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the
lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The
roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold
and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the
lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days.
Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy
for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that
civilization holds?
Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842
The jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since
there were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round,
which began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a
figure substantially larger than America’s population.
Go into any corner store in America and you will see workers of every
age and race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current
round, the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion
on lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest
state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.
Powerball players pick six random numbers when they purchase their
tickets, with a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no
winning ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.
The totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries
have been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s
record of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363
million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to
ticket sales.
State-run gambling programs such as Powerball have been promoted by
Democrats and Republicans alike as a solution to state budget
shortfalls, even as the politicians slash taxes on corporations and
wealthy individuals and gut social programs. From the standpoint of
government revenue, lotteries and casinos are nothing more than a
back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the poor in proportion
to the growth of social misery.
The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.
Psychology Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow
when people feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over
their economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very
important to psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.
There is ample reason for American workers to feel they have no
control over their lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com,
more than half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover an
unexpected expense of $500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand
tires.
Some 62 percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21
percent do not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical
emergency or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.
For all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the
real financial state of most American households is far worse than
before the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans
were almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a
recent survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the
decline in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the
housing bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played
major roles.
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12
percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013, according to
the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of consumer finances. A large share
of this decline has taken place during the so-called recovery presided
over by the Obama administration.
In addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more
economically polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the
first time in more than four decades “middle-income households” no
longer constitute the majority of American society. Instead, the
majority of households are either low- or high-income. Pew called its
findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in
American society.
“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today,
commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer
than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the “American
Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly
unrealizable.
Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial
crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two
decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the
lowest it has been since the 1960s.
For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100
million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery
has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery
ticket is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a
constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a
low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence.
The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”
Using the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the
“illusory happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion
is, in fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real
happiness.” It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses
of people to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them
into revolutionary struggles.
Andre Damon
Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses
By
Nick Barrickman
9 January 2016
A new survey put out by the personal finance management site
Bankrate.com on Wednesday found that more than half of Americans could
not weather a sudden financial crisis without having to borrow money
from friends and family or being forced to reduce the amount spent on
other items such as dining out, paying cable or cell phone bills, or
other basic features of a “middle class” lifestyle.
The survey,
conducted last month among a pool of 1,000 Americans in conjunction
with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, found that only
37 percent of those surveyed would be able to pay an emergency expense
of $1,000, such as an emergency room visit or the cost of repairing a
broken down vehicle, out of pocket.
Sixty-three percent of those
surveyed would not be able to cover such a sudden expense without either
cutting down on expenses elsewhere, borrowing or resorting to credit.
The survey found that nearly four in 10 Americans had suffered such a
financial setback in 2015.
“Without an adequate rainy-day fund, we
are all living on a very slippery financial slope,” Gail Cunningham of
the National Foundation for Credit Counseling told Bankrate.com. “The
unexpected, unplanned expense is going to rear its ugly head and usually
at the most inopportune time…Things as small as a flat tire or one trip
to the emergency room can wreck the budgets of those who do not have an
adequate amount in their savings account,” she said.
For
Americans making less than $30,000 per year, only 23 percent would be
able to cover such a sudden expense on their own. This was contrasted by
nearly 60 percent of those making over $75,000 annually who could say
the same. Nine percent making $30,000 or below stated that they did not
know how they would cover such expenses, meaning that they were one
expensive setback away from personal financial ruin.
The poll
comes amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the
living standards of a significant section of the US population, a
component of the growth of social inequality more broadly.
Since
the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent economic “recovery” in
2009, 95 percent of all wealth gains have gone to the top 1 percent in
society. A report released in November by the St. Louis Federal Reserve
showed that Americans’ personal savings in 2015 were half of what the
average was in the early 1980s.
A US Federal Reserve report
released in 2014 found that nearly six in 10 Americans had lost all or
part of their savings due to the financial impact of the 2008 economic
crisis, while a 2015 study by GOBankingrates.com revealed that the
majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings to their name. A
report released the Pew Research firm last month revealed that the
number of middle-income homes as a portion of the population had largely
vanished in the span of a few decades.
The
figures come as the US Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates
for banks and other financial institutions, which will likely lead to
further difficulty for individuals who rely upon credit in order to
finance their costs of living.
The expenses eating away at the
typical individual’s savings read like essential items for living in
modern society. According to Bankrate.com, the largest expense for
one-third of all Americans outside of food and shelter consisted of
utilities such as water, electricity or phone service. For those over
the age of 50, one in five cited medical bills as their largest co
According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.
Obama’s final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats
By Patrick Martin 13 January 2016
The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question.
Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster.
By most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016 than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have been forced into bankruptcy.
According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.
In 27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Obama, however, painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring, “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” He boasted, “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s; an unemployment rate cut in half.”
BLOG: AS OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY SABOTAGE OUR BORDERS, E-VERIFY AND REFUSE TO ENFORCE LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS!
The president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a decent-paying job.
He went on, tellingly, to cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it “just had its best year ever.” This perfectly expresses the utter blindness, not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The “best year ever” was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits.
Real wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obama’s stooges in the United Auto Workers union.
“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Obama concluded. The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.
The president conceded that economic inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as though the policies of his administration—bailouts for Wall Street, budget cuts and wage cuts for workers—had nothing to do with it.
In the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted, by “recklessness on Wall Street,” not a single banker or speculator has been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income since Obama entered the White House.
Obama listed a few other policy “successes,” claiming that “we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector… we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans.” He was referring, however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans Administration.
Obama sought to defend the foreign policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home in the name of fighting “terrorism.”
While he claimed to reject an American role as the world’s policeman, he nonetheless boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”
He continued, “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas.
Obama indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he claimed, “With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons.”
He called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed, “will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt America’s commitment—or mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year…”
Then he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries, “our reach has no limit.”
Obama concluded his speech with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.
In a clear reference to Donald Trump, he argued that “we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us strong.”
Obama was making an argument, not so much that racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role. “When a politician insults Muslims,” he said, “it makes it harder to achieve our goals.”
This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied.
No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the
lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The
roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold
and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the
lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days.
Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy
for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that
civilization holds?
Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842
The jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since
there were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round,
which began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a
figure substantially larger than America’s population.
Go into any corner store in America and you will see workers of every
age and race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current
round, the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion
on lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest
state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.
Powerball players pick six random numbers when they purchase their
tickets, with a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no
winning ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.
The totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries
have been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s
record of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363
million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to
ticket sales.
State-run gambling programs such as Powerball have been promoted by
Democrats and Republicans alike as a solution to state budget
shortfalls, even as the politicians slash taxes on corporations and
wealthy individuals and gut social programs. From the standpoint of
government revenue, lotteries and casinos are nothing more than a
back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the poor in proportion
to the growth of social misery.
The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.
Psychology Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow
when people feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over
their economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very
important to psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.
There is ample reason for American workers to feel they have no
control over their lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com,
more than half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover an
unexpected expense of $500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand
tires.
Some 62 percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21
percent do not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical
emergency or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.
For all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the
real financial state of most American households is far worse than
before the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans
were almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a
recent survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the
decline in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the
housing bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played
major roles.
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12
percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013, according to
the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of consumer finances. A large share
of this decline has taken place during the so-called recovery presided
over by the Obama administration.
In addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more
economically polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the
first time in more than four decades “middle-income households” no
longer constitute the majority of American society. Instead, the
majority of households are either low- or high-income. Pew called its
findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in
American society.
“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today,
commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer
than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the “American
Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly
unrealizable.
Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial
crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two
decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the
lowest it has been since the 1960s.
For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100
million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery
has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery
ticket is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a
constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a
low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence.
The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”
Using the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the
“illusory happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion
is, in fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real
happiness.” It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses
of people to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them
into revolutionary struggles.
Andre Damon
Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses
By
Nick Barrickman
9 January 2016
A new survey put out by the personal finance management site
Bankrate.com on Wednesday found that more than half of Americans could
not weather a sudden financial crisis without having to borrow money
from friends and family or being forced to reduce the amount spent on
other items such as dining out, paying cable or cell phone bills, or
other basic features of a “middle class” lifestyle.
The survey,
conducted last month among a pool of 1,000 Americans in conjunction
with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, found that only
37 percent of those surveyed would be able to pay an emergency expense
of $1,000, such as an emergency room visit or the cost of repairing a
broken down vehicle, out of pocket.
Sixty-three percent of those
surveyed would not be able to cover such a sudden expense without either
cutting down on expenses elsewhere, borrowing or resorting to credit.
The survey found that nearly four in 10 Americans had suffered such a
financial setback in 2015.
“Without an adequate rainy-day fund, we
are all living on a very slippery financial slope,” Gail Cunningham of
the National Foundation for Credit Counseling told Bankrate.com. “The
unexpected, unplanned expense is going to rear its ugly head and usually
at the most inopportune time…Things as small as a flat tire or one trip
to the emergency room can wreck the budgets of those who do not have an
adequate amount in their savings account,” she said.
For
Americans making less than $30,000 per year, only 23 percent would be
able to cover such a sudden expense on their own. This was contrasted by
nearly 60 percent of those making over $75,000 annually who could say
the same. Nine percent making $30,000 or below stated that they did not
know how they would cover such expenses, meaning that they were one
expensive setback away from personal financial ruin.
The poll
comes amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the
living standards of a significant section of the US population, a
component of the growth of social inequality more broadly.
Since
the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent economic “recovery” in
2009, 95 percent of all wealth gains have gone to the top 1 percent in
society. A report released in November by the St. Louis Federal Reserve
showed that Americans’ personal savings in 2015 were half of what the
average was in the early 1980s.
A US Federal Reserve report
released in 2014 found that nearly six in 10 Americans had lost all or
part of their savings due to the financial impact of the 2008 economic
crisis, while a 2015 study by GOBankingrates.com revealed that the
majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings to their name. A
report released the Pew Research firm last month revealed that the
number of middle-income homes as a portion of the population had largely
vanished in the span of a few decades.
The
figures come as the US Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates
for banks and other financial institutions, which will likely lead to
further difficulty for individuals who rely upon credit in order to
finance their costs of living.
The expenses eating away at the
typical individual’s savings read like essential items for living in
modern society. According to Bankrate.com, the largest expense for
one-third of all Americans outside of food and shelter consisted of
utilities such as water, electricity or phone service. For those over
the age of 50, one in five cited medical bills as their largest co
US jobs report: Employment numbers obscure deeper social crisis
By Tom Hall 9 January 2016
Friday’s job figures for December from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was an occasion for praise by business commentators and self-congratulatory statements by Obama administration officials. The economy unexpectedly added 292,000 jobs last month, considerably above analysts’ projections of 211,000 according to a poll of economists by CNNMoney. The official unemployment rate remained at 5.0 percent.
Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, bragged that the report “[marked] the strongest two years of job creation since 1998-2000.” Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez declared in a written statement that “the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record continues… the worst economic crisis in generations is behind us. Despite unprecedented obstruction from Republicans in Congress, the nation is enjoying an historic recovery.”
Notwithstanding its decent headline payroll figure, the report, upon closer examination, reveals a continuation of economic stagnation and low wage growth that are wreaking havoc with tens of millions of American workers, for whom there has been no “recovery” from the 2008 financial crisis. Even on the jobs front, overall payroll growth for 2015 declined roughly 13 percent relative to 2014, from 3.1 million added jobs to 2.7 million.
This stagnation is borne out by the breakdown of employment figures in the report. The service industry, a traditionally low-wage sector, was the biggest driver of last month’s growth, with 231,000 additional jobs. In the professional and business services subcategory, which showed the biggest growth in the service sector, nearly half of the new jobs, 34,000 out of 73,000, were part-time.
Mining and manufacturing jobs continue to stagnate or decline, driven by a deepening slump in demand and fall in commodity prices. While manufacturing showed a modest increase of 8,000 jobs, employment in the durable goods subcategory, which includes heavy machinery and computer products, declined by 6,000 over the month. The mining and logging sector continued its long decline, shedding 8,000 jobs for a total of 129,000 over the entire year.
“Involuntary part-time workers,” or people working part-time because they are unable to find full-time work, remained unchanged at 6 million people. While this represents a decline of 764,000 over the course of 2015, it is still nearly 50 percent higher than 10 years ago.
The low-wage, casualized labor market, the result of a systematic restructuring of the American economy to place the burden of the financial crisis on working people, continues unabated.
Erik Holm, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’ s MoneyBeat blog, noted in a post that for non-management employees, overall year-on-year wage growth was a meager 2 percent, before factoring in inflation. “So for the vast majority of Americans,” Holm wrote, “there’s virtually no appreciable or noticeable wage growth.” He continued: “That shows two things clearly: employers still by and large do not have to pay up to find workers--even with an ostensibly ‘full employment’ landscape--and the big picture for employees still by and large has not changed.”
“That is not the picture of a robust, healthy, growing economy,” Holm concluded. “The headline numbers may look like ‘jobs market full speed ahead,’ but the reality of the wage numbers shows where things actually stand.”
Average hourly earnings actually fell one cent in December.
The 5 percent official unemployment rate, while formally considered close to full unemployment, is widely acknowledged to significantly undercount the real state of joblessness, with the head of the Gallup polling agency going so far as to call it a “Big Lie.” The fall in unemployment numbers is largely driven by a collapsing labor force participation rate, as millions of people, discouraged by the weak job market, have given up looking for work altogether. While this figure rose in December 0.1 percentage points to 62.6 percent, it remains near the lowest levels in almost 40 years.
Because they are not counted as part of the labor force, people discouraged from looking for work are not considered in the official unemployment figures. The Economic Policy Institute, which analyzes the government’s monthly employment figures, estimates that there were 2.9 million such “missing workers” in December 2015. The official unemployment rate would rise to 6.7 percent if these workers were counted as part of the labor force, the think tank noted.
An alternative measure of unemployment tabulated by the BLS, which includes marginally attached workers and involuntary part-time workers, and which is informally dubbed the “real unemployment rate” in the press, stayed constant last month at 9.9 percent, nearly twice the official level.
The end of 2015 and the first week of 2016 saw several high-profile announcements of layoffs by American corporations. Only days after the Christmas holiday, chemical giant DuPont announced it would lay off 1,700 of its 6,100 workers in the state of Delaware, where the company is based. The layoffs are part of a plan to trim the company’s global workforce by 10 percent in advance of an announced $130 billion merger with Dow Chemicals.
The Macy’s department store chain announced plans on Wednesday to slash 4,800 jobs and close 40 US stores in the aftermath of a dismal holiday season for the retail giant. A story by Business Insider, also released on Wednesday, reported that Yahoo plans to lay off 1,000 workers, or 10 percent of its workforce, beginning as early as this month.
Overall figures on the American economy continue to sour amid growing signs of a new global financial downturn. On Monday, JP Morgan Chase halved its forecast for GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2015 from 2 percent to 1 percent, citing weak manufacturing and construction figures.
Placating Americans with Fake Immigration Law Enforcement
How our leaders create fantasy 'solutions' for our immigration-related vulnerabilities.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com
Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.
It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States. . . . The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program.
The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA.
The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.
The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.
Incredibly, the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.
New Obama Executive Action to Shred Immigration Caps
By Sen. Jeff Sessions
The Daily Signal, January 4, 2016
. . .
The number of aliens authorized to work in the United States each year is limited by law, according to the number of foreign work visas and green cards that are statutorily available. Under this breathtaking executive action, those limits set by Congress are waived.
Here is how the scheme works: Under current law, there is a statutory cap on the number of aliens who can receive green cards based on sponsorship from their employers, and thus a cap on the number who can receive the all-purpose work authorization those green cards provide. Under this new rule, the administration can bypass those caps with two easy steps.
First, it would simply approve as many aliens as it wishes to seek green cards in excess of the cap. Then, it would give those workers—and their spouses and children—a renewable all-purpose work permit while they wait for their green cards to become available, nullifying Americans’ statutory protections against job-threatening flows of excess foreign labor. Adding further to the pool of workers, it expands the number of H-1B visas exempt from the annual cap.
. . . http://dailysignal.com/2016/01/04/new-obama-executive-action-to-shred-immigration-caps/
The indicators of a deepening crisis in production sent shock waves through the financial markets because they portend the looming collapse of a vast speculative house of cards built up since the 2008 Wall Street crash, which sits atop a real economy that has never recovered from the Great Recession. The dirty secret of the so-called “recovery” is that it has been dominated by an expansion of the types of parasitic and quasi-criminal activities that triggered the financial crisis and depression in the first place.
Never have the rich increased their wealth so quickly as in America since the financial crash
of 2008. But side by side with the amassing of previously unthinkable private fortunes,
the infrastructure of America is crumbling, education, health care and other social
services are starved of funding, and the living standards of the vast majority of the
population, the working people who produce the wealth, are declining.
The New Year stock sell-off
5 January 2016
The first trading day of 2016 quickly turned into a global financial debacle, with stock markets all over the world plummeting after the Chinese government shut down its major exchanges to prevent a full-scale crash.
The sell-off confirmed the year-end expressions of foreboding by bourgeois commentators over the prospects for world capitalism in the new year. Whether Monday’s market rout is the beginning of an implosion of unsustainable financial bubbles or an anticipatory financial heart attack remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however. It is a symptom of profound and insoluble contradictions that have only intensified since the Wall Street crash more than seven years ago.
The collapse on Chinese markets, with the Shanghai Composite Index closing with a loss of 6.9 percent, was triggered by new data showing that Chinese manufacturing activity fell in December from the already depressed level of the previous month. The December decline marked the tenth consecutive monthly contraction.
The report confirmed that the slowdown in China to its lowest growth rate in a quarter century was likely to worsen in 2016. Given the immense role of the world’s second-largest economy and central manufacturing hub as a magnet for imports, including oil and other industrial commodities as well as manufactured goods, the indication of stagnation spread fears of a further fall in commodity prices and a deepening crisis of commodity-exporting nations from Brazil and Russia to Australia and Canada.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell by more than 3 percent. Germany, a major exporter to China, suffered a 4.3 percent decline on its DAX stock index. The other major European indexes fell by more than 2 percent, and the EURO STOXX 50 index declined by 3.14 percent.
The global market sell-off was compounded by negative economic data from the US. The Institute for Supply Management reported that its index of factory activity fell to 48.2 in December from 48.6 in November. Any reading below 50 denotes contraction. The figure for December was the weakest since June 2009 and marked the first time since the 2008 crash that the US manufacturing sector had suffered two consecutive monthly contractions.
At the same time, the Commerce Department reported that US construction spending fell 0.4 percent in November. The dismal data prompted economists to lower their fourth-quarter 2015 projections for US economic growth to as low as a 1.1 percent annual rate. The figures confirmed that the US, previously cited as the “bright spot” in a world economy dominated by stagnation and slump, is itself in an industrial recession.
The US indexes fell sharply, with the Dow ending the day down nearly 1.6 percent, the S&P 500 down 1.53 percent, and the Nasdaq 2 percent lower.
The indicators of a deepening crisis in production sent shock waves through the financial markets because they portend the looming collapse of a vast speculative house of cards built up since the 2008 Wall Street crash, which sits atop a real economy that has never recovered from the Great Recession. The dirty secret of the so-called “recovery” is that it has been dominated by an expansion of the types of parasitic and quasi-criminal activities that triggered the financial crisis and depression in the first place.
The US and world central banks and all of the major governments responded to the breakdown of capitalism in 2008 by transferring trillions of dollars in public assets to the bankers and hedge fund billionaires, no strings attached. They were free to do with the blood money as they saw fit. Even the feeble and token proposals to rein in CEO pay at bailed-out corporations were blocked by the financial moguls and their bribed politicians.
Untold trillions were pumped into the financial markets to engineer a record rise in stock prices for the benefit of the rich and the super-rich, whose fortunes doubled in the aftermath of the 2008 crash.
At the same time, governments launched brutal attacks on the working class to make it pay for the bankrupting of the state. These attacks—austerity, wage cutting, mass layoffs—bolstered the profit margins of the corporations and further enriched the top 10 percent, and especially the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent.
The corporations used their massive cash hoards not to expand production or create decent-paying jobs, but to find new avenues for speculation, plowing money into the so-called emerging market economies, the booming energy sector, and high-yield, high-risk junk bonds. While 2015 was a year of rising poverty and desperation for the masses, it was a record year for job-destroying and socially destructive activities such as mergers and acquisitions, stock buybacks and dividend increases.
The McKinsey Global Institute last year published a report that gives some idea of the colossal growth of debt in the world economy—a measure of the increase in financial speculation and swindling. It noted that global debt has grown by $57 trillion since 2007, raising the ratio of debt to the world’s gross domestic product by 17 percentage points. China’s total debt has quadrupled, rising from $7 trillion to $28 trillion by mid-2014.
In an article published on January 1, the Wall Street Journal noted that in 2015 “the American corporate landscape was dominated by activist investors, buybacks, currencies and deals”—in other words, by speculation. Meanwhile, the real economy is being starved of productive investment. Capital spending by members of the S&P 500 index fell in the second and third quarters of last year compared to 2014, the first time there have been two consecutive quarterly declines since 2010.
The final weeks of 2015 saw mounting signs that the underlying stagnation and slump in the real economy—marked by plummeting oil and commodity prices, declining global trade and dismal or negative growth rates—is beginning to undermine the mountain of speculative debt. The prices of energy-related junk bonds began to fall sharply, and mutual funds that speculate in them suffered a rush of redemption orders, prompting two such funds to refuse to honor redemption requests from investors.
The social and class significance of the further explosion of financial parasitism is indicated in statistics that document the massive redistribution of wealth from the working class to the bourgeoisie that has taken place.
The chief economist of the World Bank published an article on January 1 pointing to a “remarkable statistical trend” in high and middle-income countries. The article noted: “Total labour income as a percentage of GDP is declining across the board and at rates rarely witnessed. From 1995 to 2015, labour income dropped from 61 percent to 57 percent of GDP in the US; from 66 percent to 54 percent in Australia; from 61 percent to 55 percent in Canada; from 77 percent to 60 percent in Japan; and from 43 percent to 34 percent in Turkey.”
Under conditions of widening wars in the Middle East and military buildups in Europe and Asia, accompanied by police-state measures imposed internally in country after country on the pretext of fighting terrorism, the underlying economic uncertainty as the new year begins intensifies great power tensions and drives the ruling elites further along the road to war and dictatorship.
At the same time, a major contributor to the sense of foreboding and fear of shocks that predominates in ruling class circles as the new year begins, reflected in the volatility on financial markets, is the sense that the coming year will see a growth of working-class opposition and struggle. The year just ended was marked by the initial signs of a new period of class struggle, with strikes and protests multiplying from Europe to China to Latin America and the United States.
In the US, the resistance of autoworkers to the imposition of new pro-company contracts by the auto bosses and the United Auto Workers union, and the turn of thousands of autoworkers to the World Socialist Web Site and the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter for information and political leadership, herald the reemergence of the most powerful detachment of the international working class into mass struggle.
Barry Grey
China Crash: $28 Trillion Debt Load Forces Credit Crunch
But according to analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, things could get a lot worse. They see the Chinese stock market falling by 27% in 2016, and it’s all because of debt.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/the_causes_of_income_inequality.html#ixzz3qSBDYQVs
AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation."
"It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States."
326,000 Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job in November: Why This Remains the Most Important Jobs Chart
By Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com, December 5, 2015
. . .
We are confident that one can make the case that there are considerations on both the labor demand-side (whether US employers have a natural tendency to hire foreign-born workers is open to debate) as well as on the supply-side: it may be easier to obtain wage-equivalent welfare compensation for native-born Americans than for their foreign-born peers, forcing the latter group to be much more engaged and active in finding a wage-paying job.
However, the underlying economics of this trend are largely irrelevant: as the presidential primary race hits a crescendo all that will matter is the soundbite that over the past 8 years, 2.7 million foreign-born Americans have found a job compared to only 747,000 native-born. The result is a combustible mess that will lead to serious fireworks during each and every subsequent GOP primary debate, especially if Trump remains solidly in the lead.
. . .
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-05/326000-native-born-americans-lost-their-job-november-why-remains-most-important-jobs
Placating Americans with Fake Immigration Law Enforcement
How our leaders create fantasy 'solutions' for our immigration-related vulnerabilities.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com, December 4, 2015
. . .
Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.
It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.
. . .
The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program. The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA. The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.
The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.
Incredibly, the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.”
. . .http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261005/placating-americans-fake-immigration-law-michael-cutler
MIDDLE-CLASS.
EQUITY, HIS ILLEGALS HAVE BUILT A TRILLION DOLLAR LA
RAZA WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS…. AND ALL JOBS GO TO
NON-AMERICANS!
2014
By Niles Williamson
19 September 2015
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html
"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."
Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."
Top 1 percent own more than half of world’s wealth
By Patrick Martin
14 October 2015
quickly as in America since the financial crash
of 2008. But side by side with the amassing
of previously unthinkable private fortunes,
the infrastructure of America is crumbling,
education, health care and other social
services are starved of funding, and the living
standards of the vast majority of the
population, the working people who produce
the wealth, are declining.