American Workers are Earning Less
The Christian Science Monitor reported today that workers' wages have dropped 2.3% in the last year, after adjusting for inflation. This represents an acceleration of a trend that has been taking place over the last four years.
This is the reality of the American economy, and it is interesting to contrast this bit of reality with a clueless article last week from Bloomberg, which stated:
When capitalist economics focuses on large scale statistic like GDP or the unemployment rate, it fails to look at the reality of everyday workers lives. It all depends on which statistics you choose to look at, and if you turn a blind eye to certain kinds of statistics, it is easy to forget what is really going on. The unemployment rate doesn't say anything about the quality or kinds of jobs that people have, or how much these jobs pay. It used to be that the largest employer in the United States was General Motors. Now it is Wal-Mart. What does this tell us about the direction that our economy is headed?
Nor do average statistics tell anything about the distribution of incomes. If the overall economy is growing, but at the same time it is putting less money into workers' pockets, then it must be putting even more money into someone else's pockets--and who could that be, but the capitalists ruling class? Without a class analysis of what is happening in the American economic system, any attempt at understanding the whys and wherefores of the economic system are doomed to failure.
It is no surprise to anyone, except for a select group of ivory tower economists and George Bush apologists, that Americans are dissatisfied with the economic for good reason. The next question is, of course, what are we going to do about it? Clearly, the Democratic Party does not offer a solution to the problem--the Democrats run screaming from the very idea of class warfare. The problem is that class warfare is a reality in American society, whether the Democrats want to acknowledge it or not. The war is being waged every day, by capitalism against ordinary working people. And this is the reality of the American economic system.
The solution is to address this fundamental, systemic problem that exists in our society. This can only be accomplished by transferring the management of society's resources to the democratic management by workers, communities, consumers, and neighborhoods. In other words, the solution is socialism.
This is the reality of the American economy, and it is interesting to contrast this bit of reality with a clueless article last week from Bloomberg, which stated:
The U.S. economy hasn't grown so fast for so long in almost 20 years. Unemployment is near a four-year low. Home ownership is at a record high.The above quote by Mr. Valliere illustrates just how much macroeconomic statistics can sometimes be divorced from the real lives of people. The simple fact that seems to escape some economic and political analysts is that if people are making less money than they were before, then the economy is not doing well for them. Contrary to Mr. Valliere's comment, there is no disconnect between the statistics and the opinions. And the reality is that people are correct in their assessment that the economy is getting worse.
Yet most Americans say President George W. Bush is doing a bad job handling the economy. In an Oct. 24-26 Gallup Organization poll, 71 percent said the economy was ``only fair'' or ``poor,'' and 66 percent said it was getting worse.
``It's the damnedest thing; it's got to be particularly frustrating for the people in the Bush administration,'' said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Stanford Washington Research Group Inc. in Washington. ``There does seem to be a disconnect between the statistics and the opinions.''
When capitalist economics focuses on large scale statistic like GDP or the unemployment rate, it fails to look at the reality of everyday workers lives. It all depends on which statistics you choose to look at, and if you turn a blind eye to certain kinds of statistics, it is easy to forget what is really going on. The unemployment rate doesn't say anything about the quality or kinds of jobs that people have, or how much these jobs pay. It used to be that the largest employer in the United States was General Motors. Now it is Wal-Mart. What does this tell us about the direction that our economy is headed?
Nor do average statistics tell anything about the distribution of incomes. If the overall economy is growing, but at the same time it is putting less money into workers' pockets, then it must be putting even more money into someone else's pockets--and who could that be, but the capitalists ruling class? Without a class analysis of what is happening in the American economic system, any attempt at understanding the whys and wherefores of the economic system are doomed to failure.
It is no surprise to anyone, except for a select group of ivory tower economists and George Bush apologists, that Americans are dissatisfied with the economic for good reason. The next question is, of course, what are we going to do about it? Clearly, the Democratic Party does not offer a solution to the problem--the Democrats run screaming from the very idea of class warfare. The problem is that class warfare is a reality in American society, whether the Democrats want to acknowledge it or not. The war is being waged every day, by capitalism against ordinary working people. And this is the reality of the American economic system.
The solution is to address this fundamental, systemic problem that exists in our society. This can only be accomplished by transferring the management of society's resources to the democratic management by workers, communities, consumers, and neighborhoods. In other words, the solution is socialism.
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