#working people

[viagginterstellari]

Rice terraces - Dongchuan County, 2019

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bagley

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 14, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 15, 2024

The July report for consumer prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which came out today, showed that prices rose less than 3% in the previous twelve months. Core inflation has fallen to its lowest rate since April 2021. For well over a year, wages have grown faster than inflation.

President Joe Biden cheered the news but added in a statement, “Prices are still too high. Large corporations are sitting on record profits and not doing enough to lower prices. That’s why we are taking on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices. We’re cutting red tape to build more homes while taking on corporate landlords that unfairly increase rent. And we’re taking on price gouging and junk fees to lower everyday costs from groceries to air travel.” 

When a reporter asked Biden if the U.S. has beaten inflation, Biden answered: “Yes, Yes, Yes. I told you we were going to have a soft landing…. My policies are working. Start writing that way.” 

Just yesterday, the administration announced $100 million worth of investments in new housing in the form of grants to state and local governments to spur the production of new housing. Kriston Capps of Bloomberg reports that “more housing units are under construction now than at any point in half a century—some 60,000 multifamily units were completed in June alone—and rents are stabilizing in some areas as a result.” 

Single-family home construction is slower, and with Senate Republicans having blocked a $78 billion tax deal that would support housing tax credits that promote the construction of housing, the White House is finding other ways to spur housing construction. 

On Monday the White House continued its attempt to protect the interests of consumers after years in which they lost ground. Continuing to combat junk fees, it proposed rules to fight back against “all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life.” 

Companies deliberately design processes to be burdensome in order to deter people from getting a refund or a rebate, or canceling a membership or a subscription. Those frustrations waste money and time, the administration said, and after listing some of its own proposals for making it easier to navigate ending subscriptions or activating insurance coverage, it invited Americans to submit their own on a public portal. 

In a speech on Friday in North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to take on the issue of price gouging by large corporations. Researchers for U.K. think tanks Institute for Public Policy Research and Common Wealth found in late 2023 that profiteering, or “greedflation,” “significantly” boosted prices, leading to increases of 30% or more in corporate profits. “Excessive profits were even larger in the US, where many important sections of the economy are dominated by a few powerful companies,” wrote Phillip Inman of The Guardian. 

Responding to today’s news that inflation is coming down, the stock market ticked up in expectation that the Fed will now be more likely to cut interest rates in September. 

The White House took notice today of the fact that applications for small businesses continue to boom across the country, with 19 million new business applications since Vice President Harris and President Biden took office, an annual growth rate 90% higher than prepandemic averages. The White House also noted that congressional Republicans are trying to cut the Small Business Administration and to cut taxes for big corporations.

Politico greeted today’s economic news with a headline saying, “Inflation is easing. Now, Harris has an even bigger problem with the economy.” And the New York Times reported that in a speech in North Carolina, “Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Details,” adding that she is expected to tweak Biden administration themes “in a bid to turn the Democratic economic agenda into an asset.”

The United States economy under Biden and Harris has been the strongest in the world, and now that inflation seems to be under control as well, Harris needs to turn that record “into an asset”? Political journalist James Fallows wrote: “Now they are all just trolling us.”

The Biden-Harris administration has changed the orientation of the United States government from relying on markets to order society and protecting the interests of wealthy Americans in the expectation that they would invest in the economy more efficiently than they could if the government interfered by protecting workers and consumers. Biden and Harris, along with the cabinet officers and staff of the executive branch, revived an older ideology calling for the government to promote the interests of the American people as a whole. This means regulating business and providing government services and oversight to make sure no interest can run the table. 

What the two different worldviews look like was on display earlier this month, when Republicans and a few Democrats in the Senate killed a bipartisan expansion of the child tax credit, a tax break for parents with dependent children. A hike in that credit during the pandemic cut child poverty dramatically, only for that rate to bounce back when the pandemic relief expired and dropped five million U.S. children back into poverty in 2022. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the change “underscores the fact that the number of children living in poverty is a policy choice.”

On January 31, 2024, the House passed an expansion of the child tax credit that was smaller than the one in place during the pandemic, and Republican vice presidential hopeful Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who has been criticized for comments about “childless cat ladies,” seemed to support the measure when he said, “If you’re raising children in this country, we should make it easier, not harder. And unfortunately it’s way too expensive and way too difficult.” He then falsely accused Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris of calling for ending the child tax credit (she has actually called for expanding it).  

But Vance missed the vote, and before it, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told colleagues that passing the bill would “give Harris a win before the election.” According to Chabeli Carranzana of The 19th, Tillis “printed out fake checks made out to ‘millions of American voters’ with the memo: ‘Don’t forget to vote for Kamala!’”  

The two different worldviews were also on display Monday night when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump complimented X owner Elon Musk for firing workers who threatened to strike. The right to strike is protected under federal labor law, and the Biden-Harris administration has stood firmly for workers’ rights. 

On Tuesday the United Auto Workers union filed charges against Trump and Musk with the National Labor Relations Board for threatening and intimidating workers. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” said UAW president Shawn Fain. 

Tonight, Trump gave a speech in Asheville, North Carolina, that was supposed to be about the economy. Before he could appear, Trump had to pay the city $82,247.60 in advance, with city officials apparently concerned about the candidate’s habit of skipping out on costs associated with his rallies. Once on stage, he tossed economic issues overboard and concentrated on personal attacks on Biden and Harris, along with stream-of-consciousness musings on tampons and socialism. Apparently speaking of his campaign aides, he said: They wanted to do a speech on the economy. They say it’s the most important subject. I’m not sure it is.”

The era of unfettered markets and the concentration of wealth may be coming to an end. In late July, the finance leaders of the Group of 20 (G20), a forum of the world’s major economies, agreed to cooperate on fair taxation of  "ultra-high-net-worth individuals,” although they did not agree as to whichinternational body should lead. 

But yesterday, Joe Perticone of The Bulwark noted that MAGA Republicans appear to have figured out a way to use the struggle over the nation’s economic ideology to elect Trump. 

The House recessed in late July having failed to pass a single one of the 12 appropriations bills the government needs to stay in operation because, although the appropriations bills are traditionally kept “clean” of anything extraneous, extremist members of the House Freedom Caucus insist on making extreme cuts and adding their culture war items to the bills. Congress doesn’t reconvene until early September, and the new fiscal year starts on October 1, leaving the House very little time to pass the necessary bills.

Yesterday, members of the House Freedom Caucus called for Republicans to return to Washington, D.C., to pass the bills “to cut spending and advance our policy priorities.” If they can’t pass the bills—and they failed all spring—the extremists want a short-term fix just into “President Trump’s second term.” But they also want the fix to include the SAVE Act, “as called for by President Trump—to prevent noncitizens from voting [and] to preserve free and fair elections in light of the millions of illegal aliens imported by the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years.” 

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. As Perticone notes, Trump’s own 2017 commission to find evidence that undocumented immigrants voted in 2016 disbanded without finding any, and another audit, led by Georgia Republicans before the 2022 midterms, found not a single successful attempt of noncitizens to vote in the previous five years. 

Perticone reports that the measure is designed to suppress legitimate Democratic voting and, if Trump still loses, by claiming that Trump lost, again, because the election was stolen by illegal voters.

Trump continues to insist that Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket was a “coup,” partly because he wants to face off against Biden, rather than Harris. But he also is priming his supporters to believe that those Americans who want the government to work for them rather than the very wealthy are illegitimate.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[eaglesnick]

“To put political power in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the pillars of national life.” – Henry George

The underlying cause of the current civil unrest on British streets can be summed up in one word – POVERTY.

Poverty and inequality in Britain has been rising since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. In an article in The English Historical Review titled, ‘Poverty, Inequality Statistics and Knowledge Politics Under Thatcher', 08/04/22, the author argues:

“Under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, economic inequality and poverty in the United Kingdom rose dramatically to high levels that have remained one of the lasting legacies of Thatcherism, with far-reaching implications for social cohesion and political culture in Britain.”

Tony Blair, a man who embraced Thatcher’s neo-liberal free-market philosophy claimed that while he was prime minister New Labour

 “...made the UK more equal, more fair and more socially mobile”  (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 14/07/2019)

This is not true for the population as a whole. It is true that more was spent on public services, and on pensioners and those poorer working age adults with dependent children, both groups seeing their economic position improve. However:

“By contrast, the incomes of poorer working-age adults without dependent children - the major demographic group not emphasised by Labour as a priority - changed very little over the period. As a result they fell behind the rest of the population and relative poverty levels rose.( Institute For Fiscal Studies: Labours Record on poverty and inequality’, 06/06/2013)

Not only that, but income inequality also continued to rise under Blair as the already wealthy saw ’their incomes increase very substantially.’ (ibid)

We all know that the last 14 years of Tory government have only made matters worse: homelessness up; NHS waiting lists up; income inequality up; public services starved of cash; benefits cut; rents up, mortgages up. I could go on

Ordinary working people are suffering a cost of living crisis. The already poor have been pushed over the brink, especially in the North where the promised “levelling up” was just an empty election slogan to get Boris Johnson elected to power. Describing the neglected North one commentator said:

“Other countries have poor bits. Britain has a poor half”. (The Economist, ‘Why Britain is more geographically unequal than any  other rich country’ , 30/06/20

Poverty led to the UK Food Riots of 1766. Poverty led to the French revolution in 1789. The Swing Riots, caused by rural poverty swept southern England in 1830. Poverty led to the Russian Revolution in 1917.  Poll Tax riots hit the streets of Britain in 1990 and a report on the London riots of 2011 blamed “deprivation".

The point is, poverty causes feelings of hopelessness, abandonment, anger and resentment.  Sometimes the victims of poverty correctly identify the people or class responsible for their plight, sometimes they don’t. The poverty and inequality experienced in  Britain today is not directly the fault of immigrants. It is the result of deliberate policies by previous Conservative and Labour governments, but mass immigration does exacerbate already existing conditions of inequality and poverty.

There are not enough houses, the health system cannot cope with demand, there are not enough teachers or schools, and unemployment is rising, as is the day-to-day cost of living, while the already wealthy become richer still.

The far-right channel the anger that ordinary working people justifiably feel about this situation towards an easily identifiable target – immigrants and the children of immigrants, especially non-whites.

The most obvious example of this cynical political strategy in recent history is Hitler’s rise to power in Germany during the economic crisis of the early 1930’s, which saw runaway inflation, and a cost-of-living crisis. Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats, playing on existing prejudices and turning them into hatred, not only of Jews but of homosexuals, gypsies, black people, those with disabilities, Poles and even some Christian groups.

Our fathers and grandfathers fought against such racial tyranny and we should do the same but we will not be successful in that fight until our governments subscribe to the goal of a fairer and more equal society, a society where poverty is falling rather than rising.

There is a conversation to be had about acceptable immigration levels in relation to the economy and social cohesion, but that cannot be conducted in isolation to the need to raise the general standard of living for ALL our citizens and not just the few at the top. Martin Lewis warned politicians of this in 2022.

“We need to keep people fed. We need to keep them warm. If we get this wrong right now, then we get to the point where we start to risk civil unrest. When breadwinners cannot provide, anger brews and civil unrest brews – and I do not think we are very far off,”  (independent: 10/04/22)

No one listened and now that day has arrived.

[nando161mando]

Women, especially mothers, are some of the hardest working people who don't get paid

[sofiaflorina2021]

Happy International Workers' Day 2024

Happy International Workers' Day, 1 May, 2024! Workers of the world, unite! ☭☭☭

[loker001]

[eruditetyro]

good morning let’s hear it for Mildly Cool Outside a round of applause for Mildly Cool Outside

[viagginterstellari]

Market - Tashkent, 2022

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

3000 men who build the Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC pose for a photo near the end of constructional work on august 1964.

[This is NYC]

* * * *

“All people who work with their hands are party invisible, and the more important the work they do, the more invisible they are.”

― George Orwell, Essays

[eaglesnick]

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” (Andre Malraux)

When Keir Starmer was campaigning for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2020 he made ten pledges. Promising to,  “advance the interests of the people our party was created to serve…based on the moral case for socialism”, his first pledge was:

“ Economic justice

Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.”

Nothing remotely radical about this, increasing taxes for top earners and corporations is standard Labour party policy, and cutting down on tax avoidance is just common sense. Tory Britain, after all, is one of the few countries in the world to encourage corporate tax avoidance.

“The UK is by far the world’s biggest enabler of corporate tax dodging, helping funnel hundreds of billions of dollars away from state coffers, according to an international investigation.

"Of the top 10 countries allowing multinationals to avoid paying billions in tax on their profits, four are British overseas territories.”  (Independent: 28/05/19)

In order to rescue our cash-starved, failing public services  - the NHS, education, social care, etc - taxes have to be increased, and it is only fair that corporations and the wealthy, many of whom have been avoiding paying tax for years, contribute their fair share.  We all know that in Britain work is taxed while tax relief is given to those on unearned income: tax on earned income is twice as much as tax paid on unearned income.

Despite this Starmer has now abandoned much of his first pledge. There is to be limited economic justice only.  Rachel Reeves, Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor, now tells us there are "no plans” to increase income tax for the rich and there and "no plans” to increase capital gains tax.

According to Reeves, it is Labour and not the Conservatives, who are now the party of business.

“Labour is now ‘pro-business', vows Rachel Reeves." (Financial Times: 19/01/22)

 Keir Starmer’s pledge to look after  "the interests of the people our party was created to serve” has now been abandoned and replaced by  the interests of big business.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm the leaders of the downtrodden animals are the pigs who lead a revolution against their human exploiters. Over time the pigs become corrupt and betray the animals they promised to liberate, making deals with the very men who treated them so unfairly.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

I think the same can be said of Keir Starmer: he is man who is becoming more Tory than the Tories themselves, and when we compare his economic policies with those of the Conservative Party it is impossible to say which is which.

[anartificialsatellite]

The older I get the more I admire people who are earnestly, genuinely into whatever their thing is. I know it sounds like an annoying cliche but unless you're being cruel or hurtful there is really no need to be normal about things. The dude with the bad fake accent at the renaissance faire is having the time of his life. The people having photoshoots with their fashion dolls are loving it. The old lady with a yard unreasonably full of tacky ass lawn ornaments is having a blast, HOA be damned.

Don't waste your time being too cool to have fun, y'know?

[sofiaflorina2021]

Happy International Workers' Day 2023

Happy International Workers' Day, 1 May, 2023! Workers of the world, unite! ☭☭☭

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[ionomycin]

Grief

ref photo by @jawsstone

[littlelightfish]

Funny things I found out playing with language setting in Netflix while looking episode 15:

Chilchuck's scream sounds HAUNTED in brazilian portuguese. Give it a try if you can.

(You can hear it here)

In spanish dub, Senshi says: "tocó mis senos de hombre", which means "he touched my man boobs" in Spanish. And I think that's the best dub line one so far.