Recession

2020 In Review: Workers Struggle Under The Weight Of The Pandemic

December 22, 2020 Dan DiMaggio and Saurav Sarkar, Labor Notes. Educate! COVID-19, Essential workers, Recession, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers will feel the ramifications of this unprecedented year long into the future. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed 300,000 lives, destroyed millions of jobs, busted gaping holes in public budgets, and magnified the myriad inequalities that have come to define life in the United States. Notwithstanding a few bright spots, the labor movement struggled to find its footing in the biggest workplace health and safety crisis of our lifetimes. The year started with 3.5 percent unemployment—the lowest in a half-century—and hopes that workers might be able to use the tight labor market to recover some of what had been lost over decades of concessions.

Why They’re Denying You Healthcare And Financial Support During A Pandemic

December 21, 2020 Caitlin Johnstone. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Recession

Every single day the western mass media are bashing us in the face with stories about horrifying scary things other countries are doing which we all need to be afraid of, and from which we must turn imploringly to our own kind and beneficent rulers for protection. Today China is controlling your weather. Yesterday the Russians were hacking your mind. The day before it was Kremlin microwave guns. Before that it was Chinese super soldiers. Tomorrow Venezuela will be using communist gamma rays to ruin your performance in bed. And on and on and on and on.

Workers Suffer As US Pandemic Relief Bill Goes Nowhere In Congress

December 18, 2020 Walter Smolarek, Peoples Dispatch. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Recession, Working Class

Not only has the coronavirus pandemic taken a staggering toll in terms of loss of life in the United States but has also caused social and economic dislocation for the working class on a massive scale. The impact of this crisis is likely to last far beyond the distribution of a vaccine. When the pandemic began to spiral out of control in March, Will Harris was one of the millions of retail workers who lost their income. Harris, who worked two part-time jobs, said that as the months of unemployment dragged on, “I couldn’t afford all my groceries when I needed them… I felt bad for spending on anything even if it was absolutely essential,” and he had to start rationing medical treatments like testosterone.

Economic Consequences Of A Second Economic ‘Mitigation’ Bill

December 17, 2020 Jack Rasmus, ZNet. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Recession, Unemployment

As of mid-December 2020 the US economy has begun showing increasing signs of an exceptionally weak 4th quarter, October-December, growth. After having collapsed -10.5% in the March-June 2020 period, followed by a partial ‘rebound’ (not sustained recovery) in the 3rd quarter, July-September 2020, the economy is now slowing rapidly once again. Dismal reports of consumer and especially retail sales in October-November appear driving the slowing growth—in turn driven by rising unemployment claims, a growing number of permanent layoffs by large businesses as the economy structurally changes long term, and, shorter term, by a sharp rise in Covid deaths, infections, and consequent partial shutdown of the services sector of the US economy throughout the US.

Democrats Make Wreck Of Covid-19 Relief Negotiations

December 16, 2020 Matt Taibbi, TK News. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Democrats, Recession

A senior Democratic congressional aide is irate tonight. “The Democrats,” the aide seethed, “have just done the worst negotiating in modern history.” At issue: a pair of new Covid-19 relief bills, just submitted by a bipartisan group of Senators. Republican Senator Susan Collins gushed that a“Christmas Miracle” allowed the two parties came together on the twin bills, which the press describes as totaling $748 billion and $160 billion, respectively. “Bipartisanship and compromise is [sic] alive and well in Washington,” clucked West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. It sure is. With the election over, the Democratic leadership in the space of a few weeks somehow negotiated against themselves...

Mutual-aid Organizing For Food Security Puts Solidarity Over Charity

December 13, 2020 Jade Guthrie, Rabble.ca. Create! COVID-19, Hunger, Mutual Aid, Recession

Since May, Justice for Migrant Workers (Justicia) has delivered over 2,000 boxes of fresh produce to migrant farm workers across the province. Each of the FoodShare food boxes feed two to four people, meaning that thousands of workers have been relying on these deliveries. Co-ordinating weekly food box drop-offs to farms where workers are quarantining as a result of the massive number of COVID-19 outbreaks has become a mainstay of Justicia's work over the past eight months. Justicia's shift toward mutual aid efforts is not unique. We have seen initiatives like these cropping up across Toronto since the outset of the pandemic.

Nineteen Tragic Facts About The COVID-19 Economy

December 11, 2020 Bill Quigley, Popular Resistance. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Human Rights, Recession

87 million. 87 million workers will lose federally mandated COVID sick leave at the end of December unless Congress acts to extend the law. 50 million. 50 million people are now facing hunger at least once a month, including 1 in 4 children. The rate of adults who sometimes or often do not have enough to eat is double in Black and Latino homes, according to the Associated Press. 30 million. 30 million people are facing eviction as of December 31, 2020 when the current Centers for Disease Control moratorium on evictions ends. There has been a 70% increase in the number of people paying their rent by credit card.

On Contact: Global Economic Machine

December 6, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Bangladesh, Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Recession

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Fabian Scheidler about how the global economic machine came to dominate our lives, and with looming social upheavals caused by predatory capitalism, what can be done to blunt its destructive power. Fabian Scheidler is author of The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization, and co-founder of Kontext TV.

Five Key Takeaways From The November Jobs Report

December 6, 2020 Paul Wiseman, AP News. Educate! Bankruptcy, COVID-19, Recession, Unemployment

Washington, DC - Evidence was abundant in the November jobs report that the U.S. economy’s tentative recovery is sputtering as coronavirus cases accelerate and federal aid runs out. Hiring slowed sharply. Hundreds of thousands of people gave up looking for work. The proportion of the unemployed who have been jobless for at least six months rose. All told, the Labor Department said Friday, employers added 245,000 jobs in November — the fewest since April, the fifth straight monthly slowdown and well short of the gain economists had been expecting.

More People In The US Are Paying Rent On Credit Cards

December 2, 2020 Chris Arnold, WBUR. Create! Cancel the Rent, Debt, Evictions, Recession

With their savings running out, many Americans are being forced to use credit cards to pay for bills they can't afford — even their rent. Housing experts and economists say this is a blinking-red warning light that without more relief from Congress, the economy is headed for even more serious trouble. There's been as much as a 70% percent increase from last year in people paying rent on a credit card, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. "If you're putting your rent payments on to a credit card, that shows you're really at risk of eviction," says Shamus Roller, executive director of the nonprofit National Housing Law Project.

Why The Fed Needs Public Banks

December 2, 2020 Ellen Brown, ScheerPost.com. Create! COVID-19, Federal Reserve, Public Banks, Recession

On November 20, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin informed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that he would not extend five of the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) set up last spring to bail out bondholders, and that he wanted the $455 billion in taxpayer money back that the Treasury had sent to the Fed to capitalize these SPVs. The next day, Powell replied that he thought it was too soon – the SPVs still served a purpose – but he agreed to return the funds. Both had good grounds for their moves, but as Wolf Richter wrote on WolfStreet.com, “You’d think something earth-shattering happened based on the media hullabaloo that ensued.”

Mutual Aid Will Help Us Survive The Biden Presidency

November 30, 2020 Dean Spade, ROAR Magazine. Create! Joe Biden, Mutual Aid, Pandemic, Recession

Many people are feeling great relief that Trump has been voted out and are rightly celebrating the efforts so many people have undertaken to make that happen. But even as we celebrate, we must ensure we do not demobilize, hoping that the new administration will take care of our problems. Unfortunately, we can be certain that the Biden/Harris administration will not address the crises and disasters of climate change, worsening wealth concentration and poverty, a deadly for-profit health care system and racist law enforcement.

The Actual Effects Of Enhanced Unemployment Benefits

November 29, 2020 John Miller, Dollars and Sense. Educate! Jobs, Recession, Unemployment

No matter how hard they search, unemployed workers can’t find jobs that don’t exist. The major cause of today’s high unemployment is the lack of jobs, not workers who have stopped searching for work and have left jobs unfilled. By the end of July, there were still 11.1 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than there had been prior to the pandemic in January 2020. Renewing the FPUC supplemental unemployment benefits would boost spending and create jobs. Economist Mark Zandi from Moody’s Analytics estimates that $1 of renewed unemployment benefits would increase economic output by $1.64...

Evictions Have Led To Hundreds Of Thousands Of Additional COVID-19 Cases

November 29, 2020 Annie Nova, CNBC. Educate! COVID-19, Evictions, Pandemic, Recession

Expiring state eviction bans have led to hundreds of thousands of additional coronavirus cases, new research finds, raising alarm about what will happen when the national eviction moratorium lapses next month. During the pandemic, which at one point was estimated it would displace as many as 40 million people, 43 states, plus Washington, D.C., temporarily barred evictions. Many of the moratoriums lasted just 10 weeks, while some states continue to ban the proceedings. The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University...

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