Recession

The Political Lessons Of The Pandemic

January 4, 2021 Joseph Kishore and David North, WSWS. Strategize! Left Politics, Pandemic, Recession, Socialism

1. As the New Year begins, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the globe. This is a world crisis of vast historical significance. The pandemic is a “trigger event” that manifests in a highly concentrated form the contradictions of the world capitalist system and is unleashing long-suppressed forces of social transformation. 2. The pandemic cannot be described as merely a medical crisis. In the course of the past year, the thoroughly reactionary character of world capitalism has been exposed. The interaction of the drive for profit regardless of social cost, the lust of the oligarchs for obscene levels of personal wealth, and their inhuman indifference to the lives and welfare of the world’s population has created a global social catastrophe.

Harvard Workers Left Out In The Cold

December 30, 2020 Michelle Chen, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Harvard, Recession, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

Harvard University’s campus has been dormant since last spring, and as COVID-19 cases rise through the winter, it’s unclear when normal classes will resume. The administration recently announced that the majority of the university’s staff would continue to work remotely through June 2021. For the janitorial staff, however, work never ended. Roughly 700 janitorial workers have held onto their jobs through the pandemic, maintaining their full union wages, even though in some cases they are working on a reduced schedule. But for hundreds of subcontracted frontline workers, next year may bring a round of layoffs at the worst possible time.

New York To Pass Nation’s Strongest Eviction Ban

December 30, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Create! Eviction, Foreclosure, New York (NY), Recession

Both the state Senate and state Assembly convened remotely Monday for special sessions to pass the legislation, a day after President Donald Trump signed the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill which he had delayed approving for several days. As Common Dreams reported Monday, the president's delay could cost millions of people a full week in unemployment benefits, intensifying fears that families will struggle to make ends meet in the new year. Under New York's Covid-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act, tenants who are struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus pandemic will be able to declare that they're facing a financial hardship due to lost income, increased medical or family care expenses, or inability to find employment due to the crisis.

Congress Passes $900 Billion Mitigation 2.0 Bill

December 23, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Democrats, Recession

As the 2020 year closes, Congress is about to pass a $900B Covid Relief spending bill. But make no mistake. It’s Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal. And it will hardly dent the rapidly slowing US economy this 4th quarter and the increasingly forecasted coming double dip recession early next year. The new spending shouldn’t be confused as a ‘stimulus’ bill. It won’t stimulate the economy much, if at all. A stimulus requires significant net new spending. Most of the deal is just a continuation of past spending levels, and in some notable examples it’s a reduction in spending levels. The same can be said for the companion legislation to keep the US federal government funded.

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.

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