Recession

Pandemic Capitalism: Pervasive Inequality Is A Chosen Catastrophe

July 8, 2020 By Chris Oestereich, Open Democracy. Create! Capitalism, COVID-19, Inequality, Recession

The current flavor of ‘no holds barred’ capitalism sits at this precipice. For years, it has extracted everything within its reach. It has exploited our natural resources and damaged our ecosystems. It has claimed our time and effort, and even our hopes and dreams. All these things have been treated as resources to be mined for a system that’s systematically designed to benefit the few. The main idea underpinning the current version of capitalism is blindingly simple: you only have to remember one thing - that your job is to maximize profits. And you only have to accept one lie - that in doing so, you benefit the collective. That might be tough to swallow, but there’s a good trick involved: buying in uncritically allows you to believe that your self-interest is benevolent. That so many people are willing to do so is captured by Upton Sinclair’s famous quip, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Today’s Revolution Includes Kale, Medical Care And Help With Rent

July 8, 2020 Rinku Sen, ZocaloPublicSquare.org. Organize! COVID-19, Mutual Aid, Pandemic, Recession

In recent months, members of progressive direct-action organizations have developed new systems for checking on their neighbors, dropping off food and medicine, providing protective personal equipment to incarcerated family members, and giving cash to those suddenly unemployed to meet immediate rent, food, and medical needs. At the same time, they’re continuing to press for workers’ rights and proper health care during the pandemic, as well as ensure access to federal stimulus money for individuals and small minority-owned businesses. In so doing, these organizations are harkening back to their roots: people creating social ties by helping each other out, and those ties fueling collective fights for new systems and policies.

United States: Record 47.2% Of Working-Age Without Jobs

July 7, 2020 Shannon Jones, WSWS. Educate! Poverty, Recession, Unemployment, United States

According to newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, 47.2 percent of working-age Americans were without work in May, the highest level recorded since the end of World War II. The numbers are based on the BLS employment-population ratio, which states the proportion of the total labor force who are actually working. It is a more accurate measure of joblessness than the monthly unemployment report, which counts only those actively seeking work. At the end of May the employment-population ratio stood at 52.8 percent; it stood at 61.2 percent at the start of the year. The employment-population ratio reached a postwar high of nearly 65 percent in 2000.

Shell: Latest Oil Company To Do A Belly Flop

July 3, 2020 Brian Kahn, Gizmodo. Educate! climate crisis, Fossil Fuels, Green New Deal, Recession, shell

We’re halfway through 2020, and I think we can all safely say it’s been a pretty terrible year. There’s been so much terrible stuff in the past two months alone, I can’t even remember the bad stuff that happened in January. But I’m sure it sucked. So I’ll take minor bits of good news where I can get it. And the latest is Shell writing down $22 billion on its balance sheets, making it the latest oil company to acknowledge that things are probably not going back to the way they were. The company announced it expected the dip in value to be driven by both its oil and gas sides of the business on Tuesday. The problem, for Shell and other fossil fuel companies big and small, is that the pandemic has cratered demand. The price of oil dipped into negative territory for a hot second in April, and the fallout has continued.

COVID19 Brings American Decline Out In The Open

July 1, 2020 Noah Smith, Bloomberg. Educate! Austerity, COVID-19, Infrastructure, Recession

The U.S.’s decline started with little things that people got used to. Americans drove past empty construction sites and didn’t even think about why the workers weren’t working, then wondered why roads and buildings took so long to finish. They got used to avoiding hospitals because of the unpredictable and enormous bills they’d receive. They paid 6% real-estate commissions, never realizing that Australians were paying 2%. They grumbled about high taxes and high health-insurance premiums and potholed roads, but rarely imagined what it would be like to live in a system that worked better. When writers speak of American decline, they’re usually talking about international power -- the rise of China and the waning of U.S. hegemony and moral authority.

Black Workers Protest Union-Busting Boston Gentrifier

July 1, 2020 Boston Bureau, Workers World. Resist! Black Working Class, Boston, Gentrification, Recession

A June 16 action for eight laid-off workers — organized just four days after the announcement they had been fired — drew about 100 people. They were protesting at their place of work, College Bound Dorchester/Boston Uncornered, on a quiet residential street on Tuesday morning. With these latest layoffs, CEO Mark Culliton targeted one-third of the remaining youth services employees working for his company, College Bound, after workers declared their intention to unionize as Uncornered United-Service Employees (SEIU) Local 888 on June 2. College Bound is a “further education” preparation program, while Boston Uncornered hires neighborhood leaders impacted by violence to be mentors in the program. The company website advertises the programs as “opportunities to turn away from the ‘street corners’ for good.” The UU mentors are Black and Brown neighborhood leaders who have demonstrated social influence and skill at developing young people by drawing on their own challenges and experiences. These workers are demanding that Culliton recognize the union and that he reinstate those illegally fired.

The 2020 Elections: The Struggle Is For Power Not Reform

June 30, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! 2020 Elections, Democracy, Recession, US Imperialism

The great African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, reminded us that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution. His reminder was not a call for abstract theorizing, quite the contrary. What he meant was that one cannot advance in practice unless that practice is guided by the most advanced understanding of the material and ideological conditions that revolutionary forces face. Over the next two days, we will ground ourselves in our particular realities as they relate to our strategic and tactical engagement with the bourgeois electoral system in the United States. Let’s begin: The ongoing and current capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression.

People’s Strike: An Open Letter To All Forces Fighting For Our Lives

June 27, 2020 PeoplesStrike.org. Strategize! COVID-19, General Strike, Recession, Worker Rights

The “normal” world roiled by this pandemic is deeply unequal, inequitable, exploitative, extractive, and repressive. It is deeply fractured around capitalist colonialism, racial oppression, gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion. It is this real world dystopia that has led to the needless death of more than 115,000 people in the United States of COVID-19, with at least 25,00 new infections daily. The vast majority of the infected and dead are Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. In the midst of the pandemic, it is this dystopian world that right-wing Republicans and neoliberal Democrats are determined to force-march us all back into against our will. Rather than following the proven best public health practices and developing a scientific, medically determined response to the pandemic, they are putting profits over people in order to save the capitalist system.

How Racism Is An Essential Tool For Maintaining The Capitalist Order

June 26, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Economy for All. Educate! Capitalism, KKK, Racism, Recession, Working Class

Capitalism’s cyclical crises could potentially turn their victims against it and make them receptive to the system’s critics. This would more likely happen if everyone in the society were roughly equally vulnerable to cyclical downturns. Most employees would then rightly worry that their jobs would be lost in the next crash. They would periodically face income losses, interrupted educations, lost homes, and so on. Whatever relief employees felt if neighbors, rather than themselves, got fired, they would know that it might well be their turn in the next cycle. The losses, insecurities, and anxieties produced by such a capitalism would long ago have turned employees against it and provoked transition to a different system. U.S. capitalism solved its instability problem by making cyclical downturns afflict chiefly a minority subpart of the whole working class.

The Pandemic Of Hunger

June 26, 2020 Frei Betto, Resumen English. Educate! Brazil, Hunger, Pandemic, Recession

In April, the World Bank predicted that the Brazilian economy would shrink by 5% of GDP by 2020. Now, in June, the prediction is 8% to 10%. And the government’s expected 2% growth. As the pandemic mainly affects self-employed and informal workers who, in order to survive, cannot be confined to their homes, the number of Brazilians in poverty is expected to increase this year from 41.8 million (2019) to 48.8 million people, equivalent to 23% of the population. The poor are all those who survive on a daily income of less than R$27.5 ($5 USD) or a monthly income of less than R$825. This year there will be 7 million more Brazilians. The emergency aid has eased the social drama a little. But until when? A survey conducted by Plano CDE, a company that analyzes life and consumption in classes C, D and E, indicates that between March and April of this year, of the 58 million Brazilians in classes D and E (with monthly incomes of up to 500 R) 51 million saw their income reduced by half or less.

Rebuilding After Recession: A Plan For Jobs

June 25, 2020 By Janet Williamson, TUC. Create! COVID-19, Green Economy, Jobs and Wages, Recession

Government investment in green technology and infrastructure is needed to create thousands of jobs and prevent a recession. Working with unions and employers, the government has put in place the Job Retention Scheme and self-employed income support schemes, protecting the jobs and incomes of millions of workers during the coronavirus crisis. But more is needed, and fast. Without further bold action from the government, we risk huge losses of jobs and livelihoods and possibly the deepest recession since the 1930s. The OECD estimates that unemployment could hit 11 per cent this year. But this is not inevitable, and action taken now can prevent the despair of mass unemployment.

United States: 30% Didn’t Make Their Housing Payment In June

June 25, 2020 Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge. Educate! Cancel the Rent, Foreclosure, Housing, Recession

A stunning 30% of Americans didn't make their housing payment for June - a figure that is likely going to ripple through the housing industry in coming months. According to a new survey by Apartment List, the rate is similar to May and shows that even though other industries are rebounding, the situation has not yet improved meaningfully in housing. These figures stood at 24% in April and 31% in May, before falling slightly to 30% in June. One third of the 30% in June made a partial payment, while two thirds made no payment at all. "Missed payment rates are highest for renters (32 percent), households earning less than $25,000 per year (40 percent), adults under the age of 30 (40 percent), and those living in high-density urban areas (35 percent). While the missed payment rate for mortgaged homeowners is just 3 percentage points lower than renters," the survey showed.

Meet BlackRock, The New Great Vampire Squid

June 23, 2020 Ellen Brown, Web of Debt. Educate! Banking and Finance, BlackRock, Corporate Bailout, Recession

BlackRock has been called “the most powerful institution in the financial system,” “the most powerful company in the world” and the “secret power.” It is the world’s largest asset manager and “shadow bank,” larger than the world’s largest bank (which is in China), with over $7 trillion in assets under direct management and another $20 trillion managed through its Aladdin risk-monitoring software. BlackRock has also been called “the fourth branch of government” and “almost a shadow government”, but no part of it actually belongs to the government. Despite its size and global power, BlackRock is not even regulated as a “Systemically Important Financial Institution” under the Dodd-Frank Act, thanks to pressure from its CEO Larry Fink, who has long had “cozy” relationships with government officials.

Black New Orleans Waste Workers Build Power Against A Crisis

June 21, 2020 Mindy Isser, Scalawag Magazine. Organize! New Orleans, Recession, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Sanitation workers in New Orleans have been out on strike for over a month now. On May 5, a group of sanitation workers, also known as “hoppers” (because they hop on and off the trucks to empty trash cans), walked off the job after frustrations around low pay and lack of safety equipment boiled over. They have held firm to their demands and to their brothers on the strike lines for over a month now. "All we’re trying to do is to get what we’re asking for, and then get back to work. We just want fair treatment," Jonathan Edward, who’s been a hopper for over a decade, said. They are not alone—workers around the country have taken bold action in response to the COVID-19 crisis, winning hazard pay, personal protective equipment, and even unions—all in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis.

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