The Biden administration and its boosters in the liberal capitalist media keep trying to puff up the U.S. economy as improving, thanks to “Bidenomics.” They point to some official government statistics, claiming gross domestic product rose 4.9% in the third-quarter, unemployment was only 3.9% in October, and inflation was down to 3.7% in September. But workers know all too well this story doesn’t describe the real world they face.
“The Economy Is Great. Why Are Americans in Such a Rotten Mood?” asks the Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal. Similarly, the news website Vox grappled with “Why a supposedly good economy is making so many people miserable.”
In fact, workers face declining real wages, as prices on many family necessities, from groceries to rents to electric and gas bills, continue to rise. While overall price increases have slowed, they still keep going up, with the biggest increases on things we need most.
Over the last year, frozen fruits and vegetables are up 8.1%; sugar, 7.7%; beef and veal, 7%; and bread, 6.1%, to name a few food items.
In the second half of 2022, real wages were about 3% lower than two years earlier, which for the average worker amounts to a loss of nearly $1,800 a year.
For October, the government reported the labor force shrank by 201,000 — meaning many workers’ jobs disappeared. Those still employed who are forced to work more than one job to try to make ends meet climbed to 5.2%, the highest since 2019.
At the same time, the number of workers employed part time who want full-time jobs rose to over 4.2 million, 7.2% of the workforce, the highest in 20 months.
The deepening capitalist crisis is eating away at so-called consumer spending, at least for the working class. A huge container shipping company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, announced Nov. 3 it’s eliminating at least 10,000 jobs, because of the drop in production.
Rising house prices combined with high mortgage rates — many at nearly 8% — put getting a home out of the reach of many working people. And rents have gone up by 22% over the past three years, especially forcing young workers either to move in with relatives or friends, or live in their car or on the street.
Capitalist crisis bears down
Tens of thousands of children, many members of recent migrant families, are attending public schools while they’re homeless. In New York City this figure reached an all-time high of 119,320 last year. An additional 12,000 students who enrolled in city schools in the last five months live in temporary housing.
Some 1 in 9 New York City students are homeless, more than the entire enrollment in Philadelphia public schools. In parts of the Bronx, the figure is over 22%.
While migrant children can attend public schools, their parents face a myriad of bureaucratic obstacles applying for work permits. Without being able to provide authorities with a stable address, their children are barred from the city’s free preschool programs.
Another indication of the depth of the capitalist social crisis is the rise in infant mortality in the U.S., for the first time in two decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate rose 3% from 2021 to 2022 — over 20,500 kids. The U.S. rate is double that of many other imperialist countries.
The death rate for women who give birth has also been rising, pushed up by the profit-driven closure of maternity wards and rural hospitals, putting needed and affordable health care out of reach for millions. The two leading causes of infant deaths today are complications during birth and bacterial sepsis, caused by the body’s reaction to an infection.
Meanwhile, government officials are promoting the lie that wage raises, many won through union struggles for pay increases to keep up with inflation, are the reason prices keep going up. Average hourly wages rose 4.1% in October over a year ago, reported the Department of Labor, far less than rising prices. And these wage increases have been slowing down since March 2022, when they were near 6%.
This issue was taken up by Karl Marx, a founder of the modern working-class movement in Value, Price and Profit, available from Pathfinder Press.
“The general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor more or less to its minimum limit,” Marx pointed out.
“If wages fall, profits will rise; and if wages rise, profits will fall,” he says, “but all these variations will not affect the value of the commodity,” which is the bottom-line basis for prices.
So, those who tell us we need to hold down wage increases to prevent higher prices are really trying to justify higher profits for the bosses.