In spite of falling prices overall, and claims by the president’s backers in 2024 that “Bidenomics” is a smashing success, working people continue to be hammered by high prices for groceries and other necessities. This occurs as a current uptick in the U.S. economy gives workers more confidence we can use our unions to fight to improve wages, and the living and working conditions we face.
“It’s Been 30 Years Since Food Ate Up This Much of Your Income,” headlined a Feb. 21 Wall Street Journal article. In 2022 the “average” person in the U.S. spent 11.3% of their income on food, reported the Agriculture Department. But there are no “average” people. People are divided into two main competing social classes — workers and bosses. Workers have to spend a far higher percentage of our wages to feed and house ourselves and our families.
In suburban Chicago, Lisa Wister, an occupational therapist, told the Journal her food bills are rising faster than her family’s income. “Everything is a negotiation, an analysis about our budget,” she said. “It’s exhausting.”
“If you look historically after periods of inflation, there’s really no period you could point to where [food] prices go back down,” Steve Cahillane, chief executive of snack giant Kellanova, told the paper. “They tend to be sticky.” That is, the increases don’t go away. He should know. He and his fellow bosses are the ones sticking it to us.
New York Times economic guru Paul Krugman insists “Bidenomics” is “almost miraculously good.” He says January inflation figures showing prices on key items are still going up is just a “statistical blip.”
But facts show otherwise. While prices for some items like wheat, coffee beans and chicken have declined from what they were a year ago, others haven’t, from sugar to beef to french fries. Nestle, the world’s biggest packaged-food company, raised prices about 7.5% last year. And they’re still rising. Hard hit are pet care, confectionaries, cooking aids and milk products.
With grocery prices high, Walmart continues to boost profits by expanding its massive grocery business. By charging slightly lower prices than its competitors at its 5,000 U.S. stores, Walmart takes in about 70% of its sales from grocery, health and other essential products. It projects sales of $645 billion for fiscal 2024, double that of Target, its closest competitor.
And the cost of many services continues to climb. To repair household items on the fritz costs 18.2% more than it did a year ago. Car repair and insurance prices for homes and health care are more expensive. The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is raising prices by 13% for the 16 million people it “serves” in California. Power monopolies are pushing similar rate hikes across the country.
Workers are increasingly finding themselves forced to use their credit cards to pay for groceries and other necessities. And it’s taking longer to pay these debts off. This is a boon for the big bankers, who rake in superprofits from charging monthly interest rates of over 20% on unpaid balances. Workers paying on car loans face the same kind of price gouging. Delinquencies on auto loans and credit cards are both now at their highest point in more than a decade.
The bosses boost their profits with price rises. ExxonMobil and Chevron, for example, recorded the biggest profits in 2022 and 2023 in a decade. Exxon’s bonanza was $91 billion; Chevron’s, $57 billion.
Capitalist economy driven by ‘greed’
“When asked what drives the economy, many Americans have a simple, single answer that comes to mind immediately: ‘greed,’” said a Feb. 21 article in the New York Times by Katherine Cramer and Jonathan Cohen, reporting on a study conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“If there is a singular explanation for dissatisfaction with the economy, it is a lack of financial certainty,” they wrote, and workers’ conviction that Democratic and Republican politicians are “unable or unwilling to do anything to help them.”
While hiring has gone up, in some areas bosses have been cutting jobs. This is true in many tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Zoom and Snap, which have laid off 32,000 employees since January.
At the same time, Wall Street is gloating over the fact that seven tech companies — Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Tesla, known as the Magnificent Seven — are responsible for the bulk of the upswing in stock prices.
Over 900 members of the United Steelworkers union are losing their jobs as bosses at Cleveland-Cliffs are closing their tin mill in Weirton, West Virginia.
Apartment rents keep climbing, a whopping 20% since 2020. Half of all those renting an apartment spend at least 30% of their income on rent.
According to a new report from Columbia University, 23% of residents in New York City were unable to afford basic needs like housing and food in 2022, up from 18% a year earlier. This was exacerbated by the federal government’s decision to let several pandemic programs expire, including expanded child tax credits, increased unemployment insurance and cash payments to low-income families battered by inflation.
So much for Bidenomics.