Back in my childhood folks made fun of the country bumpkin, the fellow
in the straw hat, with the crooked buck teeth and his pants held up by
a strap across his shoulder. The poor simpleton was forever being
taken by the sharp faced fellow in a pin striped Sears Sucker Suit,
smirking as he took the innocent fellow for all he had.
Someone ought to hunt up some of those old time pictures and run them
again. Only this time write, "Workingman" over the head of the
Bumpkin, and, "Corporate Privateer" over the fellow in the pin
stripes.
What will happen when the Workingman wakes up and realizes that he has
no government looking out for him, and what he has been told about
this Free Enterprise in which any man can pull himself up by his boot
straps, is nothing but a sham.
It would be in the best interest of the Ruling Class to revisit the
French and Russian revolutions. Meanwhile, let them eat cake!
Carl Jarvis
On 7/15/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2017/8127/812701.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 27 July 24, 2017
(lead article)
Working class bears brunt of capitalist rulers’ crisis
Active working class is shrinking in U.S. Millions of workers are no
longer in workforce. For men the rate has been dropping for 60 years.
For males between 25 and 54 the percentage working is now lower than it
was at the end of 1930s depression. Bars indicate recessions.e
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
If you believe the capitalist rulers and their media, U.S. economic
conditions are getting rosier. Official joblessness was 4.4 percent in
June, nearly full employment, they say, and the “recovery” from the 2008
capitalist financial meltdown, now into its ninth year, is one of the
longest on record. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said June 27
that she now believes there won’t be another financial crisis “in our
lifetimes.”
But working people see their jobs, living conditions, health, families
and future prospects under unprecedented economic and social attack
because of the growing crisis of capitalist production and trade. Rising
joblessness, stagnant wages, spreading opioid epidemic, increased
homelessness, declining birth rates and devastating conditions are the
“new normal” for workers and farmers.
The bosses and their government have no solution for the depression-like
conditions this crisis forces upon working people. And, while it is
impossible to predict when the next deep downturn will hit — it will come.
The closure of steel, auto, coal mining and other industries in many
cities and towns across the U.S. have shattered the lives of millions of
workers, leading to rising deaths from opioid overdoses. In Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, where Bethlehem Steel once employed thousands, those who
remained in town had little choice but to take jobs in retail at less
pay. Now many of these workers, like others in places like Decatur,
Illinois, and Saginaw, Michigan, are “getting hit a second time” the New
York Times reported June 25, as bosses lay off these workers as malls
and retail stores shut down, victims of competition from online shopping
outlets.
“Rural America is the New ‘Inner City,’” headlined a May 26 Wall Street
Journal article. It pointed out that in 2013 more people died in less
populated U.S. counties than were born — the first time since records
began being kept in the 1930s.
There’s also a growing gap between what employers pay workers in rural
and urban areas. The average wage, the Journal noted, is now one-third
lower in towns with 250,000 or fewer people.
Birth rates are falling as growing numbers of young people find it
harder and harder to find steady jobs and company-funded health care.
Growing numbers of workers put off starting families until a later age,
if at all. In 2016 the “fertility rate” in the U.S. was the lowest it
has been ever — 62 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
Nearly 10 percent of babies born today in the U.S. are premature. The
U.S. has the worst rates of infant mortality, preterm birth and low
birth-weight babies of all industrialized capitalist countries. In fact
the U.S. has the highest rate of babies who die the same day they are
born in the industrialized world.
At the same time, the gap in workers’ life expectancy has widened by 20
years, depending on where you live. It’s lowest on Native American
reservations and counties along the lower half of the Mississippi and in
coal country in eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia.
Meanwhile, homelessness is on the rise, with many workers just a
paycheck away from losing their apartments. Others face mental problems
that the for-profit health insurance system no longer covers. In New
York, for example, the government of liberal Democratic Mayor Bill de
Blasio admits the number of homeless people living on the streets has
gone up by 40 percent compared to last year. De Blasio tries to pass
this off, claiming it’s because of a housing shortage and because the
survey was taken on a particularly warm day when people just felt like
staying outside! But the figures show that for the first time ever the
number of homeless people on the streets and in city shelters is going
up at the same time.
Shrinking workforce
While the official unemployment rate in June was 4.4 percent
—basically “full employment,” the apologists for capitalism never tire
of telling us — millions of workers are no longer counted as part of the
workforce. The fact is, the active working class is shrinking in the
U.S. The labor force participation rate — the share of the population
actually working or looking for work — remains near a 40-year low.
Male participation in the labor force has been steadily dropping for 60
years. Between 1948 and 2015, the work rate for U.S. men 20 and older
fell from 85.8 percent to 68.2 percent. For men of prime working age,
the percentage working is “lower now than it was at the end of the Great
Depression,” the Weekly Standard reported July 8.
The numbers of those who have had to accept just part-time hours with
less pay and benefits continues to rise. In June it was 5.3 million.
According to the U.S. Labor Department report, average wages rose 2.5
percent over the past year — 4 cents in June — but not enough to keep up
with basic necessities, like food, rent and energy. “Fifty to 60 percent
of lower-tier wage earners are earning less and less year over year,”
Robert Frick, economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, says. And real
wages for production workers haven’t risen in over 40 years.
The crisis for working people is worldwide. Lower-wage temporary
contracts for workers — leaving them to fend for themselves for health
care and retirement — is the norm in the European Union. “The jobs
crisis has gone on for so long that many would-be workers have given up
and left the labor market for good,” the Financial Times reported July 5.
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