8/25/19
As the corporate media bangs the drum of imminent recession, we need to take a look at how tens of millions of American households that live paycheck to paycheck are situated for another choreographed downturn. It will tell you all you need to know about the predatory nature of late-stage vulture capitalism, over which Donald Trump presides as its orange mascot. What jumps out when you look at the data is just how phony the “longest recovery” has been — the one for which Joe Biden wants to take a victory lap. The stark reality is that in the last decade or so the rich have gotten richer as the rest of the country has sunk deeper and deeper into debt, with little to show for it except rent receipts. As we head into the next downturn, whenever it happens, tens of millions of American families are hanging on the edge of economic oblivion. Thanks to the Trump tax cut, their government will be too much in debt to throw them a lifeline. The $20 trillion in lost American household wealth that came from the unprosecuted theft of household wealth during Wall Street's Great Foreclosure caper had generational consequences that linger and still define many lives today. The Federal Reserve Board's latest "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households," released in May, surveyed 11,000 adults. It found that in order to cover an emergency $400 expense, 39 percent of those polled would have to either borrow or sell something to come up with the cash. Many years into this “amazing recovery,” the Federal Reserve found that “across the country, many families continue to experience financial distress and struggle to save for retirement and unexpected expenses." The annual survey found that “many adults were struggling to save for retirement” with one in four with “no retirement savings or pension whatsoever.” Can’t imagine why.
In the years since the Great Recession, student debt has exploded from $500 billion to $1.57 trillion. Non-housing related debt was $2.65 trillion in 2008. By the second quarter of this year it had surpassed $4 trillion. And, in the midst of Trump’s ranting in February about his wall with Mexico, seven million Americans, a record number, fell into that 90-day abyss of being months late with their car payment. See a pattern here? Now we are struggling to hold on to our family car, the same way we were clawing to hold on to our home just a decade ago. Since the 1970s, when wages flatlined as productivity spiked and unions began to shrink, American corporations have been running things by paying off both political parties. In the last few years, as a consequence of this collusion of the comfortable, the economic circumstances of our elected representatives has continued to vastly outpace what’s been happening for everyone else. They appear ready for whatever capitalism has in store for us. As Roll Call reported last year, the “cumulative net worth of senators and House members jumped by one-fifth in the two years before the start of this Congress, outperforming the typical American’s improved fortunes as well as the solid performance of investment markets during that time.” One essential element of keeping the lid on America’s collective anger over decades of declining wages, disappearing benefits and actual decline in our average lifespan, is to cover the ups and downs of the economy as if it were some sort of naturally occurring meteorological phenomenon. But the kinds of market gyrations that promote dislocation and misery for the masses are not the result of gravity or barometric pressure. They are the consequences of decisions driven by an ever-shrinking circle of people and institutions who engineer scarcity — because making a killing is the only way they know how to make a living.
