1. From the Economic Policy Institute:
“The hourly compensation of a typical worker grew in tandem with productivity from 1948-1973. …. After 1973, productivity grew strongly, especially after 1995, while the typical worker’s compensation was relatively stagnant. This divergence of pay and productivity has meant that many workers were not benefiting from productivity growth—the economy could afford higher pay but it was not providing it. Between 1979 and 2013, productivity grew 64.9 percent, while hourly compensation of production and non-supervisory workers, who comprise over 80 percent of the private-sector workforce, grew just 8.0 percent. Productivity thus grew eight times faster than typical worker compensation…”
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2. According to a new study by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36% decline….Simply put, the NY Times notes, it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. Only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing.
3. 76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, according to CNN Money:
“Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings....
Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all…
Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn’t enough money left over for saving more.”
4. According to a Federal Reserve report on American households’ “economic well-being” in 2013, fewer than half of all Americans said they’d be able to come up with four Benjamins on short notice to deal with an unexpected expense…
Under a section titled “Savings,” the report notes that “savings are depleted for many households after the recession,” and lists the following findings:
*Among those who had savings prior to 2008, 57 percent reported using up some or all of their savings in the Great Recession and its aftermath.
*39 percent of respondents reported having a rainy day fund adequate to cover three months of expenses.
*Only 48 percent of respondents said that they would completely cover a hypothetical emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing money.
5. New York Times said:
“The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially….“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study...”
6. The promise of the American dream gave some hope that they themselves could one day rise up the economic ladder. But according to a study released those already in financially-stable circumstances should fear falling down a few rungs too. The study found that nearly a third of Americans who were part of the ‘middle-class’ as teenagers in the 1970s have fallen out of it as adults. Its findings suggest the relative ease with which people in the U.S. can end up in low-income, low-opportunity lifestyles — even if they started out with a number of advantages. Numerous reports have suggested that those on middle income enjoys less security than they did a generation ago. The strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work. Fast food is driving the bulk of the job growth at the low end — the job gains there are absolutely phenomenal.
7. 2014 American Household Credit Card Debt Statistics from Nerd Wallet Finance found:
*Average credit card debt: $15,607
*Average mortgage debt: $153,500
*Average student loan debt: $32,656
In total, American consumers owe:
*$11.63 trillion in debt
*An increase of 3.8% from last year
*$880.5 billion in credit card debt
*$8.07 trillion in mortgages
*$1,120.3 billion in student loans
*An increase of 11.5% from last year
The US Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances documents a devastating decline in economic conditions for a large majority of the population during the so-called economic recovery. The report reveals that between 2007 and 2013, the income of a typical US household fell 12 percent. The median American household now earns $6,400 less per year than it did in 2007. The report also shows that wealth has become even more concentrated in the top-most economic layers. The wealth share of the top 3 percent climbed from 44.8 percent in 1989 to 54.4 percent in 2013. The share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33.2 percent in 1989 to 24.7 percent in 2013.
Too frail to work, too poor to retire will become the “new normal” for many elderly Americans. The majority of people in the United States, no longer believe in the American dream, or that America is the land of opportunity, or that their children will have a better standard of living than their own. They’ve grown more pessimistic because they haven’t seen the changes they were hoping for, and because their lives are just as hard as they were right after the crash.
The World Socialist Party of th United States has been successful in developing a clear critique of capitalism, reaching out to let as many workers understand the system they live under. We're holding up a sign to let workers who have come to socialist ideas themselves know we're here. The revolution will not happen because workers have or have not been exposed to our case. They won't even read it unless they feel the need it, they'll continue to support capitalism as long as they feel they need capitalism. Prevailing powerful propaganda is a useful tool for the ruling class, but it cannot overrule the lived experience and capacity of workers to think. It only works now because it is going with the grain.
We reject the conservative call 'a fair days pay for a fair days work', in favor of the revolutionary call 'Abolish the Wages System'.
We recogniSe that the wages currently paid by the employing classes, can never be 'fair' because they represent only the market-price to the employer (buyer of labour, competing in that market with all other buyers/employers) of the employees' ability to labour ('labour-power') : they bear no necessary relation to the prices that that labours' products eventually realise on successful Sale by the employer ( the products of labour belong to the employer) on the market. Indeed the employer's profit grows in direct proportion to the difference between the two prices. Hence the perpetual pressure from the employers to resist wage increases, or improvements in working conditions, or indeed, force wages down and worsen conditions.
We recognise that, within this 'arrangement' the employee class can only ever, on average, gain in wages it's subsistence as necessary to maintain and reproduce it's labour-power under the market conditions prevailing at a particular time: we do not oppose actions by the employees to raise their wages, or improve their conditions, but recognise such pressures can never move their position far beyond that average.
We recognise that in times of 'boom', when employers are keen to maximise production as far as possible and so seek to avoid disruptions to production, such actions to raise wages are most likely to succeed, at least temporarily; conversely, in times of 'recession' when the employers are curtailing production and shedding labour, they are almost certain to fail, except, perhaps, in certain industries that are perhaps not as subject to the general down-turn.
We recognise that competitive production only for profit between a myriad 'blind' competing employers is the last remaining cause of poverty in the world today - the purely technical problem of producing sufficency for all, reliably, has long since been conquered - and that capitalism and it's wages system cannot be reformed to work in any other way than it currently does and always has.
We say again 'Abolish the Wages System'. This will occur when a majority of the population opts to take the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole community, under the democratic control of the whole community, producing only for use (without the paraphernalia of wages and prices only necessary to support sale at a profit for the benefit of the tiny and shrinking minorities currently monopolising those means of production and distribution) which implies free access for all to the socially available product.
Facts and figure from here
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