"The point is not to reduce inequality, poverty, debt, or gas emissions a little or to increase the food supply and wages so that fewer people are hungry. Yes, these will help. But the need is for a complete reset, a new direction, that favors the people as a whole and puts them center-stage. This means putting human rights, not the narrow pursuit of maxim profit by the rich, at the center of everything and taking a new fresh path free of parasitic arrangements that favor even fewer people every year. The rich and their representatives are not going to usher in this new direction because it would mean making themselves completely obsolete. It is up to working people, women, students, youth, senior citizens, and everyone else to collectively bring in the alternative."
- About 7 out of 10 Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
- One in three U.S. workers are earning less than $15 an hour.
- The problem of joblessness for Black men is on average three times worse than what is generally assumed.
- 52% of women, ages 50 and up, say the economy isn’t working well for them.
- Three-Quarters of Americans say the economy is on the ‘Wrong Track’
- The student debt crisis so far has led 43 million borrowers to collectively owe around $1.6 trillion.
- 35% of Americans lose sleep over their debt.
- The average American household will spend $5,200 more this year to buy the same goods and services it purchased last year.
- A new measurement suggests that the U.S. undercounts people in poverty by millions.
- Between February 2020 (prior to the pandemic) and February 2022, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) declined 2.1 percentage points, from 63.4% to 62.3%. That translates into 3 million fewer workers today. The LFPR was at a peak of 67.3% in early 2000 (more than 20 years ago).
- Food inflation will hit millions
- From February 2021 to February 2022, inflation rose by 7.9 percent to a 40-year high, and food prices also increased by 7.9 percent over those 12 months.
- The Feeding America network reported a 60% increase in demand early in the pandemic, and continues to see steady or increased demand.
- Food banks and pantries across the U.S. are stretched so thin by soaring operating costs that they’re having to ration what goes out to feed the nation’s hungry.
- One in eight people in the US do not have access to nutritious food.
- The percentage of people who say that now is a “bad time to buy” a home jumped to 73%, another record-worst in the data going back to 2010.
- Officially, the Federal Reserve balance sheet now stands at nearly $9 trillion. The real figure is higher.
- Three men own as much as the bottom half of Americans.
- The velocity of money (V),1 an important economic metric, has declined from a high of about 2.2 in the 1990s to a bit below 1.5 before COVID-19, and to 1.1 during the pandemic.
- The soaring cost of diesel is rippling through the global economy.
33% of Americans were denied credit in the past year.
81% of Americans think a recession will hit this year.
Inflation in the U.S. is more than three times higher than it was last year, straining Americans’ finances.
The extremely high cost of houses is leaving millions out of the home ownership market.
About 72% of those who bought homes within the past 2 years received help from family with their down payment.
Consumers are taking on more credit card debt, just as interest rates are expected to rise.
Bankruptcy filings are creeping back up in early 2022.
735 billionaires in the U.S. have seen their collective wealth soar by 62% over the past two years while worker earnings have grown just 10%, modest gains eaten away by the rising costs of food, housing, and other necessities.
Between 2009 and 2017 depression rates increased more than 60% among teens 14–17 years old. Other age cohorts also saw large increases during the same time period. It is reasonable to assume that even more people of all ages experienced depression and/or anxiety between 2017-2022. The “Covid Pandemic” has traumatized billions.
Across Los Angeles County, California last year (2021), the unsheltered died in record numbers, an average of five homeless deaths a day, most in plain view of the world around them.
San Francisco alone is home to 77 billionaires, but more than 34,000 people are homeless across the Bay Area and more than 800,000 live in poverty.
Security and dignity in retirement is also becoming a pipe dream for millions. Since 1974, more than 140,000 companies have ended their defined-benefit plans. More than a third of workers — more than 50 million people — don’t even have access to a 401(k) or other so-called defined-contribution plan. Of those who do, more than a quarter don’t participate.
Twenty five percent of college graduates over the age of 25 make less than $35,000 a year, with many close to the poverty level.
Globally, another quarter billion people will fall into poverty this year, Oxfam Says.
In addition, interest rates at home and abroad are expected to rise in the coming months, which means that the cost of borrowing money will increase, which means that more people will be paying even more for various forms of debt that they hold. This will reduce disposable income, which means that the standard of living and the velocity of money will further decrease as well.
"The necessity for change that favors the people is presenting itself very forcefully at this time. The crisis of the capitalist economic system has become unusually severe. There is a rapid breakdown at all levels, which is why life is becoming more chaotic, anarchic, violent, and untenable. The human personality is being violated severely. It is no surprise that mental and emotional illnesses have increased significantly in the recent period. Millions wake up every day asking themselves: “What shocking or horrible thing will happen today?” “What kind of bad economic news are we going to get this week?” “What new conflict, crisis, or war is upon us now?” There is no reprieve from the chaos, violence, and accelerating social and economic breakdown. Things feel like dystopian bedlam. Even worse, everyone is supposed to accept that there is no alternative to the unsustainable status quo.
But reality, life, and people have a way of being resilient and overcoming what seems like a never-ending nightmare. Nothing lasts forever, everything is transient. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle has not disappeared under today’s unprecedented conditions. The dialectic lives even in these difficult times. It is up to working people and all enlightened forces to grasp this dialectic and use action with analysis to move humanity forward in a human-centered direction. It can be done and must be done."
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