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Capitalist flood of profits doesn't lift all boats
July 18, 2000 @ 05:00:00 am
/ WW / - Living standards for the working class have sharply declined over the last decade, a new study reports. The rising impoverishment of workers across the United States contrasts sharply with gaudy ...

Living standards for the working class have sharply declined over the last decade, a new study reports.

The rising impoverishment of workers across the United States contrasts sharply with gaudy celebrations of soaring profits by the big bankers and corporate bosses.

One of the most pervasive myths told by the big-business-controlled media is that workers' living standards have gradually improved over the years.

While there have been gains for some, the stark fact is that for much of the working class the living standards have been declining.

While Marxists have pointed to this trend of capitalism--one of this economic system's irrationalities that can be fixed only by replacing it with socialism--it was also the featured subject of a June 29 Wall Street Journal article.

The Wall Street Journal is neither Marxist nor anti-capitalist, but here is how its report opens:

"The long economic boom has pushed unemployment to its lowest level in decades, but more jobs don't necessarily mean higher living standards.

"A new report shows that an American holding a full-time job in the late 1990s was still as likely to fall below the official poverty line as a similar worker in the 1980s, and more likely to do so than a full-time worker in the 1970s."

In other words, the standard of living for most workers today is below that of the 1970s. The report the Wall Street Journal refers to is from the Conference Board, which describes itself as a business membership and research organization.

"By this measure," the Journal reports, "the 1990s economy looks much worse than the 1970s."

According to an expert cited by the Wall Street Journal, the average wage for a full-time worker without a college education is now 8 percent less than it was in 1972.

The Conference Board report also has more statistics that confirm that poverty is increasing and is sharply higher than it was during the early 1990s recession.

The "new" jobs available today generally pay less and the lowest paying jobs now make up 48 percent of the total employment. The minimum wage has fallen sharply since 1969, when it was $7 per hour in today's dollars compared with the current level of $5.15, the Journal reports.

The same week the Conference Board made its report, Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies released a report titled "The State of the Nation's Housing: 2000."

According to this study, low-income households cannot afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment in any state anywhere in the United States.

"The red-hot economy has done little to relieve the housing problems of low-income households. Renters in the bottom quarter of the income distribution saw their real incomes actually decline between 1996 and 1998, while real rents increased by 2.3 percent," the Harvard study says.

Everyone knows that the great capitalist crisis of the 1930s created havoc with the workers' standard of living. This happens with every significant capitalist depression.

But how many know that today's "red-hot economy" is also devastating workers' living standards? Too many believe that their growing poverty and difficulties are their own problem and not that of others. Perhaps they are convinced that few others are getting poorer by the giddy reports of Wall Street's boom shown almost nightly on the TV.

It was only through united, organized struggles that U.S. workers in the 1930s were able to make gains. That's what built the strongest union movement this country has ever seen. It will take that same kind of organization and struggle to turn around the economic devastation that workers are enduring today.

- END -

(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: @workers. org.">ww @workers. org. For subscription info send message to: @workers. org.">info @workers. org. Web: https://www.workers.org

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