U.S. corporations just had their best quarter ever.
 While profits are high, unemployment benefits are running out for many. |
Businesses in this country earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter of 2010—from April 1 to June 30—according to the U.S. Commerce Department. That’s the highest figure since the government began keeping track of profits over 60 years ago.
Corporate profits have been skyrocketing for awhile now. For the past seven fiscal quarters, profits have grown significantly. They account for a whopping 11.2 percent of the entire U.S. gross domestic product—the total output of goods and services in the country.
The capitalist owners, politicians and their media mouthpieces are positively triumphal. They are taking the news as an opportunity to wax eloquent about the ongoing “magnificent recovery.” They have been slapping themselves on the back (while lining their pockets) for some time. In 2009, bonus payments at Wall Street’s top financial firms were up 17 percent to more than $20 billion.
Life is good for the super-rich. They have figured out how to produce more, and thus profit more, while giving out less to those who work so hard every day to produce it.
This has increased the suffering for working and poor people, the vast majority of society. It has meant far fewer jobs, income and resources for working people. And things are getting worse.
At the end of November, unemployment benefits ran out for two million people in the United States. That’s almost one quarter of those currently getting unemployment benefits. Even if the benefits are somehow saved, it will only be temporary. Two million more will lose their benefits by February 2011. Unemployment benefits average only $300 per week, nowhere close to a living wage. But these benefits have been keeping millions of working families afloat. Never even discussed by the government are the millions of workers who have been unemployed for over two years and are still unable to find work.
The politicians atop Capitol Hill have decided that the government simply cannot spend the money on workers who have been thrown out of their jobs by the economic crisis. Never mind that the economy “shed” 430,000 additional jobs last week, pushing a new layer of workers into the ranks of the unemployed.
The politicians in Washington have once again proven they are just fine with this. In fact, it gives a glimpse into the bipartisan attack on workers that will continue next year and beyond.
Capitalist politicians of all stripes will cut workers’ benefits endlessly without ever considering cutting the U.S. war budget, which funnels over $500 million per day into the criminal occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. They will, in fact, fund more wars to open up more markets to try to continue the supremacy of U.S. capital and the tiny class that owns it.
That’s the system’s basic equation. There will always be money for more wars, more prisons and more exploitation and repression. As long as the super-rich are profiting, the system is working (for them). Workers and the poor are left to starve.
No capitalist party will ever change this. No media pundit or demagogue has the answer.
What can change the equation? Fighting back; fighting for socialism. When workers, students and poor and oppressed people resist these attacks, the illogical nature of capitalism is exposed. The weaknesses of this seemingly unassailable system are laid bare. It is a struggle happening right now and it will inevitably heighten in the months and years ahead.
