Photo: A worker in a food distribution warehouse. Credit: Rawpixel/Preston Keres (CC0 1.0 Universal)
With convention season concluded, one thing is clear: Neither of the two capitalist parties have an answer for the cost-of-living crisis facing the working class.
For the working class, the entire conversation around inflation, interest rates, and the economy raises crucial questions — mainly, how can we secure an economic future where workers can thrive, not just barely survive? Both major parties are speaking to this issue, but neither is really offering notable change. While their agendas are not the same, neither speaks to the depth of the crisis facing the working class or lays out a blueprint for turning it around.
The real economy
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 147 million people are having at least “a little trouble” meeting their expenses week to week, 37.6 million are finding it “very difficult,” and 25.1 million went hungry at least “sometime” during the last week. There are many ways to measure employment, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment is truly about 16%.
Newspapers are touting falling inflation. In general the trend is downward, but what does that really mean? The cost of housing is up 5.1% from this time last year, electricity, 4.9%. Food at the grocery store is up 2.2% and at restaurants 4%. The price of a gallon of milk and a pound of chicken is up 22% from July of 2020. So inflation may be “cooling,” but only in relation to the astronomical highs of the past couple years.
Capitalist politics: No solution
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are presenting the same plan to workers, that your wages will go up and prices will go down. Trump has no real plan on inflation and insofar as we can tell, his plans will reduce wages for tens of millions. Trump is against any form of price controls or attempts to prevent price gouging. He also is proposing massive increases in tariffs that almost certainly will increase prices of many basic goods. Even more, Trump is seeking to significantly reduce overtime pay. Trump also says he will massively cut everyone’s taxes. However, the plans put together by his likely policy team would actually increase taxes for everyone making less than $44,725, targeting workers struggling the most to get by.
Harris is talking tough on taking on big corporations. Her “plan,” however, does not truly address this. Harris has released almost no details on how she would keep down prices. From what we glean, her plan boils down to making it easier for the government to sue individual companies for ill-defined price-gouging that may, at some point — perhaps years in the future — bring down prices at that one company.
Further, the Harris-Walz campaign is touting that they would pursue many of the same policies as the Biden-Harris administration that have failed to bring down prices over the last few years. Housing is one of the biggest costs for working families and one of the biggest drivers of inflation. Harris is promising to build 3 million new homes during her presidential tenure. We need, however, 4.3-7.3 million new homes to truly address the affordable housing crisis.
Harris has promised to increase the federal minimum wage, but not specified how much. There is no scenario in which Congress would pass a $15 minimum wage currently and “any wage rate below $15 an hour is insufficient” for workers to meet the basic cost of goods and services, according to the Economic Policy Institute. So, even if she comes through, the federal minimum wage will still be a poverty wage under President Harris.
Challenging power
Neither party can provide solutions that meet the scale of our problems, because they are first and foremost concerned with protecting capitalist power. Trump’s unfettered capitalism is clear enough, reveling in how great a union buster Elon Musk is and promoting a tax cut that will give hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the super wealthy. Harris has promised the crypto industry that she will be “pro-business,” cozied up to some of the biggest monopoly corporations on the planet and reassured the oil lobby there will be no ban on fracking.
One of her top advisors, Tony West, has been Uber’s top lawyer in efforts to keep driver wages and benefits down, something her Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz has also worked with Uber on. In fact, one of her first tasks once she became the nominee was to “work to build bridges to the business world.”
The “business world,” is exactly who is to blame for inflation. It is also the business world that has waged a war on any increased spending for programs that help the working class and fought hard to make sure the 1% doesn’t pay a dime more in taxes. “Business world” lobbying is why the United States is still 23%–37% short of meeting the required 2030 emissions reductions and why the target touted by Biden and Harris is well below what is needed to save the planet.
The lobbyists who serve the “business world” are the reason why the U.S. is set to spend $1.7 trillion on the development of one plane, the F-35, that “doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to,” or a $2 trillion multi-year plan to build a new generation of nuclear weapons — despite 61% of people supporting the phasing out of many such systems.
The interests of workers are directly opposed to the interests of capitalists. Capitalists only get richer if workers get poorer. Capitalists get richer if they pay lower taxes and the government does less to support working families and regulate harmful practices. If you feel that everyone deserves a roof over their head, enough food to eat, access to a good education, and a job that doesn’t leave you in poverty at the end of your shift, your values clash with the values of the 1% who run this country.
Socialism is the answer
The capitalist economy does not work for workers. Only massive changes in the economy, which 69% of Americans want, that challenge the idea that corporate profits should trump all other considerations can help reverse course and build an economy that works for workers.
The good news is society is already partially structured for socialist transformation. Currently, the top 1% of companies by sales account for 80% of revenues. If workers controlled just the 100 largest corporations, 0.007% of all businesses, they would control the key levers of investment, production and distribution. Practically, the biggest obstacle, then, to a socialist transformation is the relatively small group of capitalists who control the economy.
The only candidate in the current election with this sort of program, is Claudia De la Cruz and her running mate Karina Garcia. If we want a world where workers live and thrive with dignity, the evidence is clear enough on who we should support in the 2024 election.
