We aren't better off than four years ago
The material conditions for the working class continue to worsen
The Democrats seem to think that running on “Are you better off than four years ago?” is a winning strategy, but the state of the country shows that the working class as a whole are not doing better now. Every metric shows that living conditions for the majority of the working class are getting steadily worse.
Homelessness
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ report on the state of homelessness in 2024:
On a single night in January 2023, more than half a million people (653,104 people) were experiencing homelessness across the United States. Behind this number is another set of numbers pointing to alarming growths in homelessness, especially since the previous year (2022):
12.1 percent was the year-over-year increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. This marked the largest increase since data collection began in 2007.2
70,642 more people did not have a place to call home in 2023 than in 2022.
72 percent of Continuums of Care (CoCs) reported increases in overall homelessness.
64 percent of CoCs reported a rise in unsheltered homelessness.
Since 2016, overall homelessness, unsheltered homelessness, and chronic homelessness have all increased every year.
Homelessness is a pretty good indicator of the overall state of a country and this marked increase shows that we are not doing better than four years ago. In fact, we have been on a consistent downward spiral since 2016. Biden/Harris have done nothing to help the homeless. The Democratic policy has been sweeps and evictions. Harris’ plan of a $25,000 tax credit for first time home buyers isn’t going to get people off the streets with the median price for a single family home in the United States at $428,500.
Child Poverty
The Democrats bragged about cutting child poverty in half, but their child tax credit was a temporary measure designed to expire. Since then, child poverty has soared. The child tax credit could have been made permanent under a Democratic majority, but they did not have the political will to do so. And now Kamala is running on bringing the tax credit back. Why should anyone believe her?
According to First Focus on Children’s 2023 Issue Brief:
13.7% of children (9.96 million) lived in poverty in 2023 compared to 12.4% (8.98 million) in 2022, an increase of nearly one million children.
Child poverty increased by 163% from 2021, from a rate of 5.2% (3.82 million) to 13.7% (9.96 million), resulting in an additional 6.2 million kids in poverty.
Following the expiration of improvements to the Child Tax Credit, the poverty gap between Black and white children, and Hispanic and white children has widened. In 2023, Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native children all experience poverty at a rate about three times that of white children:
Black children (alone, not Hispanic): 20.7%
Hispanic children (any race): 22%
American Indian and Alaska Native (alone): 19.7%
Asian (alone): 14%
White (alone, not Hispanic): 7.2%
3.6% of children (2.59 million) were living in deep poverty. This is an 8% increase from 2022 and a more than doubling of the deep child poverty rate from 2021. These are children in households with very few resources (an annual income of less than $19,000 a year for a family of four with two children) who face severe material deprivation.
35.3% of children (25.56 million) were living in households with annual incomes up to double the poverty threshold — around $74,000 a year for a family of four with two children — but were still struggling with material hardship.
Using the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator, in many places a family of four with two children needs at least an annual income of $80,000 to cover household expenses.
More children in poverty is certainly not an indication of things being better than four years ago.
Cost of Living
And it is not just the children. According to an inflation report from Bankrate.com, the cost of living has soared since 2020, “Prices are still 21.2% more expensive since the pandemic-induced recession began in February 2020, with only about 6% of the nearly 400 items the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks cheaper today.” Here are just a few items and their price increase since 2020:
Rent 24.9%
Eggs 65.1%
Motor vehicle insurance 49.8%
Motor vehicle repair 44.6%
Uncooked beef roasts 40.2%
Gas prices 27.7%
Grocery prices 25.3%
Admission to movies, theaters, and concerts 19.5%
Pet Food 21.80%
The list goes on and on. And wages have not kept up with this increase in prices. “Since the beginning of the post-pandemic inflation surge in Jan. 1, 2021, prices have risen 20.0 percent, compared with a 17.4 percent increase in wages over the same period, Bankrate’s second-annual Wage To Inflation Index found.”
This same article from Bankrate goes on to tell us, “The share of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work has been rapidly increasing, hitting 4.2% in August after hitting a three-year high of 4.3% the prior month.” This marks a number higher than prior to the pandemic, when in 2019 employment was at 3.67%.
The material conditions of the working class in the United States continue to get worse. Bidenomics delivered for the rich and the weapons manufacturers, but not for the poor. In fact, the working class lost much of the relief they had received in pandemic assistance. As Stephen Semler explains in the Lever:
The last major spending bill enacted by the Democratic trifecta at the end of last year terminated enhanced funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) this spring, leaving about 32 million people with less food assistance. The estimated drop in monthly benefits that occurred as a result range anywhere from $95 to $320, depending on the household. The extra benefits that kept 4.2 million people out of poverty in late 2021 were gone.
Instead of expanding coverage, the Biden/Harris regime has been continually ending much needed assistance. Yet they can always find more money to fund proxy wars and genocide.
Living Paycheck to Paycheck
A recent report from Forbes found that:
A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. In other words, more than three-quarters of Americans struggle to save or invest after paying for their monthly expenses.
Similarly, a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%)
Over 3/4 of the country are living paycheck to paycheck and almost 1/3 cannot even cover their basic expenses. This is not a sign of a healthy economy.
The Conditions of the Working Class in the United States
All told, conditions for the working class have been steadily getting worse. And this has been as true under Biden as it was under Trump. There is no reason to expect them to get better under Harris. And the reason for this is that the capitalist class are continuing to extract the surplus value of the working class - a basic part of the capitalist economy. This leads to gross levels of inequality.
According to the St Louis Fed:
The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.9 million on average. As a group, they held 67% of total household wealth.
The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $51,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.5% of total household wealth.
Black families owned about 23 cents for every $1 of white family wealth, on average.
Hispanic families owned about 19 cents for every $1 of white family wealth, on average.
And from a report by the Economic Policy Institute:
The top 1% take home 21% of all the income in the United States.
And from Inequality.org:
Overall, the combined wealth of America’s billionaires has grown by 88 percent over the past four years to $5.529 trillion according to Institute for Policy Studies calculations of Forbes Real Time Billionaire Data.
Over the past three decades, America’s most affluent families have added to their net worth, while those on the bottom have dipped into “negative wealth,” meaning the value of their debts exceeds the value of their assets, according to National Bureau of Economic Research data.
According to the Federal Reserve, white households held 84.5 percent of all U.S. wealth as of the fourth quarter of 2023, while making up only 77 percent of households. By contrast, Black households held only 3.4 percent and Latinos held only 2.3 percent of national wealth.
Between 2009 and 2019, the bottom 90 percent had wage growth of just 8.7 percent, compared to 20.4 percent for the top 1 percent and 30.2 percent for the top 0.1 percent.
Productivity has increased at a relatively consistent rate since 1948. But the wages of American workers have not, since the 1970s, kept up with this rising productivity. Worker hourly compensation has essentially flat-lined, increasing just 17.3 percent from 1979 to 2021 (after adjusting for inflation). Over this same time period, worker productivity has increased 64.6 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In other words, productivity grew at a rate 3.7 times as fast as worker pay.
Karl Marx was Right
What does this all show us? It illustrates that Karl Marx was correct in his analysis of capitalism.
From day to day it thus becomes clearer that the production relations in which the bourgeoisie moves have not a simple, uniform character, but a dual character; that in the selfsame relations in which wealth is produced, poverty is also produced; that in the selfsame relations in which there is a development of the productive forces, there is also a force producing repression; that these relations produce bourgeois wealth – i.e., the wealth of the bourgeois class – only by continually annihilating the wealth of the individual members of this class and by producing an ever-growing proletariat. - Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy
In order for the capitalists to become rich, the workers must remain poor. Under capitalism, the working class can win small concessions through reforms, but until private property is abolished, they will never have the same rights as the ruling class.
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. - Karl Marx, Capital
As long as capitalism continues to exist, poverty will continue to exist. This is the nature of the capitalist system. Only the international proletariat can overthrow this system. And the lies of the ruling class will not win out. A Gallup poll in July found that:
This month’s economic outlook ratings result in a -46 net optimism score (% getting better minus % getting worse), three points more negative than last month (-43) and the lowest since last November’s -49.
No amount of gaslighting from Democrats about the economy can convince the working class who are living through it that the economic outlook is good. Unfortunately the working class has nowhere to turn without an organized mass communist party. Many will vote for Trump simply because Biden/Harris and the Democratic regime have not delivered for them. But a return to Trump will be no improvement for the workers and neither will Harris. We need a class based movement to overthrow the capitalist system, not two bourgeois parties serving their donors.
This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party. - V.I. Lenin
This is indeed damning data. The politicians might easily / frequently lie, but the data do not. It's the underlying message in the quote by Lenin, i.e the part about the failures of the " bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain", that is most important to spread if we are to build a broader public willingness to break the hold of the uniparty / duopoly. We must help the party-captured to see more clearly how they are manipulated by the culture wars and propaganda and how they are losing ground in the process.