Christmas in America this year reveals two starkly different social realities.
For millions of working-class families, buying gifts this year required scraping together scarce dollars, borrowing from friends and relatives or adding more debt to their already overloaded credit cards.
At the other pole of society, America’s ruling elite, which has presided over this economic catastrophe, is celebrating its good fortune. 2010 is expected to be the second most profitable year for Wall Street investment firms on record. The biggest five banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup—have put aside at least $90 billion for year-end bonuses that could top last year’s payouts.
Meanwhile, economists anticipate little hiring and expect unemployment to remain at nine percent or above throughout 2011 and beyond.
- more than half of the US labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began.
- Nearly a third of all working families—comprising some 45 million people—are categorized as low-income, making less than twice the official poverty rate.
- A new study by the US Conference of Mayors on hunger and homelessness in 27 major cities found a staggering 24 percent jump in the demand for food assistance in 2009, with unemployment cited as the number one factor driving people to seek emergency aid.
- Poverty rose across the US but most sharply in the Southwest and South and across depressed industrial states like Michigan and Ohio.
- The US Census found that Michigan was the only state in the US to have a net loss in population over the last decade, while the US population grew by 10 percent overall. The mass exodus of workers and college graduates from Michigan points to a historic change in American society.
The rise and fall of Michigan parallels the rise and fall of American capitalism, from the unchallenged industrial power in the world — accounting for 50 percent of the world’s GDP in 1950 — to a society in deep decline...
The corporate and political establishment responded to the economic decline of the US and the rise of powerful international competitors in the 1970s and 1980s by systematically dismantling industries it deemed unprofitable and unleashing a class war against the living standards and social position of the working class that continues to this day.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/pers-d24.shtml
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