I wonder how bad this economic downturn is going to be. This recession just began in February 2020. The economy is opening up for the first time since the coronavirus struck the United States and people are saying the economy is going to pop right out of its slump. I doubt that.
This week, I saw all kinds of people standing in the soup line three blocks long, which was three blocks longer than two weeks ago. Facebook just laid off my friend across the street a couple weeks ago. Just a week ago, a long-time friend was furloughed from her job for the summer. My domestic partner has seen her hours reduced at work. Middle class families are rummaging through my garbage and recycle bins. The rich are getting richer. Maybe that was the big boys plan.
No, I just do not see an economic recovery around the corner. I see a deep recession. One of my local bicycle stores is closed, along with two bakeries, the coffee shop, the chocolate shop, my chiropractor and others. Four blocks away two Vietnamese restaurants have closed permanently along with a pizza parlor. Seven blocks away the Roseway Theater is shuttered. Next to it the wedding store is closed forever, and next door to that the appliance repair store is gone. All have closed permanently since March 2020. All have been open since at least the 1980s. The Roseway Theater had been open since 1924.
The coronavirus pandemic ignited this recession, but its depth and misery for Americans have been caused by 40 years of relentless class warfare by the rich. The opening shots of the war began in 1971 when a little known Republican tobacco attorney named Lewis Powell wrote what is known as the Powell manifesto urging the rich to combine their resources, establish a variety of organizations to turn back the clock to the era of the robber barons, take over the courts, and generally fight back against the Constitutional and democratic rights of the vast majority of people. The rich took his advice. They organized. Out popped the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Federalist Society, and a lot more. Two months after he wrote his manifesto, Powell was sitting on the Supreme Court bench serving the rich as a legalized guerilla fighter in their war against the rest of us.
The Roseway Theater is closed and that financially helps streaming corporations like Amazon and Apple and their rich shareholders become richer. The local restaurants are gone but that financially helps Walmart, Domino’s Pizza and other major corporations and billionaire owned private equity companies by eliminating the local competition, and their rich shareholders are prospering at the expense of local business people, the real entrepreneurs, people who are our neighbors. The local coffee shops are gone, and that helps the affluent shareholders of Starbucks and other major coffee corporations get richer.
A recent poll shows 62 percent of Americans think the United States is in the toilet. Political corruption on a massive scale has done that, with the billionaires in control of both major political parties, as well as the Supreme Court. (Click here for that story)
The CARES Act of March 2020 was supposed to help the economy with loans to small businesses, but apparently, the authorized money is not enough and perhaps deliberately so. Thank you Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. The CARES Act authorized $4.75 trillion to save the 1 percent who derive the vast majority of their income and wealth from major corporations.
Bloomberg reports the Federal Reserve is printing and giving billions of dollars to major corporations, such as Walmart, AT&T, and United Health. Technically, those are loans but will likely be forgiven. Meanwhile, those billions find their way into the hands of the rich via higher dividends and capital gains. Click here for that story.
If you count capital gains, the rich have gone from stealing 7 percent of all income produced in the United States in 1971 when Lewis Powell wrote the Powell Manifesto to at least 37 percent by 2016. It is likely closer to 40 percent in 2020. You can thank the corporate wing of the Supreme Court for much of that gain.
Don’t you think it’s time to forget about our petty differences on the social issues the rich have used their news organizations to get us to focus on, and unite to save ourselves against the depredations of the rich? If not for yourselves, why don’t you do it for future generations?
John Hively's Blog: News and Analysis of the War Against the Middle Class 