Corporations Cause Inflation

Ignorance is the corporations’ biggest tool against the workers and uninformed. Employment at 4 percent to zero is good for the workers because workers can ask for more wages and benefits, and unions can ask for more and not worry about no one being able to find work if they lose their jobs. Unemployment at 5 percent to 10 percent is good for the corporations for the corporations would have a reserve army of labor force who are desperate enough to agree to whatever work at whatever wage they can receive. Unemployment plays a critical role in the capitalist system, preventing wage growth from threatening the profitability of the corporations. A tight labor market opens the best way for organizing unions, like Starbucks and fast food, and Amazon as well. According to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, “Corporations tell us they have ‘no choice’ but to raise prices. Meanwhile: Corporate profit margins soared to their highest levels since 1950. Stock buybacks are expected to reach $1 trillion this year. They’re playing us.” So, how do the corporations keep unemployment at 5 to 10 percent? They get the government, Federal Reserve, to raise the interest rates largely to the benefit of businesses, because corporations are considered more important than keeping low unemployment to the benefit of the workers. “Powerful businesses are using the cover of inflation to increase their prices higher than their actual costs are rising. Repeat after me: Wages and cost of production aren’t pushing up prices. Profit seeking corporations are,” Reich says. When interest rates go up, corporations, then, do not expand and if they cannot afford the interest rates they will close, stop building, stop expanding, and then stop hiring and begin laying off workers, which will then get the unemployment where they like it, at 5 to 10 percent, which, coincidently, stops labor unions from organizing. “Raising interest rates is a terrible mistake. The Fed assumes inflation is being driven by wage increases. That is false. Wage growth has lagged far behind inflation. You know what’s a real driver of inflation? Monopolistic corporations jacking up prices to maximize profits,” Reich maintains. He also says, “Billionaires are not ‘self-made.’ They’re made via a combination of inherited wealth, government subsidies, tax loopholes, labor exploitation, and policy failures. Can we stop perpetuating a myth that blames the wealth gap on choices of everyday Americans?” “The upward redistribution of wealth over the past 40 years has shifted $50 trillion from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans. Trickle-down economics was always a hoax. This has been the agenda all along,” Reich says. This is now what our Federal Reserve is doing, raising the interest rates. They say they’re doing this to stop inflation, but it is done just to make sure the corporations can maintain the profit level and hold down the workers wages and benefits. Reich again states, “Inflation isn’t being driven by government spending. It’s being largely driven by the fact that a handful of mega corporations have consolidated their market power and can raise prices on consumers.” So, labor must move fast while the door is still open. There is still a labor shortage here brought on by a lot of reasons. The biggest reasons was Covid-19 pandemic, but the door is closing, and people who kept the capitalist system running during the worst of the pandemic at the risk of their health and even their lives while making corporations ver rich and now that there is a chance for workers to better their lives, let’s get it done before the Feds close the door by its continuance of increasing the interest rates. For the young workers, this may be your only chance for many years to unionize. The last time labor had this advantage was 62 years ago when even union wages were so low that a good union trade worker was paid 50 cents to 75 cents more than the union wage. We used to say we could just go crossed the street and get a higher paid job. The competition was that great. So, workers let’s not wait for another 62 years. Let’s get it done now while the door’s still open.