On Sunday, Brazilians will go to the polls in the first round of elections that will be watched around the world. Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro has seen his support plummet amid a devastating coronavirus pandemic, rising inflation and food costs, increasing poverty and severe deforestation in the Amazon. His most recognized challenger is the former president and Workers’ Party leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Amid the many crises facing the Bolsonaro government, various representatives of the Brazilian capitalist class have gone over to the Lula campaign. Among them are many leaders of the impeachment process (in reality, an institutional…
Working Class
Federal Reserve Puts Burden of Curbing Inflation on Global Working Class
On Wednesday, at the end of a two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell announced a tightening of monetary policy in response to the highest U.S. inflation in 40 years. The burden of this measure will fall disproportionately on the working class, both in the U.S. and abroad. In a press release the FOMC said the current inflation rate reflected “supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher energy prices, and broader price pressures.” The Fed raised its benchmark policy rate by 0.75 percentage points, the first increase of this magnitude since 1994. This…
Amazon’s CEO Pay Is More Than 6,000 Times That of the Company’s Typical Worker
A tight labor market created a rare moment of leverage for low-wage workers last year. But Corporate America took no great leap forward on pay equity. A new Institute for Policy Studies report, Executive Excess 2022, reveals how low-wage corporations have continued to pump up CEO pay during the pandemic while workers are struggling with rising costs. The report zeroes in on compensation trends at the 300 publicly held U.S. corporations that reported the lowest median worker wages in 2020. At over a third of these firms — 106 in all — median worker pay either fell or failed to…
Inflation Crisis Is Being Resolved on Backs of Workers. It Doesn’t Have to Be.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its latest report on inflation, and the news is not good for working people. According to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — which measures the cost of consumer products — inflation for all goods, including food and energy, rose again in January, this time by 0.6 percent. This latest increase brings the yearly rate of inflation up to a whopping 7.5 percent, a figure not seen since the early 1980s when out-of-control inflation and a stagnant economy amounted to an all out economic war on U.S. workers. While wages for this…