the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 6, 2008
159,000 workers lost their jobs in September. This is double the rate of job losses during the last few months. More huge job losses are expected in the months ahead. And this is according to U.S. Labor Department statistics which severely understate the problem.
Last month’s job losses were spread throughout the economy. 51,000 workers in manufacturing plants lost their jobs, 35,000 more workers were laid off from their jobs in retail and another 35,000 in construction. 16,000 workers in transportation and warehousing were put out in the street, and another 17,000 who worked in financial services lost their jobs. And this was before the recent freeze-up of credit now causing big layoffs in this sector.
According to government figures, job losses so far this year come to 760,000, with a total of over 9.5 million people now unemployed. Despite the huge job losses in September, the official unemployment rate remained steady at just over 6%! This shows how rigged the government unemployment reports are.
The politicians and bosses present this soaring unemployment as if nothing can be done about it–as though it were out of human control. Not true!
Look what 700 billion dollars could do: 180 billion dollars could put hundreds of thousands of people to work repairing or replacing all the 77,000 deteriorated bridges in the U.S.; 36 billion dollars could finance rebuilding all the substandard schools in the country. Just seven billion would double all the federal money spent so far on rebuilding New Orleans.
This would still leave over two-thirds of the 700 billion, not to mention all the other money the government has forked over in the last few months–totaling over two trillion dollars. With this money, all the roughly 50 million people in the U.S. without any health insurance could be given full coverage for two years; 500,000 additional public school teachers could be hired to teach in the rebuilt schools for four years. And so on...
Instead the Democrats and Republicans both decided to bail out the Wall Street speculators–the very criminals who created the mess we are in!