A Modern Day Depression

Sep 27, 2010

It’s now official. The committee that “dates” recessions has declared this latest one ended more than a year ago–in June 2009. Since then, according to these “experts,” the economy has been expanding!

Tell that to the unemployed. Even the government’s own figures show that unemployment continued to grow–even with an “expanding” economy. There are nearly half a million fewer workers employed today than when this supposed “recovery” began–and 8.7 million fewer than when the recession began. And in fact, the committee that declared the recession over admitted that employment won’t recover for years!

The result is growing poverty–the government says that close to 50 million people are now living below the poverty line–a jump of 10% over the last year. No wonder that one out of eight people in the entire country now depend on food pantries–that is charities–to stop from starving!

Another result is more people without medical insurance–in 2009 alone, seven million people lost employer-based coverage.

And finally, more people have lost housing. Bank repossessions were 25% higher than last year.

These rapidly degrading living conditions are the direct consequence of the capitalists’ war against the working class. The capitalists are using the disastrous levels of unemployment as a club against those still with jobs, to force people to work harder and produce more for less money and benefits, even while the politicians continue to cut vital government safety net programs.

This is why the top capitalists’ fortunes continue to grow ever bigger: they are expropriating ever more of what the working class produces.

So, the new economic “recovery” that the economists talk about is a recovery only for the capitalist class. For the working class and poor, it is nothing but a continuation of a modern-day economic depression.