In 2021, a “politically diverse group of scholars” from the country’s top think tanks embarked on an “objective” assessment of “how we are doing as a country.” The findings are out—and the liberal establishment is shocked.
“The US economy is racing ahead. Almost everything else is falling behind,” summarized the New York Times. Americans’ satisfaction with their own lives ranks much lower than it did three decades ago. Although GDP has grown faster than any other high-income country, the US ranks among the lowest in life expectancy, child mortality, murder rates, trust in government, and depression. The US is also #1 in the world for fatal drug overdoses.
“We’re so wealthy but so unhappy,” said one of the scholars. How could this be? These out-of-touch “intellectuals”—who together have advised every president since Bill Clinton—proceeded to give their explanations.
Too much money and food for our own good
Maybe we’re just dumb or confused. You see, “Americans’ negative perceptions [are] inconsistent with society’s underlying strength.” In other words—we would be better off if we simply accepted their lectures about how good we have it and stopped complaining.
Or perhaps “affluence itself” is the cause of all our woes! NYT breaks it down for us: Too much food leads to obesity. Higher incomes allow us to forgo friends and families. We can afford smartphones that make us isolated and depressed. In this modern world, “we’re prone to overconsume and make ourselves sick,” and we have lost “our life narratives.” In short, Americans are just too well off to be happy. First-world problems!
However, in passing, one of the study’s more honest researchers notes: “Most of the report’s measures capture average outcomes.” But the US is also one of the most unequal countries in the world. “The strong economic performance has principally provided gains for the wealthiest 10%.” A small detail!
As the Biden-Harris campaign and their friends in the liberal establishment repeated ad nauseam: the economy is great and Americans are just thankless. / Image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr
Gaslighting campaign
As the Biden-Harris campaign and their friends in the liberal establishment repeated ad nauseam: the economy is great and Americans are just thankless. Back then, the RCA described this as a gaslighting campaign—and we were right.
Now, Politico has discovered that “Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.” It turns out that the official government statistics were misleading, hiding the reality facing working-class Americans.
Take unemployment. The official U-3 figure stands at around 4%. Pretty good, right? Turns out, this counts homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But if you count as unemployed “people who can’t find anything but part-time work or whose wages are below the poverty line,” the percentage shoots up to a whopping 23.7%. Nearly one in four workers is functionally unemployed in America.
When it comes to earnings, the main government indicator only tracks full-time wages, leading us to believe that the US median wage stands at $61,900 per year. But if you track everyone in the workforce, including part-time workers and unemployed job seekers, the number drops 16%, to little more than $52,300.
What about inflation, which remains the top concern for most Americans? The official Consumer Price Index is bad enough, showing that goods and services across the board are 23% more expensive than they were in early 2020. However, this includes luxury goods, second homes, and other things most Americans aren’t concerned with.
Politico recalculated inflation figures based on the prices of basic necessities—groceries, insurance premiums, housing, transportation, etc. In 2023 alone, the true cost of living for working-class Americans rose by 9.4%—more than twice the official CPI figure of 4.1%!
The prophets of Bidenomics told us wages were rising faster than inflation. But if you take the more accurate earnings and inflation measures detailed above, median purchasing power fell by 4.3% in 2023.
In the words of Karl Marx, “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” / Image: public domain
“Accumulation of misery”
For the last 50 years, workers’ living standards have fallen by nearly every measure. This is why Americans are increasingly unhappy. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the other 397 richest people in the US increased their total wealth by $1 trillion last year alone—they are now worth a record $5.4 trillion.
In the words of Karl Marx, “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole”—i.e., on the side that actually produces society’s wealth.
The final 2024 data shows that there are around 162 million workers in America. If you divide the official $29.7 trillion GDP among the workforce, we can estimate that the average worker produced about $183,000 last year. That’s over $3,500 per week, per worker. Compare that to the more accurate median wage of roughly $1,000 per week. Even the skewed bourgeois statistics help prove that the majority of the country’s wealth is appropriated by the capitalist class through the exploitation of our labor.
The working class must become conscious of its economic power, organize to expropriate the billionaires, and set up a workers’ government. On that basis, the existing wealth will be used to raise everyone’s living standards—the material starting point for a dignified and happy existence for all.