The popular narrative about worker shortages and layoffs is aimed at building a cultural consensus against workers and the labour movement, and is based on biased, partial, and contradictory definitions.
Profits are booming and corporations are raising prices, but instead of regulating corporations, the Federal Reserve is using its powers to create a recession and raise unemployment. Workers will suffer.
The Fed knows inflation is a problem born of insufficient supply that only governments can tackle. But that doesn’t look like stopping it from pushing the US economy, and everyone else’s, into recession.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell plans to address sky-high inflation by hiking interest rates — acknowledging that doing so will suppress wages and worker power. It's a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the inflation crisis.
Starbucks, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Amazon – all protect profits by making customers pay more. We need the political courage to say they can and should cover rising costs themselves
"A large across-the-board increase in interest rates is a cure worse than the disease," says economist Joseph Stiglitz. "That might dampen inflation if it is taken far enough, but it will also ruin people's lives."
Spread the word