I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SUNDAY (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
Combine Angelou's "When someone shows you who they are, believe them" with the truism that in politics, "every accusation is a confession" and you get: "Every time someone accuses you of a vice, they're showing you who they are and you should believe them."
Let's talk about some of those accusations. Remember the moral panic over the CARES Act covid stimulus checks? Hyperventilating mouthpieces for the ruling class were on every cable network, complaining that "no one wants to work anymore." The barely-submerged subtext was their belief that the only reason people show up for work is that they're afraid of losing everything – their homes, their kids, the groceries in their fridge.
This isn't a new development. Back when Clinton destroyed welfare, his justification was that "handouts" make workers lazy. The way to goad workers off their sofas (and the welfare rolls) and into jobs was to instill fear in them:
This is also the firm belief of tech bosses: for them, mass tech layoffs are great news, because they terrorize the workers you don't fire, so that they'll be "extremely hardcore" and put in as many extra hours as the company demands, without even requiring any extra pay in return:
Now, there's an obvious answer to the problem of no one taking a job at the wage being offered: just increase the offer. Capitalists claim to understand this. Uber will tell you that surge pricing "incentivizes drivers" to take to the streets by offering them more money to drive during busy times:
(Note that while Uber once handed the lion's share of surge price premiums to drivers, these days, Uber just keeps the money, because they've entered the enshittification stage where drivers are so scared of being blacklisted that Uber can push them around instead of dangling carrots.)
(Also note that this logic completely fails when it comes to other businesses, like Wendy's, who briefly promised surge-priced hamburgers during busy times, but without even the pretense that the surge premium would be used to pay additional workers to rush to the restaurant and increase the capacity:)
So bosses knew how to address their worker shortage: higher wages. You know: supply and demand. For bosses, the issue wasn't supply, it was price. A worker who earns $10/hour but makes the company $20 profit every hour is splitting the surplus 50:50 with their employer. The employer has overheads (rent on the shop, inventory, advertising and administration) that they have to pay out of their end of that surplus. But workers also have overheads: commuting costs, child-care, a professional wardrobe, and other expenses the worker incurs just so they can make money for their boss.
There's no iron law of economics that says the worker/boss split should be 50/50. Depending on the bargaining power of workers and their bosses, that split can move around a lot. Think of McDonald's and Walmart workers who work for wildly profitable corporate empires, but are so badly paid that they have to rely on food stamps. The split there is more like 10/90, in the boss's favor.
The pandemic changed the bargaining power. Sure, workers got a small cushion from stimulus checks, but they also benefited from changes in the fundamentals of the labor market. For example, millions of boomers just noped out of their jobs, forever, unwilling to risk catching a fatal illness and furious to realize that their bosses viewed that as an acceptable risk.
Bosses' willingness to risk their workers' lives backfired in another way: killing hundreds of thousands of workers and permanently disabling millions more. Combine the boomer exodus with the workers who sickened or died, and there's just fewer workers to go around, and so now those workers enjoy more bargaining power. They can demand a better split: say, 75/25, in their favor.
Remember the 2015 American Airlines strike, where pilots and flight attendants got a raise? The eminently guillotineable Citibank analyst Kevin Crissey declared: "This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers":
Now, obviously, the corporation doesn't want to offer a greater share of its surplus to its workforce, but it certainly can do so. The more it pays its workers, the less profitable it will be, but that's capitalism, right? Corporations try to become as profitable as they can be, but they can't just decree that their workers must work for whatever pay they want to offer (that's serfdom).
Companies also don't get to dictate that we must buy their goods at whatever price they set (the would be a planned economy, not a market economy). There's no law that says that when the cost of making something goes up, its price should go up, too. A business that spends $10 to make a widget you pay $15 for has a $5 margin to play with. If the business's costs go up to $11, they can still charge $15 and take $1 less in profits. Or they can raise the price to $15.50 and split the difference.
But when businesses don't face competition, they can make you eat their increased costs. Take Verizon. They made $79b in profit last year, and also just imposed a $4/month service charge on their mobile customers due to "rising operational costs":
Now, Verizon is very possibly lying about these rising costs. Excuseflation is rampant and rising, as one CEO told his investors, when the news is full of inflation-talk, "it’s an opportunity to increase the prices without getting a whole bunch of complaining from the customers":
But even stipulating that Verizon is telling the truth about these "rising costs," why should we eat those costs? There's $79b worth of surplus between Verizon's operating costs and its gross revenue. Why not take it out of Verizon's bottom line?
For 40 years, neoliberal economists have emphasized our role as "consumers" (as though consumers weren't also workers!). This let them play us off against one-another: "Sure, you don't want the person who rings up your groceries to get evicted because they can't pay their rent, but do you care about it enough to pay an extra nickel for these eggs?"
But again, there's no obvious reason why you should pay that extra nickel. If you have the buying power to hold prices down, and workers have the labor power to keep wages up, then the business has to absorb that nickel. We can have a world where workers can pay their rent and you can afford your groceries.
So how do we get bosses to agree to take less so we can have more? They've told us how: for bosses, the thing that motivates workers to show up for shitty jobs is fear – fear of losing their homes, fear of going hungry.
When your boss says, "If you don't want to do this job for minimum wage, there's someone else who will," they're telling you that the way to get a raise out of them is to engineer things so that you can say, "If you don't want to pay me a living wage for this job, there's someone else who will."
Their accusation – that you only give someone else a fair shake when you're afraid of losing out – is a confession: to get them to give you a fair shake, we have to make them afraid. They're showing us who they are, and we should believe them.
In her Daily Show appearance, FTC chair Lina Khan quipped that monopolies are too big to care:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM
Philosophers of capitalism are forever praising its ability to transform greed into public benefit. As Adam Smith put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." The desire to make as much money as possible, on its own, doesn't produce our dinner, but when the butcher, the brewer and the baker are afraid that you will take your labor or your wallet elsewhere, they pay more and charge less.
Capitalists don't want market economies, where they have to compete with one another, eroding their margins and profits – they want a planned economy, like Amazon, where Party Secretary Bezos and his commissars tell merchants what they can sell and tell us what we must pay:
Capitalists don't want free labor, where they have to compete with rival capitalists to bid on their workers' labor – they want noncompetes, bondage fees, and "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) that force their workers to stay in dead-end jobs rather than shopping for a better wage:
Capitalists hate capitalism, because capitalism only works if the capitalists are in a constant state of terror inspired by the knowledge that tomorrow, someone smarter could come along and open a better business, poaching their customers and workers, and putting the capitalist on the breadline.
Being in a constant precarious state makes people lose their minds, and capitalists know it. That's why they work so hard to precaratize the rest of us, saddling us with health debt, education debt, housing debt, stagnating wages and rising prices. It's not just because that makes them more money in the short term from our interest payments and penalties. It's because it de-risks their lives: monopolies and cartels can pass on any extra costs to consumers, who'll eat shit and take it:
A workforce that goes to bed every night worrying about making the rent is a workforce that put in unpaid overtime and thank you for it.
Capitalists hate capitalism. You know who didn't hate capitalism? Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. The first chapter of The Communist Manifesto is just these two guys totally geeking out about how much cool stuff we get when capitalists are afraid and therefore productive:
https://pluralistic.net/SpectreHaunting
But when capitalists escape their fears, the alchemical reaction that converts greed to prosperity fizzles, leaving nothing behind but greed and its handmaiden, enshittification. Google search is in the toilet, getting worse every year, but rather than taking reduced margins and spending more fighting spam, the company did a $80b stock-buyback and fired 12,000 skilled technologists, rather than using that 80 bil to pay their wages for the next twenty-seven years:
Monopoly apologists like to argue that monopolists can rake in the giant profits necessary to fund big, ambitious projects the produce better products at lower prices and make us all better off. But even if monopolists can spend their monopoly windfalls on big, ambitious projects, they don't. Why would they?
If you're Google, you can either spend tens of billions on R&D to keep up with spam and SEO scumbags, or you can spend less money buying the default search spot on every platform, so no one ever tries another search engine and switches:
How do we get capitalists to work harder to make their workers and customers better off? Capitalists tell us how, every day. We need to make them afraid.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The anti-Zionist activist group Jewish Voice for Peace will pay a penalty of $677,634 to the US government after allegations of fraud.
Jewish Voice for Peace received a loan under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that was launched in March 2020, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia says in a statement.
Groups engaged in political or lobbying activities were not eligible for the loans, and Jewish Voice for Peace said it was not engaged in such activities in its loan application. An investigation determined that “Jewish Voice for Peace was primarily engaged in political activities,” however, the statement says.
The investigation came after a complaint filed by The Zionist Advocacy Center, a New York-based group.
Jewish Voice for Peace received a loan of $388,817, and, as part of a civil settlement, agreed to pay twice that amount in a penalty. The settlement does not include a “determination of liability,” the district attorney’s office says.
“Jewish Voice for Peace contends that any misstatements in this application were inadvertent,” the statement says.
Jewish Voice for Peace took in $3.3 million in revenue, mainly from donations and grants, between July 2022 and July 2023, according to its most recent tax filings.
STUDENT LOAN HAVERS:
Did you know that under the CARES act you can have any payments made after 3/13/20 refunded? This will cause your loan to go back up to that amount, but if anyone is getting their loan forgiven and has less than $10K or you're like me and were trying to pay down your loans during the 0% interest period and then got it forgiven finally for PSLF?
Just was on the phone with FedLoan and they have processed my refund. I may have cried a bit about this. Hopefully this information helps someone else out there!
My friend found this out from TikTok! It was a very very tiny sentence tucked away on my loan provider's webpage, so it's hidden away. But call and ask for it!!!
The word “forbearance” is fancy, old-fashioned, and deeply foreboding: the Hill House of financial terminology.
But it’s a pretty simple concept. “Forbearance” is a temporary postponement of repayment on a loan. Basically, whoever lent you money-a bank, a credit card company, the gubern’mint-has pressed pause on your payments so you have time to get your shit together.
You can request student loan forbearance at any time, but lenders are much more likely to agree to it if you’re facing a significant hardship: you lost your job, you got very sick, you watched Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! from start to finish, and so on and so forth.
Under normal circumstances, the terms of every forbearance agreement are unique. Twelve months is a fairly standard timeframe. You could make no payments, or smaller payments-it all depends on what kind of agreement you make with your lender.
How is that different from deferment?
You may have heard of something called “deferment.” When I was a baby bitch, I was told that deferment and forbearance are different, and that deferment is always better. The reason: deferred loans did not accrue interest, but forborne loans did-a distinction I’ll explain more clearly below.
Anyway, that is OLD, BAD ADVICE! Don’t follow it. Here’s why.
In actual practice, not every lender uses the same language to describe the same terms! Just because your lender’s website uses the word “deferment” instead of the word “forbearance,” it does not automatically mean you’re getting a better deal. You must always check the terms for yourself and ask for a clarification if you’re not sure. That’s why I encourage you to assume that deferment and forbearance mean the same thing.
The better, more precise version of that advice is: a postponed loan agreement is a much better deal for you if the loan‘s interest is also paused.
Ask the Bitches: “The Government Put Student Loans in Forbearance. Can I Stop Paying—or Is It a Trap?”
Chicago is sitting on nearly $2 billion in federal COVID relief funds. While the Mayor continues to signal she will prioritize re-paying big
9.14.21. Chicago
CPD arrest non-violent protestors demanding that federal COVID reliefs help those most in need and impacted by COVID. Mayor Lightfoot spent almost 70% of CARES Act discretionary funds on police payroll. 4.5% went to public health.
Write or call your alderperson to demand COVID relief funds help those most harmed by COVID
According to a joint analysis conducted by the counter-disinformation consulting firm Alethea Group and the nonprofit Global Disinformation
According to a joint analysis conducted by the counter-disinformation consulting firm Alethea Group and the nonprofit Global Disinformation Index, at least five companies behind some of the internet’s top sources of false, misleading or conspiratorial information related to COVID-19, including the Epoch Times, Newsmax and the Federalist, received sizable loans from the federal government as part of the Paycheck Protection Program
UNEMPLOYED WORKERS UNION WILL FILE CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT ON THURSDAY
PRESS CONFERENCE, THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 9 AM SHARP @ CUMMINGS COURTHOUSE, 111 N. CALVERT ST, BALTIMORE (MEET AT 8:30 AM)
We will be filing our lawsuit in court this Thursday, June 24, 2021, which is the first step before an actual hearing is set.
Everyone is included in the suit regardless of whether you are in the smaller group of named plaintiffs. We are asking the court to certify a large class: all unemployed workers in Maryland who filed for benefits. Every grievance, every statement filled out and recorded has the potential to be used as evidence.
Along with winning unemployment benefits for all of those who have yet to receive their payments, we are asking for an injunction on Governor Hogan's halting federal pandemic benefits.
Again please meet us at 8:30 AM, Thursday outside the Cummings Courthouse at 111 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore 21202. Our attorney will then file at 9:30 AM. We are asking as many people as possible, especially unemployed workers and their supporters, to attend.
We will Livestream, and the media will be present.
Please meet us at 8:30 AM, so that we are ready. The event will begin at 9 AM sharp.
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Don't forget:
UNEMPLOYED & WORKERS RIGHTS CLINIC from: 6 PM to 8 PM at 2011 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
It is still critical to file your grievance. Our attorney and assistance will be on hand to take your statements.
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Delegate Sheila Ruth has sent the Unemployed Worker Union important information.
Wednesday, June 24, 10 AM, the MGA Joint Committee on Unemployment Insurance Oversight will be holding a "Briefing from the Maryland Department of Labor on Implementation of UI Legislation." The hearing will be about the UI bills the MGA passed in the 2021 session. The briefing will be live-streamed on YouTube. When it goes live, there will be a camera icon in the "Joint Committee on Unemployment Insurance Oversight" section on this page:
THANK YOU AGAIN to all who have participated in filling out grievances, spoken out at the Town Hall meeting, and attended the Annapolis and other protests. We have learned that since speaking out some workers have received their benefits. Wonderful! It proves that standing up for what is right counts! We will not rest until everyone receives their deserved benefits.
They called it the Gilded Age — the period from the Civil War to the turn of the century. It was an era of astonishing economic growth and just as shocking wealth inequality. By 1913, the top 1% (including the likes of Rockefeller, Frick and Carnegie) owned 45% of the nation's wealth. Today, that 1% once again own nearly 40% of the total wealth. And their share is still climbing!
Sadly, it's our own government that is eagerly assisting these over-moneyed few in their unending quest to acquire even bigger bankrolls. It starts, of course, with the tax cuts whose benefits chiefly accrue to the rich that get pushed through every time the Republicans are in charge. But that's only part of how the federal government shovels money upward.
Take, for example, the $2.2 trillion COVID relief package called the CARES Act that was passed in March 2020. It included emergency payments to struggling American households. But plenty of non-struggling billionaires also nosed up to the trough.
Corporate raider Ira Rennert (worth $3.7 billion, according to Forbes) got a relief check from the government. So did prominent hedge fund manager George Soros (worth $8.6 billion), as well as Forrest Preston ($1.2 billion), founder of Life Care Centers of America, one of the largest long-term care companies in the US.
In fact, ProPublica found 270 well-heeled taxpayers who collectively disclosed $5.7 billion in income, according to their previous tax returns, but who were able to claim such massive deductions that they all listed negative net incomes on their tax returns. And therefore qualified for those relief checks.
That's right. Beyond not having to pay income taxes in the first place, our needy billionaires even get refunds. For instance, Timothy Headington is an oil mogul and real estate developer who's worth $1.4 billion and had $62 million in income in 2018. But after $342 million in write-offs, his income was negative $280 million.
Same for Rennert, whose $64 million in income that year was erased by $355 million in deductions, for a final total of negative $291 million. Then there's long-time tax dodger Robert Dart, former CEO of Dart Container (they make those red go-cups.) He reported income exceeding $300 million, but deductions left him with a taxable income of negative $39 million.
Asked what he thought about billionaires receiving stimulus checks, Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), responded, “The tax code is simply not equipped to tax billionaires fairly, or even ensure they pay anything at all.” He forgot to add, "Welcome to the new Gilded Age."
