Examining the latest annual earnings data from the Social Security Administration, Elise Gould and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that “the top 1% now amasses a record share of total earnings, while the bottom 90% share of earnings has hit a historic low…Wages for the top 1% grew more than seven times as fast as wages for the bottom 90% between 1979 and 2021,”

Earnings inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the past four decades and continues to accelerate, with the top 0.1% seeing wage growth of 465% between 1979 and 2021 while the bottom 90% experienced just 29% growth during that same period.

The EPI experts noted that “the share of earnings at the very top—the top 0.1% of wage earners—is driving the rising earnings share of the top 1%.”

“The share of the top 0.1% increased from 1.6% of total earnings in 1979 to a whopping 5.9% of total earnings in 2021, roughly 3.7 times as much,” Gould and Kandra wrote. “Of the 7.3 percentage point rise in the share claimed by the top 1%, 4.3 percentage points (roughly 60%) can be explained by the rise of the top 0.1% share.”

“The bottom 90% of wage earners experienced wage growth that lagged far behind average growth for much of the last 40-plus years,” Gould and Kandra observed. “In 2021, average annual earnings of the bottom 90% were $36,571, while the top 5% earned, on average, $335,891, more than nine times as much as the bottom 90%.”

In 2020 and 2021, the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the “only group to experience real wage gains… was the top 1% of the earnings distribution.”

“While the bottom 90% experienced losses of 0.2%, those in the 90th-95th percentiles experienced larger losses of 2.0%,” EPI found. “Between 2020 and 2021, earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% rose 9.4% and 18.5%, respectively.”

“With the possible exception of excess unemployment, declining union membership plays the single most significant role in slow and unequal wage growth,” the pair wrote. “This erosion was not driven by workers’ declining interest in unions, but rather by concerted employer opposition, along with state and federal policy that has made it nearly impossible for workers to form unions in the face of unwilling employers.”

 More than half of all adults in Great Britain are buying less food and drink, with surging costs leaving the most vulnerable worst off.

People in the most deprived areas of England are the most likely to have cut back, with 61% saying they were buying less food when shopping last month, compared with 44% in the least deprived areas and 51% across Great Britain.

Almost a quarter of those questioned in the Food Standards Agency’s consumer insight tracker said they had skipped or reduced the size of a meal because they could not afford to buy supplies, as food and non-alcoholic drink prices rose by 16.5% in the year to November 2022, the highest increase since September 1977, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Staple foods such as bread and cereals, have seen the largest price increases, rising by 1.9% in the past month alone, contributing to an annual increase of 16.6%. Campaigners and analysts suggest that supermarkets have been raising prices in their cut-price ranges more quickly than more luxury items, piling pressure on those needing to save money.

That meant inflation for low-income households, where staple foods make up a bigger share of the budget, stood at 10.5%, while the figure for high-income households was 9.1%.

One study published this week, which tracked the cost of almost 19,000 items in UK supermarkets on a daily basis from July to December, found that items originally below 75p accelerated at the fastest rate – 16%. In contrast, items priced from £1.50 to £5 in July went up by just under 4%, and those above £5 fell by nearly 4%.’

 Price tracking agency Skuuudle said the differences made “difficult reading for those on low incomes who are seeing the cost of many value items increase but who may not be able to benefit at all from the reduction in price of more expensive items. This change could well be driven by a reduced demand for more expensive items as more people turn to value products during the cost of living crisis.”

Rising cost of basic food items leaving poorest people worst off, UK study finds | Inflation | The Guardian

 Speaker: Adam Buick

Friday 5th August 2022

 Covid-19 and drug overdoses led to a second straight year of worsening life expectancy in the US – its lowest in 25 years, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control.

  1.9m UK households failed to make at least one mortgage, rent, loan, credit card or other bill payment over the last month.

With the UK heading into recession, mortgages and rent costs rising and the energy price guarantee becoming less generous from April, consumers will only face further financial pressures in 2023 leading to more defaults, it warned.

About 4m households are likely to face higher mortgage payments in 2023, with the average monthly mortgage payment rising to £1,000 (up from £750), the equivalent of about 17% of pre-tax income.

Earlier this month the Trades Union Congress said 2022 has seen the sharpest fall in real wages since 1977 and the second worst on record since 1945. Analysis of official statistics found that real wages fell by an average of £76 a month in 2022 as a result of pay not keeping pace with inflation.

Nearly 2m UK households behind on bill payments as Christmas approaches | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 By mid-April, India is forecast to surpass China as the world’s most populous country.

  India’s fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades – from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today.

 A record number of brownfield sites in England that have been identified for redevelopment and could provide 1.2m homes are lying dormant.

The amount of land available covered 27,342 hectares (67,563 acres) in 2022, 6% more than in 2021. It has the capacity to provide 1.2m homes at a time of nationwide housing crisis.

Brownfield sites with room for 1.2m homes unused in England, report says | Housing | The Guardian

 Many American workers are suffering the mental and financial anguish of being suddenly laid off. After corporations complained of labor shortages through 2021 and 2022, several companies have shed workers in mass layoffs as 2022 comes to a close. Numerous high-profile tech companies, including Facebook’s Meta, Twitter and Amazon, announced mass layoffs in recent weeks.

Catalent, a pharmaceutical manufacturing contractor, recently informed employees the company is going to cut about 600 jobs in Indiana, Texas, and Maryland over the next several weeks, as demand for Covid vaccines has dropped significantly. Other corporations have announced mass layoffs right before the holidays, claiming economic downturns have driven the cuts, even as they record profits and the economy showing no signs of a downturn. 

Stellantis, which manufactures the Jeep Cherokee SUV, announced on 9 December the closure of an Illinois plant resulting in more than 1,200 workers being laid off by the end of February 2023. 

“It came without the slightest bit of warning and absolutely no details. It wasn’t even a rumor so it just dropped like a bomb,” said Deanna Viel, a worker at the plant Belvidere, Illinois.

Right before Thanksgiving, about 2,700 workers at United Furniture – a company that has facilities in Mississippi, California and North Carolina – received an email notifying them they were laid off immediately.

“These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it,” said Stanford Graduate School of Business Prof Jeffrey Pfeffer on the recent trend of tech companies shedding employees. “Layoffs often do not cut costs, as there are many instances of laid-off employees being hired back as contractors, with companies paying the contracting firm. Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.” 

 A study by UK researchers found a layoff to be the 7th most stressful life experience, correlated to significant increases in developing a new health condition as well as the risk of suicide, depression and substance abuse.

‘Heartless’ mass layoffs hit US workers ahead of holidays | Business | The Guardian

 How should we refer to the children of immigrants? The traditional answer is “second-generation immigrants”, yet “first-generation locals” is far more accurate, as a new research paper co-authored by Alan Manning, one of the UK’s top economists, points out.

The key issue for first-generation locals isn’t that their parents are migrants – it’s that they are often poor.

Class, not parents’ place of birth, determines the life chances of ‘first-generation locals’ | Torsten Bell | The Guardian

 Despite animal cruelty, environmental destruction, and human health impacts factory farming provides affordable meat to our populations, creates jobs in small towns, stimulates local economies, and helps families prosper so goes the argument presented by the meat industry. It is the pig’s or your own family’s welfare. 

 Have rural communities actually experienced their purported economic benefits? Has factory farming made life easier for the people in small towns?

A 2022 report by Food and Water Watch suggests the opposite. The report takes pig farms in Iowa as a case study of how our corporate-controlled food systems are failing environments, animals, and communities.

Factory farms, facilities that raise thousands of animals in extreme confinement to maximize production and profit, operated by multibillion-dollar corporations like Smithfield and JBS now dominate the meat market. Factory farms use this dominance to set the terms for pig prices, preventing fair pricing, contributing to market volatility, and pushing down the real price of pigs. The fact that these enormous corporate firms and their equally enormous factory farms control the market is irrefutable. 

But are they at least providing more jobs on the ground for the community? Despite years of claiming the contrary, the answer is straightforward: absolutely not. The study found that between 1982 and 2017, real median household income and total wage jobs declined in the counties that sold the most pigs and had the largest farms. The population also took a steep drop, at twice the rate of Iowa’s more rural counties. Job losses, too, were commonplace. Statewide, total farm employment dropped 44% between 1982 and 2017—the boom years for factory farming.

The results of this study are clear: Factory farming is bad for the economy, driving up the price of pigs without returning profits to local farmers. It puts local farms out of business and results in net job loss. Families suffer hardship as incomes decline, and property values diminish due to rampant pollution from factory farms.  It ensures that factory-farmed pigs grow up and die in misery, while our climate catastrophe worsens, human health deteriorates, and local communities suffer.

 Meat consumption increases the risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia, and more, the meat industry’s routine use of antibiotics to protect their bottom line results in antibiotic resistance in both farmed animals and the people who eat them.

Factory farms are not good for local communities. Who are factory farms good for? Large corporations. Factory farming—and its corporate chokehold on rural communities—is just as brutal to humans as it is to animals.

The meat industry has created a false dichotomy that pits people against animals – Alternet.org