In recent months, corporate bosses, its media lap-dogs and top Federal Reserve officials have pointed to workers’ wages as a factor in surging prices, which have pushed overall inflation in the United States to a four-decade high.

The AFL-CIO’s latest annual analysis of top executive pay was published Monday with the following conclusion: “CEOs, not working people, are causing inflation.”

The AFL-CIO’s new report attempts to reframe the national inflation discussion, emphasizing that while wage increases won by ordinary workers are drawing outsized attention from policymakers and executives, CEO pay hikes significantly outpaced the wage increases of rank-and-file employees last year. 

“Runaway CEO pay is a symptom of greedflation—when companies increase prices to boost corporate profits and create windfall payouts for corporate CEOs,” the new analysis states.

The report shows that “in 2021, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received, on average, $18.3 million in total compensation.”

“CEO pay rose 18.2%, faster than the U.S. inflation rate of 7.1%,” the analysis finds. “In contrast, U.S. workers’ wages fell behind inflation, with worker wages rising only 4.7% in 2021. The average S&P 500 company’s CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 324-to-1.”

The highest-paid executive among S&P 500 companies last year was Expedia’s Peter Kern, who brought in an eye-popping $296 million in total compensation.

Other executives at the top of the 2021 list were Amazon CEO Andy Jassy ($213 million), Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger ($179 million), Apple CEO Tim Cook ($99 million), and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon ($84 million).

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said that “last year, Amazon delivered the highest CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500 Index with a pay ratio of 6,474 to 1.”

“Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy received $212.7 million in total compensation,” he noted. “What did Amazon’s median worker earn last year? Just $32,855… Corporate profits and runaway CEO pay are responsible for causing inflation, not workers’ wages.”

Economist Dean Baker similarly argued that soaring executive pay is contributing to inflation, which has eroded modest wage gains that many ordinary workers have seen since late 2020.

“We… transfer tens of billions of dollars upward to CEOs and other top corporate executives through the corrupt corporate governance structure that we have instituted,” writes Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “In this context, it is not surprising that even mediocre CEOs can get paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars annually. And, it is not just the CEO. If the CEO gets $20 million, the chief financial officer might get $10 to $12 million, and even third-tier executives may get $2 to $3 million.”

‘CEOs, Not Working People, Are Causing Inflation’: Report Shows Soaring Executive Pay (commondreams.org)

 America’s massive lead problem came into focus in 2015, when thousands of mostly Black residents in the city of Flint, Michigan, were found to have been poisoned by lead in their drinking water. Since then it has become clear that this problem is systemic and widespread, and that many other Americans lack access to water that is reliably safe and clean. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said there are no safe levels of lead, which is now recognized as a neurotoxin that can cause lower IQ, developmental delays and behavioral problems in children, as well as kidney and cardiovascular problems in adults. But there are still up to 12.8m houses and apartment buildings connected to the water system with lead lines in the US, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Biden had promised to rid the nation of lead contamination of its water supply. Yet the 2021 infrastructure spending package approved by Congress contained only enough federal funding to replace a third of the country’s lead pipes – leaving cities to figure the rest out for themselves.

The issue is now of low-income residents being left out of lead line replacements – or even getting more lead because of partial fixes. Studies have found that black and brown children are far more likely to have elevated levels of lead in their blood and to live in older homes with lead lines, yet it tends to be wealthier white residents who take advantage of local programs that offer property owners loans to replace lead pipes.

Cities that are undertaking lead replacement programs often ask homeowners to pay to replace the portions under their private property. If owners don’t pay, some cities essentially cut the lines in half, removing the city-owned portions of the lead lines but leaving the lines on private property intact. One problem, for those in buildings with no replacements, is that they still have lead pipes. Another is that disrupting or cutting the old pipes can cause more lead to break loose and flow into the residents’ water.

“We’re just dealing with so many other things in our community,” said Monica Huertas, a social worker, who runs a neighborhood environmental group. “It’s the water, it’s the soil, it’s the jobs, it’s the color of your skin … Our community’s overburdened and we’re all overworked and underpaid.”

Revealed: US cities refusing to replace toxic lead water pipes unless residents pay | Water | The Guardian

 A report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week finds that since the $7.25 an hour wage was established in 2009, its real value has declined 27 percent, bringing the value of the federal minimum wage to its lowest point in 66 years.

Further, the value of the minimum wage is 40 percent lower when compared to its highest historical value of about $12.12 in 1968 after adjustment for inflation.

The last time that the federal minimum wage was lower than its current value was in 1956, when it was worth $7.19 in 2022 dollars.

 The MIT living wage calculator has found that, for instance, a single mother with two children making the federal minimum wage would need to work 235 hours a week – more hours than exist in a week – in order to make a livable wage.

Economists say that, if the minimum wage were raised in proportion to the productivity gains over the decades, the federal minimum wage would be $31.67 an hour. If it were raised alongside Wall Street executive bonuses since 1985, it would be $44.12.

 Although fast food and other service workers have been waging a campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even that number – over twice the federal minimum wage – is now only worth the equivalent of $11.65 in 2012 dollars, which is the year that Fight for $15 began.

The Value of the Federal Minimum Wage Is at a 66-Year Low (truthout.org)

 While Europe swelters under an unprecedented heatwave, making daily life intolerable, in the Horn of Africa, a persistent prolonged drought is making life unliveable.

Four consecutive rainy seasons have failed. Water wells have dried up, crops have withered and millions of livestock have died, resulting in mass displacement.

“The impact of the drought on children is devastating,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director for Emergency Operations. “In Somali region alone, over 900,000 people have been displaced. Drought not only means lack of water. It means that children are going hungry and thirsty every day. They are forced to walk miles in search of food and water and often they have to drink from contaminated water sources. This leads to malnutrition and other killer preventable diseases like diarrhea.”

“This climate-induced crisis is a malnutrition crisis for children and not just in Ethiopia but across Africa,” said Fontaine. 

Malnutrition rates are increasing at an alarming rate due to the drought. Across the four drought-impacted regions, an estimated 600,000 children will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition by the end of the year. 

In the Somali region, there has been a 43 per cent increase in severely acute malnutrition admissions for under 5 children in May 2022 compared to May 2021.

 The side-effect of the war in Ukraine is also set to tip more families in Africa over the edge and will exacerbate food insecurity with increasing fuel prices and reduced availability of wheat imports. Ethiopia imports 67 per cent of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine.

“This means prices of cooking oil, bread and wheat flour are reaching new records in local markets and even families not living in humanitarian crisis cannot meet their daily food needs.” said Fontaine.

UNICEF Emergency Director, Manuel Fontaine, visits drought stricken Somali region and calls for an immediate scaled up humanitarian response to save millions of children – Ethiopia | ReliefWeb

The Rail Delivery Group, which represents the rail companies, said it had rejected a cost-of-living pay rise for RMT memberson the grounds that it would be ‘unfair to taxpayers’ given the emergency funding the government had provided to the industry during the pandemic.

 Yet just last week, the UK’s largest train operator, FirstGroup, boasted to investors that profits for this year were “ahead of expectation” and pledged to resume dividend payouts. The company handed its shareholders £500m in December 2021.

Abellio, which runs Greater Anglia, East Midlands Railway and West Midlands Railway, contributed €355m (£305m) to the profits of its sole shareholder – the Dutch state railway – according to latter’s 2021 annual report.

UK Treasury chief secretary Simon Clarke said private and public sector workers should exercise “pay discipline” and take real-terms pay cuts to curb inflation. However, rail bosses have largely seen their pay continue to rise, or faced only superficial cuts.

The CEOs of the six biggest train companies took home a combined salary of more than £5m in 2020.

In the last financial year, FirstGroup CEO Matthew Gregory was paid £840,000 – 6% more than he received in 2019-2020 and 30 times more than what the company’s lowest-paid workers earned, according to its latest annual accounts. 

By contrast, rail companies offered the RMT a 2% pay rise, with an additional 1% contingent on accepting changes to their terms and conditions, in their latest round of negotiations. 

Go-Ahead Group, which operates the Govia Thameslink Railway, paid its interim chief financial officer a salary of £100,000 a month from September 2021 to March 2022 while it recruited a permanent replacement. The company recently announced it would resume paying dividends in 2022, having last paid out £30m to shareholders in 2019.

Rail strikes: Top train firm paid shareholders £500m last year | openDemocracy

 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine albeit with various exemptions.

Men who seek to leave Ukraine choose the route via Crimea, which was annexed by Russia. Others enrol in a foreign university, find a job as a volunteer emergency aid driver or try to cross the so-called green border on foot.

Social networks offer various tips. The Instagram account “Departure for Everyone” has more than 14,000 followers. 

 “Legal Move Abroad,” a Telegram channel, has more than 53,000 followers.

 And its backup channel, “Help at the Border,” has more than 28,000. 

In May, Odesa lawyer Alexander Gumirov launched a petition demanding Kyiv lift the ban on men travelling abroad and calling instead for the recruitment of volunteers. In just a few days, the petition gathered 25,000 signatures. Gumirow considers the ban pointless. “If a person wants to defend his free, beloved native country, his home and his family, there is no need for a ban on leaving,” he said, adding that a ban is unnecessary, too, if people don’t want to defend their home.

How Ukrainian men try to get around the ban to leave the country | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 19.07.2022

One couldn’t have but noticed that in the build-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine peace talk was the harbinger of the war. The louder and more the politicians and statesmen talked, the nearer war approached. When governments are proclaiming their peaceful intentions one can be sure that a war is in the offing.

The prospect of war with its slaughter and suffering is, undoubtedly, vile and revolting. It is understandable that any human being should brand it as immoral and seek to oppose it. But an enemy is always portrayed as despicable and diabolical, while atrocity tales of barbarism are circulated and the enemy is proclaimed the enemy of all decency and of all civilisation in general. Russia’s leader, Putin, has been characterised as the violator of all that peace-loving people hold dear. 

Widespread opposition to war will not, and cannot arise from sentimentalism and emotionalism. It must have its roots in an understanding of what causes war, the purposes for which wars are fought and a recognition of worldwide class interests, irrespective of nationality, language, colour, sex or any other sectional division. Workers must understand that they have a common interest with those whom they are sent to kill and that the real enemy is the social class that sends them to do the killing, then there is a prospect of an end to war. Until then, peace activists will no more stop future wars than it has staved them off in the past.

For years the Socialist Party has had to put up with the apathy or wrongly directed zeal of the great majority and has been trying to get the workers of all countries to realise that, without a fundamentally different and better basis for the social system, there never would be or could be any safeguard against war. But we who were engaged in the campaign of showing the only way of escape were not listened to. We had to put up with the people who were “not interested in politics,” or who thought they knew of short cuts or easier ways.

There have been active peace movements in all parts of the world, organising petitions and protests. Never in all their previous history have these activities been so amply demonstrated to be absolutely futile and impotent as at the present day to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Their efforts are misdirected and quite useless. The capitalist juggernaut lurches onwards, unheeding to the inevitable clashes, pitting worker against worker in ineffectual and ghastly conflict. The peace activists call attention to the evils of war (of, which we all are already painfully aware) but stop short of unearthing the cause, i.e., capitalist competition between the nations for trade routes, markets and sources of raw materials. The solution follows logically, i.e. a worldwide movement by the workers for the establishment of a worldwide socialist society.

Wars between nations is occasioned by the struggle for markets and for the possession of regions rich in mineral wealth, while the present competitive system remains inevitable. It cannot be attributed to human weakness, and cannot, therefore, be removed by appeals, however eloquent, to the “better nature” of the peoples of the world. 

Our attitude to war, the Socialist Party’s attitude, is one of uncompromising opposition because we contend that the workers have a common interest against the world capitalist class, and have nothing to gain by partaking in the quarrels of the latter, which are only possible with the continuance of exploitation.

The political leaders who served their masters by opposing any ceasefire to the war until the foe had been vanquished are right in one thing. Conflicts are not settled by equitable negotiation but only when one or the other is prepared to yield, or when the object of each has become unattainable. Those in the peace movement – unless seeking the overthrow of capitalism—are in the position of accepting the competitive social system which necessarily breeds bitter rivalries and of thinking at the same time that the rivalries can be settled by amicable discussion at the council table.

Modern war is fought to settle the squabbles of capitalism’s master class; it does not involve the interests of the ordinary people except that it brings them nothing but suffering. If the working class refuse to fight—as we say they should—it should be on these grounds—and this should apply to all war, not just to the Ukraine war. To the workers who understand their position in society, it is a matter of indifference which section of the international master class wins or loses, for it will be the workers of both sides who lose their lives or gain nothing if they survive.

The Socialist Party advocates the organisation of the working class for the capture of the political machinery in order that a new social order may be established in which the means of life will be owned in common by all and in which therefore there will be no need for the forcible protection of property and the slaughter of millions of producers in order to decide which bunch of parasites shall control the trade routes and markets of the world.

 Between March and May, pay excluding bonuses was down 2.8% from a year earlier when adjusted for inflation – the fastest drop since records began. Pay including bonuses was down 0.9% when adjusted for inflation.

 Climate scientists are  increasingly concerned that extreme heatwaves in Europe are occurring more rapidly than models had suggested, indicating that the climate crisis on the European continent may be even worse than feared. Temperature records are usually broken by fractions of a degree, but the 40.2C recorded at Heathrow is 1.5C higher than the previous UK record of 38.7C recorded in 2019 in Cambridge. They say the latest record showed that slashing carbon emissions, and rapidly upgrading the UK’s overheating homes and buildings, was more urgent than ever.

The role of human-caused global heating appears clear, as the scientists estimated that chances of breaking 40C in the UK without it would be less than 0.1%. Dr Friederike Otto at Imperial College London said 40C “would have been extremely unlikely or virtually impossible without human-caused climate change”. Otto added: “While still rare, 40C is now a reality of British summers.”

“Climate change is driving this heatwave, just as it is driving every heatwave now,” she said. “Greenhouse gas emissions, from burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil, are making heatwaves hotter, longer-lasting and more frequent.” 

Prof Hannah Cloke, at the University of Reading, said: “The all-time temperature record for the UK has not just been broken, it has been absolutely obliterated. Even as a climate scientist who studies this stuff, this is scary.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see this [40C] in my career,” said Prof Stephen Belcher, at the Met Office.

Climate action remained vital, said Otto: “Heatwaves will keep getting worse until greenhouse gas emissions are halted. It is also in our hands whether every future heatwave will continue to be extremely deadly and disruptive,” she said. “We have the agency to make us less vulnerable and redesign our cities, homes, schools and hospitals and educate us on how to keep safe.”

Day of 40C shocks scientists as UK heat record ‘absolutely obliterated’ | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 More than 37 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes. The disease can damage organs, eyesight, and limbs if left unmanaged and is the country’s seventh leading cause of death.

Just three pharmaceutical corporations control the nation’s lucrative insulin market, the century-old drug can cost a person without adequate health insurance more than $300 per vial. Insulin prices in the U.S.—seven times higher than those found in peer countries—are so steep that experts have accused the federal government and pharmaceutical industry of violating human rights. A quarter of people with diabetes have to ration insulin to survive in the U.S.A.

Legislation passed by the House and considered by the Senate last year included language that would have made all insulin products subject to Medicare price negotiation and that would have capped Medicare beneficiaries’ insulin copays at $35 per month.

Both provisions have been left out of the latest draft of the bill released by the Senate Finance Committee, however.

Excluding Insulin From Drug Price Reform a ‘Slap in the Face,’ Advocates Say (commondreams.org)