Stunning political events have taken place over the past month. A major presidential candidate who seemed poised to win survived an attempted assassination, after which the other major candidate dropped out, and his replacement precipitated a wild swing in momentum — all in only a few weeks’ time.
These events have accented an election that already involved important issues framed in existential terms, from the future of reproductive rights to the very continuation of our democracy. But as the smoke settles (for now) and the main presidential contenders have become established, this election may turn on one central issue: inflation.
While everyone agrees that inflation is happening — less intensely than at its recent peak, but still with major impacts on American households — the Joe Biden administration has struggled to articulate a clear explanation of its central causes and effective solutions. Closer to the beginning of his term, the Biden team and establishment media blamed supply chain issues. More recently, they have resorted to wonky statistics to explain that actually Americans don’t realize how good they have it. The solution has essentially been outsourced to the Federal Reserve and their one-trick pony approach of increasing interest rates.
The AFL-CIO, the country’s major labor union federation, has put forward a much clearer and more compelling message, placing the blame for crippling price increases squarely on rapacious CEOs and their outlandish compensation. In its annual Executive Paywatch report, it finds that CEO pay at S&P 500 companies has actually increased 6 percent over the last year to an average of $17.7 million.
The statistics put the economy’s weaknesses in shocking perspective. Workers at these companies would need to work more than five career lifetimes to earn what their CEOs make in only one year. The report frames it another way: the median employee would have needed to start working in the…
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Auteur: Paul Prescod
