The Vocabulary of Oppression and Disinformation

  

Woke – “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Merriam Webster. Sounds a whole lot like the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Stuff like tolerance (“Let him has not sinned cast the first stone” or wokey stuff like “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek”).

Socialism – “a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property… b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” Merriam Webster. Given the number of flagrant American billionaires, I don’t think this is remotely happening in the United States. Often confused with “social programs,” governmental benefits like Medicare, Medicaid and public education… which are dramatically different. A “social disease,” for example, is also not socialism.

Special Military Operations – According to Wikipedia, these are “Special operations may include reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, and counter-terrorism actions, and are typically conducted by small groups of highly-trained personnel, emphasizing sufficiency, stealth, speed, and tactical coordination, commonly known as ‘special forces’.” In Russia, its clandestine meaning is all-out war, including the use of banned weapons to annihilate both civilian and military targets, indiscriminately blasting schools, hospitals and residential areas.

Liberator – One who frees “(something, such as a country) from domination by a foreign power.” Merriam Webster. Often a fabrication used by autocrats and bully nations to justify invasion of another country, recently cited by Vladimir Putin in connection with his “special military operations” against Ukraine.

Patriot – “one who loves and supports his or her country.” Merriam Webster. Rising US connotation, as in connection with the patriot movement: “a term which is used to describe a conglomeration of non-unified right-wing populist, nationalist political movements, most notably far-right armed militias, sovereign citizens, and tax protesters. Ideologies held by patriot movement groups often focus on anti-government conspiracy theories, with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describing a common belief that ‘government has been infiltrated and subverted’ and is no longer legitimate. The movement first emerged in 1994 in response to what members saw as ‘violent government repression’ of dissenting groups, along with increased gun control and the Clinton government.” Wikipedia. Often associated with groups that believe Donald Trump was truly reelected last November and that the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol to reverse the outcome of that election was a patriotic effort, “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Supply-side Economics – “a theory that reducing taxes especially for rich people will lead to an improved economy.” Merriam Webster. Also known as: “trickle-down economics,” “incenting the job creators,” etc. Based on the theory that given a tax cut, the rich will immediately hire a lot more people and create many new solid jobs. There is no evidence anywhere in the world that rich people act that way… ever.

Critical Race Theory – “a group of concepts (such as the idea that race is a sociological rather than biological designation, and that racism pervades society and is fostered and perpetuated by the legal system) used for examining the relationship between race and the laws and legal institutions of a country and especially the United States.” Merriam Webster. Laws banning the discussion of critical race theory in public schools, for example, are aimed at stopping classroom examinations of current and past examples of racial discrimination and intolerance. Predicated on a belief that Supreme Court cases and federal statutes, beginning in the 1950s, forever eliminated racism in the United States. 

Cancel Culture –  “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure… the mass withdrawal of support from public figures or celebrities who have done things that aren't socially accepted today.” Merriam Webster. Europe’s ban on Nazi memorabilia, flags and statues is an example of cancel culture. In the United States, taking down Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders is also considered to be cancel culture.

My body, my choice – “When someone invokes the phrase ‘my body, my choice,’ they are insinuating that they have (or should have) a legal right to do to their body whatever they want.” Psychology Today. This is primarily a fabricated right (not within the US Constitution) that individuals claim allows them to refuse vaccinations for diseases that may well infect many other or allow dangerous variants to propagate. Commonly, the same advocates also believe that abortion should be illegal, and that drug dealers and narcotics addicts should face criminal charges.

America First – A major campaign slogan (part of the “Make America Great” movement) for Donald Trump has its roots in antisemitism: “The photo of KKK members marching with an ‘America first’ banner dates from the 1920s and can be found in the Getty Images archive. [See above photo next to a contemporary KKK publication.] The Ku Klux Klan ‘coin’ (actually a token) bearing the slogans ‘America First” and ‘Preserve Racial Purity’ on one face and ‘The Invisible Empire’ on the other was struck in 1965 to celebrate the centennial of the KKK’s founding, numismatists say, although it was never officially endorsed by the organization… The phrase ‘America first’ also appears in Klan literature as part of a longer credo, ‘America first, last and forever,’ or its variant ‘America first, last and always,’ as uttered by a KKK speaker quoted in the Binghamton, New York Press and Sun-Bulletin in 1923:” Snopes.com.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I could just keep adding to this list, but remember, when you see or hear these words uttered by politicians and their followers, those expressions carry deep, toxic and highly oppressive meanings that are well understood by those who share that belief system.

Space, the Final Frontier… Next War Zone

 

Posted by The Irish Sun, December 23, 2021

“Time to let the American broomstick fly and hear the sounds of freedom.”                                                            SpaceX Official as Russia threatened to stop supplying rocket engines to U.S. companies, notably, Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance

The shared global space mission, including both Russian and American space travelers, is scheduled to bring astronauts back to earth on March 30th. A Soyuz capsule will remove these residents from the International Space Station and return them to earth… in Kazakhstan, a Russia-friendly nation from which many Russian space missions are launched. A bit touchy given the explosive situation between NATO powers and Russia over Ukraine. American Astronaut, Mark Vande Hei, “who on Tuesday [3/15 broke] the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days — is due to leave with two Russians… The astronaut and flight engineer will have logged 355 days in space by then, setting a U.S. record. The world record of 438 continuous days in space belong[ed] to Russia.” Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, March 15th. 

To make matters worse, Russian Space Agency’s hard-line leader, Dmitry Rogozin, is a major outspoken champion of brutal autocrat Vladimir Putin. The relations on board the space station are thus less than cordial, and the future of that joint space program is very much in jeopardy for obvious reasons. “Vande Hei , 55, a retired Army colonel, moved into the space station last April, launching on a Soyuz from Kazakhstan with Pyotr Dubrov and another Russian. He and Dubrov stayed twice as long as usual to accommodate a Russian film crew that visited in October.

“As the situation 260 miles below intensified last month, Vande Hei acknowledged that he was avoiding conversations about Ukraine with Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, their Russian commander. Three more Russians [blasted] off Friday [3/18] from Kazakhstan to replace them… ‘We haven’t talked about that too much. I’m not sure we really want to go there,’ Vande Hei told a TV interviewer in mid-February… Space station operations continue as always — in orbit and on Earth, according to NASA… ‘It would be a sad day for international operations if we can’t continue to peacefully operate in space,’ said NASA human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders, noting that it would be ‘very difficult’ to go it alone…

“Besides threatening to pull out of the space station and drop it on the U.S., Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin had the flags of other countries covered on a Soyuz rocket awaiting liftoff with internet satellites earlier this month. The launch was called off after the customer, London-based OneWeb, refused his demands that the satellites not be used for military purposes and that the British government halt its financial backing.

“The European Space Agency also is reeling. After missing a 2020 launch deadline for its Mars rover — a joint European-Russian effort — the project was on track for a September liftoff from Kazakhstan. Now it’s probably off until 2024, the next opportunity for Earth and Mars to be properly aligned. And Russia has pulled its staff out of the French-run launch site in South America, suspending Soyuz launches of European satellites.

“All this comes on top of the Russian government’s anti-satellite missile test in November that added countless pieces of junk to the debris already encircling Earth and put the space station’s four Americans, two Russians and one German on alert for days.” AP. Russia’s commitment to the International Space Station program expires in 2024, but as our “NASA astronaut caught a ride back to Earth on Wednesday [3/30] after a U.S. record 355 days at the International Space Station, returning with two cosmonauts in a Russian capsule to a world torn apart by war .

“[American] Mark Vande Hei landed in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan alongside the Russian Space Agency’s Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the last year in space, and Anton Shkaplerov. Wind blew the capsule onto its side after touchdown, and the trio emerged into the late afternoon sun one by one… Despite escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the war in Ukraine, Vande Hei’s return followed customary procedures.” Associated Press, March 31st. Is that space program over? Can this cooperation find a path to continue? Or is amped-up militarization of space the next big step?

With America’s new “Space Force,” under the aegis of the US Air Force, it is equally clear that space offers so many military opportunities to those nations able to access orbital flight. Beams of lasers, like the stuff of our own “Star Wars” defense strategy, could hit ground targets or disable nearby satellites, tanking GPS systems and weather tracking ability with devastating results. Add the damage to communications and spy satellites, the bad gets so much worse. The ability to launch targeted rockets and missiles, perhaps with nuclear warheads, could also enable a massive electro-magnetic pulse that would destroy just about every form of electronics within its targeted area. 

“EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, are intense bursts of electromagnetic energy that can be utilized to damage electronics. Man-made nuclear EMPS are impressive weapons of war that are sparingly used due to their highly destructive nature... Man-made EMPs are generally created through nuclear explosions… Essentially, these weapons emit a pulse that damages or destroys the electronic systems in an object due to damaging current and voltage surges.” InterestingEngineering.com 12/29/19. Computers and cars would be damaged beyond repair. Credit cards? Gasoline pumps? Telecommunications? The Internet? Our entire financial system? 

“Jeffrey Manber, now with the private Voyager Space company, helped forge U.S. and Russian ties in the mid-1990s, with the first piece of the space station launching in 1998. He sees the outpost as ‘one of the final holdouts of collaboration’ between the countries. But, he added, ‘there is no going back if the partnership is ended and the result is a premature ending of the ISS program.’” AP. I suspect that, indeed, there is no going back.

Regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian invasion, Russia has brought a very long-term era of hardship and isolation, as the world’s number one villain, to itself to its people. “‘Russia is done,’ said New School political scientist Nina Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian whose rise through the communist ranks mostly took place in Ukraine.” Alexander Nazaryan, reporting for the March 14th Yahoo!News. A villain with impaired financial resources but able to reach into space with a wide array of weapons? 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the world faces a renewed focus on a highly militarized, exceptionally dangerous, escalation in orbital space as a major area of probable global conflict. 

The Democrat’s Achilles Heel – An American Criminal Justice System that Still Fails African Americans

 

It’s not as if Black American voters are vulnerable to being recruited by the Trump-controlled Republican Party. But they just might feel frustrated enough to abstain from the November mid-term elections, where voters traditionally vote in lower numbers than in presidential election years. There is so much distracting news – obviously Putin’s war against Ukraine and the resulting inflation – that the clarion call for equal justice for minorities of color seems to have been drowned out by so many other issues . After a number of smartphone videos, Black Lives Matter protests, and very public and some successful trials against police using excessive force, even to the point of Blue-on-Black shootings, the road to equal justice seems to have stalled. 

Writing for the March 17th Associated Press, Aaron Morrison and Hannah Fingerhut present evidence of that disturbing reality: “Few Americans believe there has been significant progress over the last 50 years in achieving equal treatment for Black people in dealings with police and the criminal justice system.

“Most Americans across racial and ethnic groups say more progress is necessary, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But Black Americans, many whom may have held hope in Democrats’ promises on racial justice initiatives in 2020, are especially pessimistic that any more progress will be made in the coming years.

“Overall, only about a quarter of Americans say there has been a great deal or a lot of progress in achieving racial equality in policing and criminal justice. Roughly a third say there’s been ‘some’ progress. An overwhelming majority of adults say more progress is needed for racial equality, including about half who say ‘a lot’ more…

“Among those who think more progress is needed on achieving fair treatment for Black Americans by police, 31% say they are optimistic about that happening in the next few years, and 38% are pessimistic. Roughly a third say they hold neither opinion… Only 20% of Black Americans who think more needs to be done are optimistic; 49% are pessimistic…  And although at least three-quarters of white and Black Americans say more progress is needed, Black Americans are much more likely than white Americans to say a lot more needs to be done, 70% vs. 47%.” 

The last seismic shifts in protecting minority rights occurred in the civils rights cases and legislation in the 1950s and 60s. Recent efforts to reform police use of force, especially against minorities, began with a flourish and has since fizzled into minor adjustments. Indeed, despite some successes, the recent trend seems to have devolved into a red-state flurry to reverse those gains, particularly when it comes to minority voting rights.

The Brennen Center reminds us that on “June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law in Shelby County v. Holder. In April 2010, Shelby County, Alabama filed suit asking a federal court in Washington, DC to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Those states, named in that Section 5 who were subject to federal supervision for patterns of voting rights suppression, were effectively released from those requirements, as section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – a statute passed in 1965 (amended and affirmed most recently by Congress in 2008) to ensure state and local governments do not pass laws or policies that deny American citizens the equal right to vote based on race – was held to be stale and thus unconstitutional. 

Every state so supervised immediately passed restrictive voting laws, rather transparently focused on reducing the ability of minority voters, generally presumed to lean Democratic, to be able to vote. Where the obvious result of such state legislation targets minority voters but does not actually name or clearly identify the excluded or impacted class, the Supreme Court ruled a year ago – in Brnovich vs Democratic National Committee, which addressed such a voting restriction law in Arizona – that there was no remedy. So, today it is vastly more difficult for minorities to vote for anyone. 

Looking at restricitve laws introduced and/or passed as of January of this year, the Brennen Center tells us: The efforts to restrict voting have continued into this year. As of January 14th, “legislators in at least 27 states have introduced, pre-filed, or carried over 250 bills with restrictive provisions, compared to 75 such bills in 24 states on January 14, 2021. These figures include carryover bills, which are far more common this year (an even-numbered legislative year) than last (an odd-numbered year). When carryover bills are set aside to focus on new legislative activity — the pre-filed and introduced bills — the increase in restrictive bills is still stark: 96 bills would make it harder to vote in 12 states as of January 14, 2022, compared to 69 such bills in 23 states, a 39 percent increase.”

A recent Texas primary, reeling under new voting restrictions, unraveled in confusion with the rejection of 27,000 votes. With new voting restrictions in Georgia, African American Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock – elected last year in a special election to fill out the term of the late Sen. Sen. Johnny Isakson who retired due to ill health – faces an election now tilted toward white voters. It’s a big story across the nation: the combined effect of disenchantment and disenfranchisement of voters of color. 

With elections won or lost by very small margins, often by less than a percentage point, Democrats need to refocus their efforts on this critical constituency or prepare to engage lots of moving trucks as they are voted out of Congress.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the increasing tolerance of so many Americans in support of inequality and voter exclusion is, frankly, exceptionally and terrifyingly un-American.

Tilting the $Playing$ Field Even More

 

Everyone knows that the richest one percent in America has more wealth than the entire bottom 50%. We have the greatest income inequality and widest wealth gap in the developed world. We also know that wealth can legally buy an uncapped tsunami of political campaign messaging under that horrific plutocratic ruling in the 2010 Supreme Court case of Citizens United vs. FEC, a decision legalizing campaign measures favoring the rich that constitutes criminality in many other democratic nations. Everything, from political power, government assistance (particularly for COVID-related issues) and benefits, to tax issues to minimum wages favors those who don’t need favors. That federal minimum wage, still $7.25 (unchanged since 1997), is a joke, but Republicans have blocked an increase for decades.

Indeed, the wealthy and political representatives have sold America a bill of goods on a policy, which I keep harping on, that sounds good but has never worked EVER. It’s based on the premise that if you reduce taxes for the rich, they will rush out and create massive numbers of high paying jobs. Instead, with the massive surpluses left over after buying a new Bentley or hot Ferrari to park at their additional vacation home with a private dock, where their ocean-capable yacht is moored, their priority is stock repurchases for their public corporation or perhaps a corporate acquisition of a bargain company or piles of foreclosed real estate that are no longer affordable.

No one who ever grew wealth spends money to create jobs without a solid business plan and a market demand analysis. This “supply side/trickle down/don’t tax the job creators” immutable Republican platform retained since Ronald Reagan was president has been a consistent failure, but it never dies. 

If that’s not bad enough, efforts to help 90% of Americans – like national healthcare (which is available every other first world developed nation) or sensible childcare (the lack of which keeps over a million women out of the job market and is also standard in most developed countries) – are typically mislabeled as “creeping socialism” to scare righteous, hardworking, wage-earning Americans. See my recent The Vocabulary of Oppression and Disinformation, which addresses fake wordplay used to manipulate voters to back the rich or minority extremist views.

The 2017 Trump-era corporate reduction of corporate taxes from 35% to 21% produced all of the above horribles without creating those promised jobs or paying for itself by generating lots more in taxable revenues. All we got was bigger deficits that saddle “the rest of us.” And if you think all we need to do is hire more IRS revenue agents to control those loopholes that the rich drive their Bentleys through, think again. Michael Hitzik, writing for the March 14th Los Angeles Times, tells us that the IRS focuses so much more on auditing "little guys" compared to taking deep dives into sophisticated-accountant/lawyer-prepared tax returns from the rich:

“The figures show that the lowest-income wage earners, defined as those eligible for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, were audited at a rate of 13 per 1,000 returns in 2021. For everyone else, the rate was 2.6 per 1,000 returns… For married couples with no children, eligibility was capped for the current tax year at adjusted gross income of $22,610. The ceiling rises with family size, but the maximum income this year, for households with three or more children, is $53,057… It’s impossible to overstate how unjust and wasteful this is. These families tend to be our most financially vulnerable, struggling to pay for basic expenses. They’re the least likely to have professional tax advice, and most likely to have limited education or for English not to be their first language.”

Even Biden’s attempt to expand his infrastructure bill to include economic support for childcare and to replace the child tax credit that expired at the end of 2021– resulting in the largest US children-in-poverty increase (to 17%) in a single month (January) – was extinguished in a bloc GOP vote in the Senate plus two Democrats (Manchin and Sinema) railing under that misused cry of “creeping socialism.” Economic analysis shows that getting a flood of women back into the marketplace would be a productivity enhancer, not a nasty contribution to inflation.

Speaking of inflation, who do you think is hurt worse by higher prices for fossil fuels, which impact pretty much the cost of anything that needs to be transported? Rich folks? Or are those at the bottom of the economic ladder, working up well into the middle, the ones who really suffer. As shares of Big Oil soar, as governments are shying away from a moratorium on gasoline taxes, as oil producing nations are enjoying their revenue increases… we may be witnessing a reset, where prices will come down eventually, but damage to oil/gas production and the ramifications of Putin’s war even if settled by some miracle, suggest that we are not going back to pre-war prices in the foreseeable future. Biden can only exert a very modest impact on the fuel prices. Even if built, the Keystone Pipeline won’t make even a slight dent in the price at the pump; it only makes fossil fuel companies richer. War can be good for business. Very good sometimes.

If you combine the power of rich voices under Citizens United and the attempt by conservative forces, especially in fossil fuel producing states, to stop significant consumer-friendly federal appointments requiring Senate confirmation, well… Any such appointment faces a GOP/Manchin/Siena bloc that tanks any appointee’s prioritizing alternative energy or not supporting programs fostered by Big Oil and Shrinking Coal.

Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to a high post at the Federal Reserve was withdrawn by President Biden on March 15th. “Her withdrawal wasn’t prompted by questions about her qualifications or experience. That could hardly be the case: Raskin had won overwhelming approval from the Senate when she was appointed to the Fed’s board of governors in 2010 and again when President Obama named her a deputy Treasury secretary in 2014… No, Raskin’s nomination was killed by the fossil fuel industry and its caucus in the Senate.

“The final decisive blow was delivered on Monday by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who said that she had ‘failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs.’” Los Angeles Times, March 16th. For a look into Senator Manchin’s deeply embedded conflict of interest, see my February 13th Manchin-ian Heresy, Part 2 blog. We watch special interests, agile political manipulators and sheer raw wealth openly displayed as they slowly erode true democracy. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is indeed an irony that we rail in support of a struggling Ukrainian democracy being invaded by a brutal dictatorship… and let our own nation’s democracy unravel from the pressure of powerful special interests.

Income Inequality, the Numbers Keeping Getting Worse

 Even with sweeping changes in compensation packages for those with specialized training and education, fully one third of working Americans earn less than $15/hour, which in itself is not a living wage in most larger cities. That the federal minimum wage has not changed since for well over a decade reflects the power of either a congressional GOP majority or the GOP’s ability to filibuster a rational increase. As the money from the 2017, Trump-era corporate tax cut was used mostly for corporate stock buybacks, increasing the share value to shareholders (obviously benefitting the biggest shareholders the most), and as the pandemic allowed companies (those not predicated on mass public in-person attendance) to shed workers and replace them with AI-driven automation, the rich got so much richer. 

The United States has the widest income/wealth gap in the developed world, where upward social mobility has pretty much been relegated to the history books.  Our metrics are also misleading. The stock market reeled from the market instability resulting from Putin’s war… but share prices for all American oil companies have skyrocketed. Wars always benefit arms manufacturers and those who deal in basic natural resources. Indeed, that segment of the rich really do get richer. 

Wall Street has done a magnificent job of setting national performance metrics – how economically weak or strong the entire country is – using the stock market and gross domestic product (GDP – the sum total of economic value in the country) as the basic success metrics. A rarified few Americans make their livings from owning stock, and the GDP gets heavily weighted by soaring income earned by those at the very top. Here’s a very simple example: if out of ten people, one makes a billion dollars a year, and nine make thirty thousand, that mini-GDP is $1,000,270,000, and the average per capita annual income for that set is $100,0270,000. If that seems profoundly distorted, you understand how our economy is measured substantially by how well the rich are doing. Once you pick you success metrics, then politicians will favor policies that make them look good under those measurements. Not by how most of us fare. 

While I have nothing against folks getting rich – that has indeed made America great – we need to be careful that rewarding the richest in our nation at the expense of the rest has powerful consequences for our entire political system, one that seems to be a substantial impetus to misguided populism. When the rich sense that they may be saddled with a greater share of the costs of servicing the American people, they use that catchy description, “creeping socialism.”
The term actually means government ownership of the means of production and wealth, but it is used to defeat efforts to help most of us, like national healthcare. Instead, a disproportionate burden is layered on to most of us. For example, that massive corporate tax cut noted above made the rich vastly richer but increased our deficit (a burden foisted on all Americans) by literally trillions of dollars.

With two companion articles written for the March 24th FastCompany.com, the impact of these policies becomes much clearer. Michael Grothaus tells us: “The federal minimum wage in the United States has not risen since 2009. It was set at $7.25 an hour that year, and remains so today in 2022. Wall Street bonuses, on the other hand, have risen steadily. And now a report from Inequality.org shows that if the federal minimum wage rate increased at the rate of the bonuses traders get, the starting wage for Americans would be set at $61.75.

“In 2021, the average Wall Street bonus was a staggering $257,500–that’s on top of their annual salary, according to New York State Comptroller bonus data. But back in 1985, the average Wall Street bonus was ‘just’ $13,970 (non-inflation adjusted). That means Wall Street bonuses have increased 1,743% over the last 36 years.

“But the comparison gets even more depressing. The average Wall Street bonus of $257,500 in 2021 was a 20% increase from only the year before, which was well above the 7% annual inflation rate. But, the average weekly earnings for U.S workers only rose only 2% between 2020 and 2021, meaning the average worker’s earnings lost buying power.

“These numbers show two failings by the government, according to Inequality.org: the failure to raise the federal minimum wage for 13 years in a row and the failure to implement provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that prohibit financial institutions from rewarding their traders for taking risks that are deemed inappropriate.” Equally harsh is that most Americans will not see wage and salary increases necessary to compensate for our staggering inflation rate. For many, with skills in sufficient demand, that’s just one more reason to find a new job.

Shalene Gupta writes: “Food prices are up, rent prices are up, and gas prices are so high that Uber and Lyft drivers are considering quitting. Inflation is 7.5%, the highest it’s been since 1982. Yet it’s unlikely that wages will rise correspondingly.

“According to a March 2022 study by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, 45% of employers don’t factor inflation into salaries and less 25% said they will be making changes to their salary budgets because of inflation. Yet the same survey found that 77% of respondents cited compensation as their main reason for turnover. Meanwhile, corporate profits are the highest they’ve been in 70 years. Given that we’re also in the midst of the Great Resignation—where record numbers of employees are leaving their jobs—why aren’t more employers raising wages?

“Mainly because employers just aren’t used to factoring inflation into wages. In the 1970s and 1980s, when inflation rates were in the 3-14% range, wages were closely linked to inflation, says Jason Furman, a professor of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Starting in the 1970s, labor unions pushed for contracts had clauses that included cost-of-living adjustments. However, as inflation rates stabilized, 3% salary increases for cost-of-living became the norm.”

Blame is often the political answer, not understanding. Prestigious political metrics entity, FiveThirtyEight.com, aggregates the more credible polling sites to create “average” result. As of the end of March, they note that President Biden’s approval ratings have fallen to 41%, that 35% of Americans blame Putin for our skyrocketing oil and gas prices (reflected across almost every market sector), but Biden shoulders 34% of the blame… even as more than 70% of Americans approve of harsh measures against Russia, knowing that this will only increase prices. 

The reality is that Putin’s war takes two of the major grain producers out of the market (Ukraine and Russia), removes Russian fossil fuels from its European market as other major oil and gas producing countries have so far refused to up their production. In short, inflation is hardly within Biden’s control, but that does not stop his administration from getting the bulk of the blame here. And that, simply, augurs badly for Democratic congressional prospects in November, as current polling confirms. Which returns Congress to control of what should be labeled the “income/wealth inequality” Republican Party. It is so much easier to find blame, usually allowing politicians to manipulate their electability, than to understand what is really happening.

I’m Peter Dekom, and America has turned from being “the land of opportunity” to becoming “the land of opportunists.”