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70% of Americans Can't Escape Paycheck-to-Paycheck Hell
The ruling class wants workers broke. Desperate people don't fight back.
Low wages and high debt levels have the USA at a breaking point: At least 7 in 10 Americans now live paycheck-to-paycheck. For the oligarchs in charge, low wages are not just about fattening their profit margins. Oligarchs view worker poverty as a social management tool that strips workers of power. Here’s seven ways widespread worker poverty benefits the oligarchy:
- Fear: When you’re one paycheck from homelessness, you accept the shitty wages. You cannot gamble with your job.
- Strike Breaking and Union Busting: Strikes require savings. Paycheck-to-paycheck is the definition of zero savings. By keeping workers perpetually broke, American business owners have largely eliminated the threats of strikes that were so effective 60 years ago.
- The WalMart Special: Pay so little employees qualify for food stamps. Then taxpayers are subsidizing your profits! Billions of taxpayer dollars flow to the Walton family this way every year. Then they use those billions to buy politicians. The perfect scam.
- Employee Retention: Can’t afford to quit your $15/hr job? Perfect! Why would they raise it to $20?
- Banks love your desperation: 25% APR credit cards keep you chained to Visa/Mastercard’s billions of annual profits.
- Monopoly protection: How can workers launch startups when medical debt consumes 40% of their income?
- Psychological Warfare: Exhaustion Yields Compliance. Two jobs or a side hustle? You don’t have energy to protest or imagine an alternative future.
Political alternatives that would systematically fight back against paycheck-to-paycheck life
- Medicare for All: Decouple healthcare from employment.
- Raise the minimum wage & index it to the cost of housing.
- Implement a Universal Basic Income
Source for 70% - Forbes 2024 Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report - archive.is/0G3Tx