Wolff: It's been good news for the 1%, for the employer class.
They've made out like bandits
not only before the pandemic hit,
but even after the pandemic hit.
When we told each other we were all struggling to get through
this.
We're all human beings invaded by a virus.
We're all alike in that way.
Well, we weren't all alike.
Some of us got even richer.
The gap between rich and poor amazingly, continued to grow
over the last three years, and the inflation was a crucial part.
That's how it was done: by having the prices
go up faster than the wages.
By having the profits go up.
Let's remember a basic law of economics.
Goods and services that are produced
generate an income for workers
and for employers, for employees and employers.
We have a name for the income produced for employees,
wages and salaries, and we have a name for the income
produced for the owners and the operators, the employers.
It's called profit.
Profits went up
by a lot.
Wages and salaries by less than half.
There's no mystery
to why inequality got worse in the United States
and why so many people are having so much difficulty
getting through the daily needs of their lives.
It's not good or healthy
for you to imagine
that this is your fault, that somehow your decisions
of what to do in your life, what career to have, what jobs to learn,
what skills to develop, or you were in the wrong place at the wrong
time, in the wrong p- Don't do that to yourself.
We are all together victims
of an economic system that works really
well for a tiny minority at the top
and very badly for all the rest of us.
Inflation is simply one way that this
works
itself out in an economic system like this.
What economists rarely discuss and
which is why this program is so important,
is to look at what I've just described from the standpoint of the lived
daily life of people who are forced
to go through the economic experience
that has been laid on us over the last two or three years.
Fraad: One of the things we have to understand
is that the mass of Americans who are suffering
are just considered collateral damage, not to be counted.
We are not to be counted.
We are not considered.
Now, we're not talking about a tiny group of people here.
The collateral damage of inflation and of the huge discrepancies
between rich and poor mean
that 65% of Americans are just on the edge.
They don't have $500
to $1000 in the worst emergency.
Let's say they bite into a muffin and their tooth breaks.
That's $1,000 at the dentist.
They don't have it.
They get into a fender bender and they can't
afford
the damage.
They'd have to pay before they get coverage if they had insurance.
They get sick and they don't have health insurance
and they get socked with a huge bill.
Their kid gets sick and they can't afford a doctor.
These are just everyday things.
Things that happen
which push people over the edge.
And when they go over the edge, they drop into poverty
and often into eviction and life on the streets.
These are tragedies.
They're a million little tragedies
that are not publicized.
They're not mentioned.
This is the mass of American people
who are collateral damage in our system.
These are real personal effects of what happens
with poverty or unemployment and inflation.