The presidential candidates of the rich target their campaign rhetoric to a sector of the working class and small business owners they are wooing to gain an advantage in the upcoming November elections. However, promises from either Obama or Romney cannot change the fact that the current depressed economic trend will likely remain and possibly worsen after the next top manager of the affairs of the ruling class is selected.
“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, author of new research from the National Employment Law Project, where she is also the co-director. “We have a ‘good jobs’ deficit.”
Bernhardt’s view is in line with a revolutionary Marxist understanding that the current stage of imperialism forces the so-called middle class—workers and small business owners who have lived in relative comfort—to shrink if not nearly disappear, especially as mid- and high-wage jobs are harder to find for a skilled labor force. Capitalist investments have to be diverted to emerging economies abroad to beat out the competition and cash in on higher profits.
Neither ruling-class presidential candidate can change these trends, no matter what is promised during their multi-billion-dollar campaigns.
One example of the downsizing of the skilled-labor workforce has been the elimination of local and state government jobs as a result of budget cuts. In some areas, the government is the primary employer. Government at all levels is now scrapping these workers with more and more layoffs.
One response to this was seen by the workers in Wisconsin in early 2011 who mobilized militant actions in opposition to Wisconsin Governor Walker’s anti-union bills.
The professed shortfall in state and local government budgets is a creation of the ruling class as the rich redirect the massive wealth created by the working class to investments for super profits by super-exploiting workers overseas in sectors such as manufacturing.
Out of desperation, skilled workers have had to search for any kind of job in this more competitive labor market, accepting lower wage jobs (under $13 an hour) just to keep food on the table and pay for housing needs. This trend is also central to the on-going crisis in foreclosures.
According to this report, jobs have increased by 8.7 percent in lower-wage occupations and 6.6 percent in higher-wage ones since 2001. Over the last decade, mid-wage jobs have decreased by 7.3 percent.
Another study, conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows that each of the last three recessions has shown greater polarization of the jobs available, with companies responding even quicker to laying off workers and downsizing.
The capitalist system cannot prevent or hold back the trends internal to it—that is why the system needs to be replaced. One step is to unite with the Lindsay/Osorio presidential campaign to promote the struggle to change this system to a rational one where joblessness is a horror of the past and a decent paying job a guaranteed constitutional right for all.
