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Written by Socialist Appeal
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Thursday, 10 April 2008 |
 By now every driver is well aware of the rising cost of gas. And many are uneasily looking ahead to the spring and summer months when gas prices historically rise even further. According to the Energy Department’s latest prediction, gasoline prices will peak near $3.40 a gallon this spring, and many other analysts expect the cost to go above the government’s conservative estimate, perhaps as high as $4.00 per gallon or more. |
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Written by Shamus Cooke
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Wednesday, 01 August 2007 |
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It is now taken for granted that social services in the U.S. will be under-funded – if they are funded at all. This isn’t because average people think that such things are unimportant, but because we’ve been taught by “our” representatives in government that even a miniscule social safety net is economically impossible (it is never explained why – it just is). As this approach continues to dominate mainstream political life, the living standards of working people everywhere are being destroyed, and the meager reforms politicians have always promised us have devolved into even tinier crumbs and counter-reforms. Indeed, reforms that benefit the working class seem to be impossible in Washington now-a-days, precisely at a time when the wealth of the country has never been greater. To make sense out of such irrationality, one has to consider that this issue isn’t limited to the 50 states of the U.S. – it’s an international problem, and its cause is no accident. |
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Written by Ann Robertson
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Saturday, 21 July 2007 |
 Marx’s analysis of capitalism, unlike bourgeois accounts, is conducted from a historical perspective. In other words, Marx was keenly aware that during the march of history, one economic system, because of internal, irreconcilable contradictions, has been replaced by another until it too falls victim to similar contradictions. Of course, when one is born and matures within a single economy and lacks knowledge of any other system, one tends to take one’s own for granted, believing that it will persevere forever. A historical perspective has the advantage of forcing us to rise above the provincial perspective that assumes economic systems are eternal. We survey from above the vast array of systems that have played their fleeting role on history’s stage. For this reason, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is specifically written with the purpose of unveiling its inner contradictions so that the possibility of its demise stands boldly in relief. This runs directly opposed to bourgeois portrayals of capitalism as “natural” and hence as unalterable as the law of gravity itself. |
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Written by Mark Vorpahl
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Friday, 15 June 2007 |
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Poor and working people’s debt has spawned an explosion in get-rich-off-the-poor industries for capitalists across the U.S. For instance, payday lenders, who provide expensive short-term cash loans, have grown from 300 in the early 1990s, to more than 25,000 today. Subprime loans to people with poor credit ballooned to $1.3 trillion in 2006. These loans entice borrowers with low starting rates, then rocket higher, trapping the unwary in even worse debt. As many as a million working families will have their homes repossessed as a result. |
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Written by Shamus Cooke
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Monday, 04 June 2007 |
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Since the 1970s, the social consequences of the current period of capitalism (commonly referred to as globalization) have primarily affected the working class, especially those in manufacturing jobs. Despite the consequential deterioration of large cities and countless smaller towns — not to mention the pauperization of large segments of the population — the effects were dismissed by politicians and the mainstream media as necessary evils. The victims of this process were told to pick themselves up by their boot-straps, go back to school, and learn to integrate into the new, technology-driven global economy. |
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Written by John Peterson
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Monday, 30 April 2007 |
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After the burst of the Information Technology bubble of the 1990s, many corporate and individual investors shifted their assets to the housing sector. With historically-low interest rates and double-digit price rises in many markets, investing in a first or even second home seemed a “safe” way to go. Millions of people became home owners for the first time, and millions of others took out second, third, and even fourth mortgages, with the seemingly endless rising value of their homes as collateral. This artificial sense of wealth compelled millions to borrow money like never before, confident that rising house prices would indefinitely give them the economic breathing space they needed to catch up with their growing debts. |
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Written by Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
 China hints at a tax on capital gains and the Shanghai stock exchange falls by 10%, but then the fall affects all the other major stock exchanges. What does all this indicate? Michael Roberts gives his view on the question. |
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Written by Socialist Appeal
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Thursday, 02 November 2006 |
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Each year, Forbes magazine presents readers with a list of the 400 richest U.S. citizens. As usual, no Socialist Appeal readers were on the list. And in 2006, for the first time, all 400 of these people were billionaires. |
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Written by Scott Marks
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Tuesday, 31 October 2006 |
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It is a basic truth that the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world to lack a comprehensive, universal health care system. And the basis for this fact is that health care is a multi-billion dollar concern for pharmaceutical and medi-corporate businesses whose prime motivation is bottom line sales and profits over health. |
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Written by Workers International League
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Thursday, 15 June 2006 |
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Economic perspectives for the future are based on the economic performance of the past, and are therefore provisional at best. This document outlines our political perspectives for the next year based on developments since our last analysis. |
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Economy 
Inflation is rising across the board. In other words, today’s dollar just doesn’t buy as much as it did a few months ago. And it’s not just housing, gasoline, heating, transportation, health care and education. The cost of that most basic of all necessities – food – is now also quickly rising for American workers and their families. 