The (increased) cost of living and dying posted by Richard Seymour

Food prices are at their highest level for fourteen years and a recent surge in wheat prices is going to drive up prices even further. Real-terms inflation for essential goods has been rising dramatically for a while, which means that the cost of living for the poorest is most dramatically affected. Rising global oil prices will compound this effect. Concurrent with this is the continuation a long-term decline in labour's share of income. Andrew Glyn's recent Capitalism Unleashed tells some of the sordid story behind this (although I find fault with his profit-squeeze theory of capitalist crisis), and of course it is a story of the successful temporary restoration of ruling class power following the years of insurgency that terrorised them in the 1960s and 1970s. So it is that in Britain labour has a lower share of national income, a de facto incomes policy designed to lower it even further, and savage attacks on welfare, specifically disability benefits at a time when our living conditions are already being squeezed. Meanwhile, taxes on corporations have been repeatedly cut. Two Labour MPs appeal in vain for the spurning of neoliberalism. There isn't much to be hoped for from the Labour left. Hope lies, as ever, with the proles.

Labels: inflation, neoliberalism, prices, profits, wages