The beginning of May before midterm elections signals the official start of primary season and the kickoff of fall campaigns. Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, the conventional view now is that Democrats are in deep trouble because Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.

But the conventional view doesn’t account for the Trump factor, which gives Democrats a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers.

According to recent polls, Trump’s popularity continues to sink. He is liked by only 38 percent of Americans and disliked by 46 percent. (12 percent are neutral.) And Trump continues to slide: Among voters 45-64 years old – a group exit polls show Trump won 50% to 49% in 2020 – just 39 percent now view him favorably and 57 percent unfavorably. Among voters older than 65 – 52 percent of whom voted for him in 2000 to Biden’s 47 percent – only 44 percent now see him favorably and more than half (54%) view him unfavorably. Importantly, independents hold him in even lower regard. Just 26 percent view him favorably and 68 percent unfavorably.

Republican lawmakers had hoped and assumed that Trump would fade from the scene by the 2022 midterms, allowing them to engage in full-throttled attacks on Democrats.

But Trump hasn’t faded. In fact, his visibility is growing daily.

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The media is framing the May Republican primaries as all about Trump. The Ohio primary was a giant proxy battle over him, in which Republican candidates outdid each other trying to sound just like Trump – railing against undocumented immigrants, coastal elites, “socialism,” and “wokeness,” and regurgitating the Big Lie.

Trump’s April 15 endorsement of JD Vance made the difference – as could his backing of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Mary 17 primary and Hershel Walker in Georgia’s May 24 primary. But whether Trump’s bets pay off in wins for these candidates is beside the point. Trump is making these races all about himself —and in so doing, casting the midterms as a referendum on his continuing power and influence.  

June’s televised hearings of the House January 6 committee will likely show how Trump and his White House orchestrated the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and rekindle memories of Trump’s threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian president Zelensky came up with dirt on Biden.

Here again, the real significance of these hearings won’t be seen in Trump’s approval ratings but in Trump’s heightened visibility in the months before the midterms – and its almost certain shift in voters’ preferences toward the Democrats.    

Also likely in June (according to leaked documents) is a decision by the Supreme Court to uphold Oklahoma’s near ban on abortion and reverse Roe v. Wade – courtesy of Trump’s three Court nominees whom Trump explicitly nominated in order to reverse Roe. 

The high court’s decision will green-light other Republican states to enact similar bans, and spur Republicans in Congress to push for national legislation to virtually bar abortions across the country. Republicans believe this would ignite their base, but it’s more likely to ignite a firestorm among the vast majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal. Score another one for Trump.

There is also the distinct possibility of criminal trials over Trump’s business and electoral frauds (such as his brazen attempt to change the Georgia vote tally). Again, their significance for the midterms is less about whether Trump is found guilty than about their continuing reminders of his lawlessness.  

Meanwhile, America will be treated to more Trump rallies, interviews, and barnstorming to convince voters the 2020 election was stolen from him, along with his incessant demands that Republican candidates reiterate his Big Lie.

Somewhere along the line, also before the midterms, Elon Musk will allow Trump back on Twitter. The move would be bad for America, but it would remind voters of how whacky, racist, and dangerously incendiary Trump continues to be.

Oh, and don’t forget the antics of Trump’s many surrogates – Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Steven Bannon, Madison Cawthorn, and others – who mimic Trump’s bravado, bigotry, divisiveness, and disdain for the law. All are walking billboards for Trumpism’s heinous impact on American life.

All will push wavering voters toward Democrats in November.

I’m not suggesting Democrats seeking election or reelection should center their campaigns around Trump. To the contrary, Democrats need to show their continuing commitment to average working people. Between now and November, they should provide help with childcare, cut the costs of prescription drugs, and stop oil companies for price gouging, to take but three examples.

If they do this, they can count on Trump to remind Americans of the hatefulness and chaos he unleashed. The combination – Democrats scoring some additional victories for working people, and Trump being Trump – could well reverse conventional wisdom about midterms and keep Dems in control of Congress.

The Real Reason Congress Gets Nothing Done

Why doesn’t Congress get anything done? Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Bills like –

The Freedom to Vote Act,

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,

The Equality Act,

Background checks for gun sales,

Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act,

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

The Build Back Better Act.

The list goes on…

So why aren’t these crucial bills getting a vote in the Senate? Because the filibuster makes it impossible.

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All told, the House passed over 200 bills since the start of 2021 that have not been taken up in the Senate. Everything from investing in rural education to preventing discrimination against pregnant workers to protecting seniors from scams – bills that have real, tangible benefits for the public; bills that have widespread public support.

So don’t believe the media narrative that Congress is trapped in hopeless gridlock and

both sides

are to blame. One chamber of Congress, led by Democrats, is passing important legislation and delivering for the people. But Republicans in the Senate, and a handful of corporate Democrats, are hell-bent on grinding the gears of government to a halt.Why are Senate Republicans doing this? Because their midterm strategy depends on it. Republicans are blocking crucial legislation so they can point to Democrats’ supposed inability to get anything done, and claim they’ll be able to deliver if you give them majorities. Don’t fall for it.

How We Stand Up to Putin and Stop Climate Catastrophe

How do we stand up to Putin and avert a climate catastrophe at the same time?

Quitting our addiction to fossil fuels. Here’s how we get there.

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West has snapped a series of sanctions into place.

Russia is the world’s second largest crude oil exporter and the primary source of global natural gas. Regardless of the short-term effects on our pocketbooks, over the longer term we need to transition to renewable energies if we have any hope of keeping the earth habitable, and freeing our economy from the influence of geopolitical foes.

This is where carbon dividends come in. 

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It works like this. We put a hard cap on the amount of carbon we allow into the economy. Permits up to this cap would be issued, and energy companies could buy them in quarterly auctions. At every mine, refinery, and port of entry, these companies would have to use a permit for every ton of carbon dioxide that would be released into the atmosphere once that fuel is burned. 

When they run out of permits, they cannot extract or import any more carbon-polluting fuel. 

To keep the climate from rising 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels – the goal of the Paris Climate Accord – we need to slash emissions by roughly 90%. Accomplishing this by 2050 would demand reductions of 7.5% per year.
Currently we’re decreasing at a rate of 1.2% per year. 

With a carbon cap, in order to ensure we meet our goals, we could simply decrease the amount of permits issued by 7.5% every year. 

But how would we do that without Americans getting clobbered by higher prices at the gas pump? That’s where the carbon dividends come in. The revenue from selling the permits will be distributed back to the public as direct payments, no strings attached. 

For the majority of middle class and poorer Americans, the dividend will more than cover any increase in fuel prices, and they’ll come out ahead. The people who produce the most carbon emissions are by and large wealthy, and can afford the hike in prices. 

The earth’s capacity to absorb carbon is a natural resource, one we should share equally, instead of giving the wealthy and oil profiteers free reign.
Plus, everyone benefits from a cleaner planet. 

One study found that a quarter million premature deaths would be prevented over the next 20 years in the United States with a carbon fee and dividend program.

I know what you’re thinking right about now. Sounds nice, Bob. But it’ll never happen. Don’t be so sure! The idea is notably popular across the political spectrum. 

Carbon dividends were first proposed in 2009 in a bipartisan bill, and subsequent plans have come from both Republicans and Democrats. 

And there’s already precedent for parts of this program. Since 2009, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has capped and sold carbon permits to power companies in 11 Northeastern states. It is boosting their economies and has proven politically resilient. 

And in Alaska, every resident receives between $1,000 and $2,000 annually from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests the state’s oil royalties. Over 80% of Alaskans say it improves their quality of life. 

We treat gas prices as something out of our control, giving dangerous amounts of power to petro-states like Russia – with alarming consequences. By weaning ourselves from gas dependence, we’d gain relief from dirty air that kills millions globally; relief from the constant hemorrhage of government subsidies for fossil fuels and from wars for oil; and, above all, relief from the ongoing destruction of the earth’s climate. 

None of this is impossible. 

The best way to contain Russia, and build a sustainable future, is with a carbon dividend.

How the Supreme Court Could Make Your Life More Dangerous

Your life could get a lot more dangerous. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court seem poised to strip away basic safety standards for our workplaces, our food, our air and water.

Congress gives federal agencies the authority to enact regulations that protect us in our daily lives. Congress defines the goals, but leaves it up to the health and safety experts in those agencies to craft and enforce regulations. 

I know regulations don’t sound very exciting, but they’re how our government keeps us safe.

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Remember when lots of romaine lettuce was recalled because it was causing E.coli outbreaks? That was the Food and Drug Administration protecting us from getting sick. 

Working in a warehouse? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets standards to ensure you don’t breathe in dangerous chemicals like asbestos. 

Enjoying the fresh air on a clear, sunny day? Thank the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting the amount of pollution that can go into our air.

These agencies save lives. Since OSHA was established a half-century ago, its workplace safety regulations have saved more than 618,000 workers’ lives.

Republicans have been trying to gut these agencies for decades. Now, with the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority solidly in place, they have their best chance yet.

In January 2022, the Supreme Court blocked OSHA’s vaccine-or-testing mandate from going into effect, which was estimated to prevent a quarter-million hospitalizations.

The Court claimed that Covid isn’t an “occupational hazard” because people can become infected outside of work, and that allowing OSHA to regulate in this manner “would significantly expand” its authority without clear Congressional authorization.

This is absurd on its face. Section 2 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 clearly spells out OSHA’s authority to enact and enforce regulations that protect workers from illness, injury, and death in the workplace. Congress doesn’t need to list every specific workplace hazard before OSHA can protect workers.

What this ruling tells us is that the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are intent on gutting the power of agencies to issue regulations.

This term, the Court will also hear a case regarding the EPA’s authority to enforce the Clean Water Act. If the Court undermines the EPA’s authority, it will put our environment – and our health – at risk. Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire because it was brimming with oil, acid, and factory chemicals? That’s what we may be returning to.

And what’s next? Will they gut the Federal Trade Commission and put us all at risk of being defrauded? Target the Securities and Exchange Commission and deregulate the financial sector, sparking another financial crisis?

Beware. If Republican appointees on the Supreme Court succeed in gutting regulatory agencies, we all lose. This agenda is anti-worker, anti-consumer, and anti-environment. The only thing it’s good for is corporate profits.

On Friday, Amazon – America’s wealthiest, most powerful, and fiercest anti-union corporation, with the second-largest workforce in the nation (union-busting Walmart being the largest), lost out to a group of warehouse workers in New York who voted to form a union.

If anyone had any doubts about Amazon’s determination to prevent this from ever happening, its scorched-earth anti-union campaign last fall in its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse should have put those doubts to rest.

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In New York, Amazon used every tool it had used in Alabama. Many of them are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act but Amazon couldn’t care less. It’s rich enough to pay any fine or bear any public relations hit.

The company has repeatedly fired workers who speak out about unsafe working conditions or who even suggest that workers need a voice.

As its corporate coffers bulge with profits — and its founder and executive chairman practices conspicuous consumption on the scale not seen since the robber barons of the late 19th century — Amazon has become the poster child for 21st-century corporate capitalism run amok.

Much of the credit for Friday’s victory over Amazon goes to Christian Smalls, whom Amazon fired in the spring of 2020 for speaking out about the firm’s failure to protect its warehouse workers from COVID. Smalls refused to back down. He went back and organized a union, with extraordinary skill and tenacity.

Smalls had something else working in his favor, which brings me to Friday’s superb jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report showed that the economy continues to roar back to life from the COVID recession.

With consumer demand soaring, employers are desperate to hire. This has given American workers more bargaining clout than they’ve had in decades. Wages have climbed 5.6 percent over the past year.

The acute demand for workers has bolstered the courage of workers to demand better pay and working conditions from even the most virulently anti-union corporations in America, such as Amazon and Starbucks.

Is this something to worry about? Not at all. American workers haven’t had much of a raise in over four decades. Most of the economy’s gains have gone to the top.

Besides, inflation is running so high that even the 5.6 percent wage gain over the past year is minimal in terms of real purchasing power.

But corporate America believes these wage gains are contributing to inflation. As the New York Times solemnly reported, the wage gains “could heat up price increases.“

This is pure rubbish. But unfortunately, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell, believes it. He worries that “the labor market is extremely tight,” and to “an unhealthy level.”

As a result, the Fed is on the way to raising interest rates repeatedly in order to slow the economy and reduce the bargaining leverage of American workers.

Pause here to consider this: The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that corporate profits are at a 70-year high. You read that right. Not since 1952 have corporations done as well as they are now doing.

Across the board, American corporations are flush with cash. Although they are paying higher costs (including higher wages), they’ve still managed to increase their profits. How? They have enough pricing power to pass on those higher costs to consumers, and even add some more for themselves.

When American corporations are overflowing with money like this, why should anyone think that wage gains will heat up price increases, as the Times reports? In a healthy economy, corporations would not be passing on higher costs — including higher wages — to their consumers. They’d be paying the higher wages out of their profits.

But that’s not happening. Corporations are using their record profits to buy back enormous amounts of their own stock to keep their share prices high, instead.

The labor market isn’t “unhealthily” tight, as Jerome Powell asserts; corporations are unhealthily fat. Workers don’t have too much power; corporations do.

The extraordinary win of the workers of Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse is cause for celebration. Let’s hope it marks the beginning of a renewal of worker power in America.

Yet the reality is that corporate America doesn’t want to give up any of its record profits to its workers. If it can’t fight off unions directly, it will do so indirectly by blaming inflation on wage increases, and then cheer on the Fed as it slows the economy just enough to eliminate American workers’ new bargaining clout.

The Rise of the Centibillionaires!

The word “‘billionaire” didn’t even exist until 1844. Fifty years later, we got “multibillionaire.” And for the next 127 years, that was enough. 

But in 2020, while the working class faced near-record unemployment during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans faced a different problem. Some of them had gotten so rich, there was no longer a word to describe just how rich they were. 

That’s why I want to bring you one of the newest additions to the English language: “centibillionaires,” people with $100 billion or more.  

What’s it like being one of history’s first centibillionaires? It’s hard to even imagine, but let’s try it by comparing them to the less fortunate. By which I mean just … regular … billionaires. 

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If you’re a regular billionaire, you can afford a private jet. If you’re a centibillionaire, you can afford a brand-new Gulfstream jet every single day for more than ten years. (Not sure what you’d do with a new Gulfstream every day — maybe give one to each of your closest 4,000 friends?)

A regular billionaire would struggle to buy their own professional baseball team. Sad, I know. But a centibillionaire could easily buy every team in the entire major league. 

If you’re a regular billionaire, you can donate to your alma mater and get your name on a building. If you’re a centibillionaire, you could single-handedly give every teacher in America an $8,000 raise for 5 straight years. 

Of course, that’s not all you could do. $100 billion is enough to wipe out all the medical debt in the United States. Or provide permanent shelter for every homeless person in America. Or buy Covid-19 vaccines for the entire world.

Basically what I’m saying is, $100 billion is a lot of money. 

More than two and a half million times what the average American worker makes in a year. 

So here’s the big question. Are these centibillionaires so rich because they work two and half million times harder than the average American? Are they really 100 times smarter than the typical billionaire?

I don’t think so. The reason for the rise of centibillionaires is that for decades, wealth hasn’t trickled down, it’s gushed up, all the way to the very top. 

That’s not an accident. As it turns out, the system that the super-rich themselves carefully crafted and lobbied for, benefits… the rich! 

And while you may not own more private jets than your average centibillionaire, you probably do pay a higher tax rate. And thanks to legal loopholes and the Trump tax cuts, when the wealthiest Americans die, they get to pass on most of their centibillions to their kids tax-free. 

We’ve got two choices as a country. We can tax the richest Americans fairly, and invest that money in ways that benefit all of us.

Or we can keep doing what we’re doing, and watch as centibillionaires get even richer while the rest of us get left behind. 

If you think wealth and power are too concentrated in the hands of a privileged few now, just imagine what a few more years of trickle-down nonsense will bring.

Of course, it won’t be all bad. At least “trillionaire” is easy to say.

How We Stop a Gerrymandering Catastrophe

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling and allowed Alabama’s egregious gerrymandered Congressional map to remain in place.

There’s no reason to sugarcoat this. Across the country, Republican state legislatures are using extreme gerrymandering to cement their power for decades, and the window to stop them is closing fast.

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Senate Democrats must use every tool at their disposal to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act before the GOP rigs their way back to power in the midterms.

Know the truth about how we got into this gerrymandering mess - and what we can do to get out of it.

Our best shot at saving our democracy is right now. It’s time to act.

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The Hidden Link Between Corporate Greed and Inflation

Inflation! Inflation! Everyone’s talking about it, but ignoring one of its biggest causes: corporate concentration.

Now, prices are undeniably rising. In response, the Fed is about to slow the economy — even though we’re still 2 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic, and millions of American workers won’t get the raises they deserve.

Meanwhile, Republicans haven’t wasted any time hammering Biden and Democratic lawmakers about inflation.

Don’t fall for their fear mongering.

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Everybody’s ignoring the deeper structural reason for price increases: the concentration of the American economy into the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

If the market were actually competitive, corporations would keep their prices as low as possible as they competed for customers.

Even if some of their costs increased, they would do everything they could to avoid passing them on to consumers in the form of higher prices, for fear of losing business to competitors.

But that’s the opposite of what we’re seeing. Corporations are raising prices even as they rake in record profits. Corporate profit margins hit record highs last year. You see, these corporations have so much market power they can raise prices with impunity.

So the underlying problem isn’t inflation per se. It’s a lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.

Take the energy sector.

Only a few entities have access to the land and pipelines that control the oil and gas  powering most of the world. They took a hit during the pandemic as most people stayed home. But they are more than making up for it now, limiting supply and ratcheting up prices.

Or look at consumer goods.

In April 2021, Procter & Gamble raised prices on staples like diapers and toilet paper, citing increased costs in raw materials and transportation. But P&G has been making huge profits. After some of its price increases went into effect, it reported an almost 25% profit margin.

Looking to buy your diapers elsewhere? Good luck. The market is dominated by P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which—NOT entirely coincidentally—raised its prices at the same time.

Another example: in April 2021, PepsiCo raised prices, blaming higher costs for ingredients, freight, and labor. It then recorded $3 billion in operating profits through September. How did it get away with this without losing customers?

Pepsi has only one major competitor, Coca-Cola, which promptly raised its own prices. Coca-Cola recorded $10 billion in revenues in the third quarter of 2021, up 16% from the previous year.

Food prices are soaring, but half of that is from meat, which costs 15% more than last year. There are only four major meat processing companies in America, which are all raising their prices and enjoying record profits.

Get the picture?

The underlying problem is not inflation. It’s corporate power. Since the 1980s, when the U.S. government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated.

Most are now dominated by a handful of corporations that coordinate prices and production. This is true of: banks, broadband, pharmaceutical companies,  airlines, meatpackers, and yes, soda.

Corporations in all these industries could easily absorb higher costs — including long overdue wage increases — without passing them on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But they aren’t.

Instead, they’re using their massive profits to line the pockets of major investors and executives — while both consumers and workers get shafted.

How can this structural problem be fixed? Fighting corporate concentration with more aggressive antitrust enforcement. And imposing a windfall profits tax on profitable corporations that are using this period of rising costs to gouge consumers. 

So don’t fall for the fear mongering about inflation. The real culprit here is corporate power.

I used to believe several things about the twenty-first century that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s election in 2016 have shown me are false. 

I assumed:

Nationalism is disappearing. I expected globalization would blur borders, create economic interdependence among nations and regions, and extend a modern consumer and artistic culture worldwide.

I was wrong. Both Putin and Trump have exploited xenophobic nationalism to build their power. (Putin’s aggression has also ignited an inspiring patriotism in Ukraine.)

Nations can no longer control what their citizens know. I assumed that emerging digital technologies, including the Internet, would make it impossible to control worldwide flows of information and knowledge. Tyrants could no longer keep their people in the dark or hoodwink them with propaganda.

Wrong again. Trump filled the media with lies, as has Putin. Putin has also cut off Russian citizens from the truth about what’s occurring in Ukraine.

Advanced nations will no longer war over geographic territory. I thought that in the “new economy” land was becoming less valuable than technological knowhow and innovation. Competition among nations would therefore be over the development of cutting-edge inventions.

I was only partly right. While skills and innovation are critical, land still provides access to critical raw materials and buffers against potential foreign aggressors.

Major nuclear powers will never risk war against each other because of the certainty of “mutually assured destruction.” I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable.

I fear I was wrong. Putin is now resorting to dangerous nuclear brinksmanship.

Civilization will never again be held hostage by crazy isolated men with the power to wreak havoc. I assumed this was a phenomenon of the twentieth century, and that twenty-first century governments, even totalitarian ones, would constrain tyrants.

Trump and Putin have convinced me I was mistaken. Thankfully, America booted Trump out of office — but his threat to democracy remains.

Advances in warfare, such as cyber-warfare and precision weapons, will minimize civilian casualties. I was persuaded by specialists in defense strategy that it no longer made sense for sophisticated powers to target civilians.

Utterly wrong. Civilian casualties in Ukraine are mounting.

Democracy is inevitable. I formed this belief in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union had imploded and China was still poor. It seemed to me that totalitarian regimes didn’t stand a chance in the new technologically driven, globalized world. Sure, petty dictatorships would remain in some retrograde regions. But modernity came with democracy, and democracy with modernity.

Both Trump and Putin have shown how wrong I was on this, too.

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Meanwhile, Ukrainians are showing that Trump’s and Putin’s efforts to turn back the clock on the twenty-first century can only be addressed with a democracy powerful enough to counteract autocrats like them.

They are also displaying with inspiring clarity that democracy cannot be taken for granted. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It’s not what governments do. Democracy is what people do.

Ukrainians are reminding us that democracy survives only if people are willing to sacrifice for it. Some sacrifices are smaller than others. You may have to stand in line for hours to vote, as did tens of thousands of Black people in America’s 2020 election. You may have to march and protest and even risk your life so others may vote, as did iconic civil rights leaders like the late John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr.

You may have to knock on hundreds of doors to get out the vote. Or organize thousands to make your voices heard. And stand up against the powerful who don’t want your voices heard.

You may have to fight a war to protect democracy from those who would destroy it.

The people of Ukraine are also reminding us that democracy is the single most important legacy we have inherited from previous generations who strengthened it and who risked their lives to preserve it. It will be the most significant legacy we leave to future generations — unless we allow it to be suppressed by those who fear it, or we become too complacent to care.

Putin and Trump have convinced me I was wrong about how far we had come in the twenty-first century. Technology, globalization, and modern systems of governance haven’t altered the ways of tyranny. But I, like millions of others around the world, have been inspired by the Ukrainian people — who are reteaching us lessons we once knew.

The January jobs report from the Labor Department is heightening fears that a so-called “tight” labor market is fueling inflation, and therefore the Fed must put on the brakes by raising interest rates.

This line of reasoning is totally wrong.

Among the biggest job gains in January were workers who are normally temporary and paid low wages (leisure and hospitality, retail, transport and warehousing). This January employers cut fewer of these low-wage temp workers than in most years, because of rising customer demand and the difficulties of hiring during Omicron. Due to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s “seasonal adjustment,” cutting fewer workers than usual for this time of year appears as “adding lots of jobs.”

Fed policymakers are poised to raise interest rates at their March meeting and then continue raising them, in order to slow the economy. They fear that a labor shortage is pushing up wages, which in turn are pushing up prices — and that this wage-price spiral could get out of control.

It’s a huge mistake. Higher interest rates will harm millions of workers who will be involuntarily drafted into the inflation fight by losing jobs or long-overdue pay raises. There’s no “labor shortage” pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good jobs paying adequate wages to support working families. Raising interest rates will worsen this shortage.

There’s no “wage-price spiral,” either (even though Fed chief Jerome Powell has expressed concern about wage hikes pushing up prices). To the contrary, workers’ real wages have dropped because of inflation. Even though overall wages have climbed, they’ve failed to keep up with price increases – making most workers worse off in terms of the purchasing power of their dollars.

Wage-price spirals used to be a problem. Remember when John F. Kennedy “jawboned” steel executives and the United Steel Workers to keep a lid on wages and prices? But such spirals are no longer a problem. That’s because the typical worker today has little or no bargaining power.

Only 6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized. A half-century ago, more than a third were. Today, corporations can increase output by outsourcing just about anything anywhere because capital is global. A half-century ago, corporations needing more output had to bargain with their own workers to get it.

These changes have shifted power from labor to capital — increasing the share of the economic pie going to profits and shrinking the share going to wages. This power shift ended wage-price spirals.  

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Slowing the economy won’t remedy either of the two real causes of today’s inflation – continuing worldwide bottlenecks in the supply of goods, and the ease with which big corporations (with record profits) are passing these costs to customers in higher prices.

Supply bottlenecks are all around us. (Just take a look at all the ships with billions of dollars of cargo idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, through which 40 percent of all U.S. seaborne imports flow.) 

Big corporations have no incentive to absorb the rising costs of such supplies — even with profit margins at their highest level in 70 years. They have enough market power to pass these costs on to consumers, sometimes using inflation to justify even bigger price hikes. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” the CEO of Kroger said last June. “What we are very good at is pricing,” the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive added in October.

In fact, the Fed’s plan to slow the economy is the opposite of what’s needed now or in the foreseeable future. COVID is still with us. Even in its wake, we’ll be dealing with its damaging consequences for years — everything from long-term COVID, to school children months or years behind.

The January jobs report shows that the U.S. economy is still 2.9 million jobs below what it had in February 2020. Given the growth of the US population, it’s 4.5 million short of what it would have by now had there been no pandemic.

Consumers are almost tapped out. Not only are real (inflation-adjusted) incomes down, but pandemic assistance has ended. Extra jobless benefits are gone. Child tax credits have expired. Rent moratoriums are over. Small wonder consumer spending fell 0.6 percent in December, the first decrease since last February.

Many people are understandably gloomy about the future. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey plummeted in January to its lowest level since late 2011, back when the economy was trying to recover from the global financial crisis. The Conference Board’s index of confidence also dropped in January.

Given all this, the last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further. The problem most people face isn’t inflation. It’s a lack of good jobs.