(Images not included)
A few days ago, we went to Target. This doesn’t happen very often, which might explain some of our shock. I expect the current state has been slowly building for a while, but it was striking for us.
There were piles of goods under almost every shelf. Boxes and packaging strewn around. Shelves were often complete jumbles of various goods with no organization of any kind, partially sprawling everywhere around. We saw maybe two employees on the floor in the entire store, and then another two at the registers, and one very muscular security guard.
People seemed confused. Perhaps more accurately, we seemed intensely focused on our denial of the reality around us. Customers, likely including ourselves, clung to a sense of normalcy like a drowning person clinging to a life preserver. Awkwardly laughing as we kicked piles of goods away from shelves in order to make the room to reach something. I watched a family trying clothes on in an aisle full of random packaging, kicking bags and new clothes away from the mirror in order to get a clear reflection of their appearance.
It felt aggressively surreal; like a satire of American Consumerism™ while the world burns. Outside the store, there were huge “NOW HIRING! INQUIRE WITHIN!” signs, of course. If one were to INQUIRE WITHIN, they would find that Target is proud to be offering the competitive wage of $14-$16/hr.
If the bottle deposit in this country had kept up with inflation, it would be almost 50 cents now.
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be around $25/hr.
Here’s the thing, though; how do we measure inflation? It’s pretty simple, really. The official inflation rate is determined by comparing the cost of an average basket of goods (sic) to the same basket of goods. This is almost entirely done around groceries; how much does a basket (sic) of bread, eggs, milk, ground beef, cereal, beans, and salt cost today vs. 1, 5, 20, 100 years ago? That determines inflation.
Ok, that’s a thing you can measure, and possibly useful.
I only thought to ask the question “How do we calculate inflation?” recently.
I wanted a new sewing machine. More specifically, I wanted a used sewing machine. So I went to Goodwill, where I’ve bought several good sewing machines. For 15 years or so, a used sewing machine at Goodwill has consistently cost $10-15. The Goodwill in Waterville, Maine had two, and they were both stickered at $50. Beyond that, Goodwill’s base price (the lowest value sticker they print) has been $1 for a long time. Now, their base price is $2. That’s 100% inflation at a base price, with targeted inflation approaching 400%.
The official inflation rate is only 8.3% in 2022. So why are real-world things that poor people have to buy up 400%? Enter subsidization. The US intensively, aggressively subsidizes three things: fossil fuels, weapons, and cereal grains. Since cereal grains are the backbone of all livestock feed, the subsidization of cereal grains amounts to a form of insulating the only measure of inflation against actually being impacted by the market. Five of the seven things I listed above in a “basket of goods” come from subsidized cereal grains.
I don’t know how the official rent inflation rate is calculated. What I do know is that five years ago, you could get a two bedroom apartment in Waterville, Maine for $600-800/mo. Now, you’re lucky to find the same apartment for $1,200. Again, we’re looking at 100% inflation rates for the things that poor people have to buy over the last few years. I have no idea what the actual inflation rate is; I'm a lost biology teacher stumbling through this apocalypse. I do know that a meaningful measure of inflation would have to include everything; housing, fuel, thrift store prices; everything. I have a hunch that a measure of the inflation rate based in reality would be close to 80% over the last few years, at least.
Back to Target. Why does “nO oNe wAnT tO wOrK aNyMoRe?” Why can’t Target find employees?
Spoiler alert: no one ever wanted to work. We want meaningful lives, and not to pop anyone’s little capitalist wet dream, but no one finds meaning at Target. So if working doesn’t result in the ability to live, why would anyone possibly work? If not a meaningful life, what are we possibly working for? Side hustles pay better. If we can do the exact same thing all the corporations do and receive subsidies and dodge taxes by receiving state health care, food stamps, or unemployment while running an under-the-table side gig; that combination can actually pay our bills. Working 50 hours at Target and paying 20% in taxes to fund corporations and wars while we can’t pay our power bills? That, as the kids say, ain’t it.
Target reported 4.2 billion dollars in profits last year.
This is a stand-off. The corporations are letting everything crumble, hoping that they can force people back to work without losing their skyrocketing profits. Their profits are the wages that they are not paying. That's what profit is; the difference between what something costs and what the workers who make, distribute, and sell it get paid. We are not going back to work because it doesn't make any economic sense for us to do so, and the companies are not paying enough to make it financially logical for workers to return because they can squeeze more pennies out of this slow apocalypse by letting piles of clothes lay on the floor.
These companies know all of this, far better than we do. They have armies of economists analyzing every tiny speck of this. They know. And here’s the game:
The corporations work together, to keep the minimum wage low, and they play a long game.
They don’t care about the stores, obviously. They will joyfully watch their stores burn to the ground, in order to hold the corporate line against any meaningful wage increase. More importantly, the system will gladly sacrifice one company in order to maintain the normalization of ever-eroding pay scales. Any corporation in the US right now could pay $25/hr and the next day have happy, competent employees. Not only would this provide good jobs, it would meet the need that they pretend is their mission; do the thing they pretend is their job; which is sell people goods. But that’s not actually their job. Their real job is to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders; that’s their legal obligation and their entire focus. So the pictures here don’t bother them. What bothers them is the possibility of losing a penny of potential profit, on the statistical scale. In order to avoid that, they are collectively holding a line and refusing to pay the higher wages, even though they could easily afford it, solely to prevent workers as a group from developing the expectation of a fair or living wage.
You can see the power that they wield be acting together. If any of them broke ranks and started paying a living wage, the whole facade would crumble.
If only there was some way for workers to act together. To bargain collectively.
Anyway, this is what capitalism looks like.
It looks like nameless, faceless corporations pretending to meet your needs, right up until they can make another penny by failing to meet your needs. Then they will joyfully watch their merchandise kicked aside, they will watch you and your family starve in the streets- and they will proudly and joyfully post their next quarter’s record-breaking profits without ever shedding a tear.