The economic and political crisis in California

John Parker WW photo: Gary Wilson

Stomach pain due to malnutrition is probably one of the most painful things to suffer from, especially if you are a growing child. It seems unreal that a system which throws trillions of dollars at multinational banks and insurance companies to shore up their profits and the lifestyles of their executives makes people actually go hungry. How could that be? Well, let’s do the math.

The average wage in California is about $35,000 per year. The census says $39,000, but that doesn’t take into account the underground economy, so that is probably a high average.

Humans need shelter, and that shelter costs conservatively about $1,000 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles County.

If you own your own home, it’s even worse. Just ask the over 380,000 people to date in California who’ve lost their homes due to foreclosures with mortgage payments that doubled and tripled or who can no longer refinance to pay the bills since their houses have plummeted in value.

So, again estimating conservatively, that’s at least half the average person’s income going to housing. But you also have to go to work and pay for gas.

Many of us have already forgotten how high these gas prices really are since they just came down. But, at about $2.60 per gallon in California, with an average commute in Los Angeles County of 40 minutes, you’re paying about $10 per day after traveling to buy groceries, picking up the kids and doing errands. Los Angeles County is very spread out and a car is a necessity.

But many cannot afford a car or may not drive because of their immigration status. A constant environment of terror reins down on the immigrant community in the form of racist immigration laws, making it sometimes impossible to receive a driver’s license. Some fear being pulled over since racial profiling, raids and deportations occur on a daily basis.

The latest increase in a bus pass of $70 per month similarly cuts into the lower wages of those forced to take inadequate public transportation at about 10 percent of their income.

Add to that the 50 percent of a person’s income going to rent or mortgage and that makes 60 percent, and we’re not done yet.

Health insurance, if you’re lucky enough to have it, comes to about $100 to $200 per month. Taking the lower range, that’s about five percent of one’s income. But what about those high deductibles? Let’s make that 10 percent and we’re still being conservative.

OK, where are we? That $35,000 per year average income, or $2,000 per month after taxes, has been hit with 70 percent for basic necessities.

Now there’s 30 percent left for food. That is if we don’t buy clothes or take care of emergencies or car repairs, etc.–all the things that happen often. But let’s say by some miracle we have the complete 30 percent for food. That leaves us with about $600 per month, or $150 dollars per week, for the average-size household of two to three people.

I failed to also mention that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed further cuts in basic services and has topped that with a scheme to steal over $4 billion through a regressive tax that targets working and poor people.

My neighbor echoed the complaints of many when he mentioned how he no longer receives the annual state benefit that he’s entitled to due to his age and health. Instead, he received a letter in lieu of his check that stated although he was still eligible for this money, the state could not honor its obligation due to lack of state funds.

Another neighbor complained about the greater amount of bureaucratic tape you have to go through to get your Medicare or medical benefits.

People are digging deeper into their pockets to pay for medicine that can’t wait or a home care attendant who must be in the home now. Those needs cut further into that $150 per week for food.

We should also consider unemployment, which is skyrocketing in the country now. In California, we enjoy the high end of the national average at over 7.1 percent. That means about 1.7 million people have no jobs, and that doesn’t include those who’ve stopped looking for jobs that don’t exist.

When you try to calculate the average percentage of housing, transportation and health care costs against a salary of zero you come up with an error in your spreadsheet–an unreal number. But the suffering of our class is very real–real enough to feel it in the gut.

However, in spite of these attacks against our class, we still fight back–like the immigrant community in Los Angeles did when it took the lead in fighting racist immigration legislation in 2006. And in regard to the same-sex marriage setback of Prop 8, our class is fighting that as well, in addition to other anti-working-class legislation.

We must realize that within this economic crisis lie the seeds of revolution that will begin to hammer the nails in the coffin that will bury all suffering due to lack of basic necessities like food.

We may not make the revolution in our lifetime, but everything that we as Marxists do is now watched more intently. Every action we take now, as trusted and sincere activists, is considered more seriously than before. And every idea we vocalize, every demand we make can become the demands of our class that will threaten any ruling-class opponent who dares to take a morsel of food from a child’s mouth.

Now is the time. Let’s get to work.