Racial inequality among the working poor shrinks in America

Andrea Peters

In July a team of researchers from a Harvard-affiliated research institute and the US Census Bureau released a study on economic mobility in the United States. The results, published in the article, “Changing Opportunity: Sociological Mechanisms for Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility,” are a blow to the claim that racial inequality is the overriding feature of modern life.

People ride their bikes past a homeless encampment set up along the boardwalk in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles. [AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

Using data drawn from multiple census years, federal income tax returns and the Social Security Administration, the researchers analyzed information from about 57 million children born between 1978 and 1992 and their parents. The scholars conclude that a key indicator of class inequality shows that racial gaps between poor, working class blacks and whites are falling. Meanwhile, class gaps are growing among whites.

The study focuses on the degree to which children and the generations of which they are a part see an improvement or a decline in their socioeconomic position relative to that of their parents and previous generations.

Before outlining in greater detail the findings of the Harvard-Census Bureau research team, it is essential to point out that, through no fault of their own, they rely on the racial groups identified by the US government in its decennial count of the population. Race, however, is not biologically real, but rather a social construct. There are no genetic or physical traits that all people from one alleged race have and which no one from another race does not have.

On the US Census, racial categories change from one year to the next. They are also restrictive and require people to choose an identity irrespective of the complex, ever-shifting historical and social reality surrounding the issue of race in America, which has become even more complicated as intermarriage rates rise and immigration changes the country’s demographics.

For example, only starting in the year 2000 have people been able to choose more than one race on the census. Latino is not a category at all. Individuals wishing to identify with such a heritage can indicate an ethnicity of Hispanic, but must also choose a racial group. People of Middle Eastern descent have no option to identify themselves exclusively as such. They have to decide between white, black, American Indian or Alaska Native, or one or another variety of sub-groups of the Asian population. These include Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and others, but no one geographically near to the Middle East. “Some other race” is a choice for everyone, and it comes with a request to then write in something more specific. That option, however, has appeared, disappeared and then reappeared over different censuses. In 2014, a study by the Pew Research Center reported that millions of Americans choose different racial categories for themselves from one census year to the next.

Images of the 2020 US Census survey with questions focused on race/ethnicity. [Photo: US Census Bureua ]

Thus, all research that analyzes racial inequalities has to be understood as limited in some sense. The organization of data into facts that allegedly apply to “whites” versus facts that allegedly apply to “blacks,” while necessary for statistical research and useful in understanding social inequalities, rests upon and can reinforce ideas of permanent racial identity that are, at their core, false. Race is not the same thing as class, which is an objective category that necessarily emerges out of the economic system and is the ultimate determinant under the capitalist social order.

But inasmuch as oppression along the “color line” is a major fact of American history and American capitalism, a critical study of racial inequalities is necessary. The danger in doing so emerges when an honest study of social reality is transformed into a subjective search for categories of identity so that people can be targeted for persecution (i.e., the Japanese immigrants and their descendants in America during World War II, the Jews in Germany under the Nazis) or, on the flip-side, showered with privileges. The wish, for instance, of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the racialist creator of the 1619 Project, to create a new racial category for “Descendants of American Slavery” has nothing to do with trying to understand the conditions of a sub-population and everything to do with making sure she and her social layer get more money.

The study led by Harvard economist and Distinguished Professor Raj Chetty is free of both of these maladies. It examines how the economic prospects of children from low-income versus high-income families have changed over recent years. They define low-income families as those at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution, which in 1992 were households with an average (median) income of $32,020. High-income families are those in the 75th percentile of the national income distribution, with a (median) household income in 1992 of $124,500. Thus, the study does not address inequality between the working poor and the truly rich. A family surviving on just over $30,000 lives in a state of absolute deprivation. A family making four times that much, however, which might include a teacher nearing retirement and a veteran autoworker, is not in the lap of luxury. While more secure than the impoverished majority and generally able to afford necessities, such households are often one major medical bill, or one job loss, away from crisis.

Working with these definitions, the researchers find that economic mobility has changed rapidly in the last 15 years. “Between 1978 and 1992,” note the authors, “household incomes in adulthood fell sharply for white children growing up in low-income families. At the same time, incomes increased for white children growing up in high-income families.” The gap in average earnings between adults born into poorer white families and those born into better-off white families in 1978 was $17,720. By the time those born in 1992 were 27 years old, that number had grown to $20,950. The cause of this increasing gap was primarily that whites from households toward the bottom saw their incomes decline during that period.

At the same time, “white-Black race gaps for low-income families shrank: the gap in average household incomes between white and Black children raised in low-income families fell by 28%, from $20,810 for children born in 1978 to $14,910 for children born in 1992.”

The lessening of this divide was driven by two factors. First, there has been some improvement for blacks born into the bottom rungs of society, with many escaping the depths of poverty as they entered their late 20s. In 1978, black children born into the bottom income quintile (the lowest 20 percent of income earners) were 14.7 percentage points more likely to remain in that quintile than their white counterparts. By 1992, however, that number had shrunk to 4.1 points. Second, the worsening situation for low-income white children also helped close the gap. About half of the narrowing of the white-black divide among the working poor was driven by “an increase in white children’s chances of remaining in the bottom quintile.” In short, the experience of being born poor and then remaining poor into adulthood is increasingly shared across the racial divide.

Simultaneously, the chances of a low-income child, from either a black or a white family, becoming a high-earner did not improve at all. Just 3 percent of black children born in 1992 into the bottom income quintile moved into the top quintile, the same number as in 1978. During this period, the prospects for white children worsened somewhat along the same measure. Whereas in 1978, 13.7 percent of those born into low-income families could expect to enter the ranks of the best-off, by 1992 that had fallen to 11.9 percent. Simultaneously, children from high-income Black households experienced some upward mobility, such that “the class gap among Black families …remained essentially unchanged.”

Chances of child from a low-income (bottom quintile) household becoming a high-income (top quintile) household, by race and birth cohort. Chart shows that upward mobility has stagnated for poor blacks and declined for poor whites. [Photo: “Changing Opportunity Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility.” Figure II. Panel B. Page 86.]

Thus, while the circumstances facing working class poor families of both races are converging, the bottom layer of African-Americans has not, after decades of racially based affirmative action policies that were billed as the solution to oppression, seen any progress in terms of closing the class gap between themselves and higher-income layers within their own racial group.

The researchers also found that the pattern of decreasing racial differences and increasing class differences was replicated across other major indicators of social well-being, including educational attainment and standardized test scores, as well as marriage, incarceration and mortality rates. “For example, the white class gap in early adulthood mortality more than doubled between the 1978 and 1992 birth cohorts, while the white-Black race gap in early adulthood mortality decreased by 77 percent.”

Incarceration rates are also leveling out between low-income members of these groups. By 2014, the incarceration rate for poorer whites had risen to 1.43 percent, up from 1.16 percent in 2000. During that same period, it fell for blacks of the same income strata from 4.53 percent to 4.28 percent. This poor layer of African-Americans has an incarceration rate that is more than double that of higher-income blacks.

In seeking the cause of these shifts, the study shows that parental employment rates within communities powerfully shape kids’ future economic mobility. The researchers insist that the issue is not so much whether any particular individual child’s parents are employed, but whether the parents of those with whom these children interact at their schools, in their neighborhoods, through their social networks, etc., have jobs. When those adults do not, it is damaging to children, not just, or even primarily, in terms of the overall amount of money that a community has (or no longer has), but in terms of the overall health of the social environment. To underscore their point, Chetty and his co-authors quote from sociologist William Julius Wilson’s 1996 book When Work Disappears: The World of New Urban Poor—“crime, family dissolution, welfare, low levels of social organization, and so on … are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.”

The researchers conclude that “the growth in the white class gap and the reduction in the white-Black race gap can be explained almost entirely by the sharp fall in employment rates for low-income white parents relative to low-income Black parents and high-income white parents over the period we study.”

In communities that are more racially mixed, where there are higher rates of interracial marriage and children are interacting more with peers across racial boundaries, falling employment rates among low-income whites have a negative impact on all children’s future economic prospects within the community, regardless of race. At the same time, however, “The areas in which outcomes of children born to low-income Black families improved the most tend to be areas in which outcomes of children born to low-income white families deteriorated the least.” Therefore, “the gains for children born to low-income Black families did not come directly at the expense of their white counterparts in the same areas.”

In other words, the data indicate that securing and improving the job prospects of all working class people—not doling out opportunities to this or that person on the basis of their perceived skin color—will help the conditions of oppressed minorities improve.

In the conclusion of their study, Chetty and his co-authors make a point that is a rebuke, albeit extremely timid, to racialists’ claims that minorities must self-segregate in order to shield themselves from their white oppressors. Rather, “One approach to increasing opportunity is … to increase connections between communities. For example, policies might focus on reducing racial and income segregation—e.g., by changing zoning restrictions, school district boundaries, or increasing the availability of affordable housing in high-opportunity areas—and fostering cross-race and cross-class interactions—e.g., forming groups designed to cut across existing lines of interaction.”

This is hardly a radical proposal. It is the sort of thing that American liberalism of a different era would have put forward as a rule. But in the present circumstances, with American democracy in its death throes, the idea that the breaking down of racial boundaries is the road to progress appears almost as a radical notion. It is rejected, in different forms, by both the Democrats and Republicans. The myopic component of the authors’ proposed policy solution lies not in the racial element, but in the class element. Capitalist society, which rests upon class inequality, cannot produce “cross-class interactions,” but rather intensified cross-class exploitation.

Critics of this study will point to the fact that, despite the trend towards lessening racial inequality among low-income households, there remain notable racial differences in terms of median incomes, chances for upward mobility and risks of downward mobility, incarceration rates, etc. Many points can be made about these facts and the underlying data, not the least of which is that averages and probabilities only reveal so much. They are, not infrequently, a great mystifier of social reality.

Beyond that, the racial gaps for working class people are dwarfed many times over by the class gaps between workers of all backgrounds and the rich of all colors. And with regards to this specific study, the researchers were not able to investigate the experience of truly wealthy populations—both black and white—because they had to “top-code” incomes above $1 million. This statistical method, leveling down the stratospheric income and wealth figures of the super-rich to make calculations possible, limits understanding of the full dimensions of economic inequality.

More broadly, however, the fact that certain racial inequalities persist and that the burdens of deprivation fall more heavily on or, rather, have particular features for some racial groups more than others, is hardly a surprise. For all the great battles waged by working people of all races against inequality and despite major conquests and cultural changes, American capitalism could never and will never resolve this problem.

Israeli Treatment of Palestinians Remains Unchanged Over 75 Years

Melvin A. Goodman

Netzah Yehuda training exercise. Photograph Source: יעסיעס – CC BY-SA 4.0

The Biden administration’s decision to continue funding the notorious Netzah Yehuda battalion, an ultra-Orthodox unit that operates on the West Bank, is the latest indication that the United States is unwilling to take any steps to counter Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.  The funding of the battalion marks a major defeat for the human rights experts in the Departments of State and Defense, who argued that Netzah Yehuda should be barred from receiving U.S. support.  This marks one more decision by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that ignores the need for accountability with regard to the barbarous actions of the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Netzah Yehuda battalion is particularly violent in dealing with the Palestinian community. The battallion has killed unarmed civilians and suspects in custody as well as committed sexual assault and torture.  it has attracted many members of an extreme religious-nationalist settler group infamous for establishing illegal outposts on Palestinian land that have no legal basis in Israeli law. In recent years, the Netzah Yehuda battalion has been involved in at least a half-dozen controversial cases involving its soldiers, resulting in jail time, discharge, or harsh criticism for assaulting or killing innocent Palestinians.

U.S. funding of the battalion is a violation of the Leahy Law, passed in 1997, that prohibits the Departments of State and Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights.   U.S. embassies and the appropriate regional bureaus of the Department of State vet potential recipients of security assistance.  If a unit is found to have been credibly implicated in a serious abuse of human rights, assistance is denied until the host nation government takes effective steps to bring the responsible persons within the unit to justice.  As a result, security forces and national defense units in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Columbia, Guatemala, and Mexico have been denied assistance in the past.  The United States, of course, plays by different rules when it comes to military support for Israel.

Even before Blinken made his unfortunate decision regarding the battalion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obnoxiously proclaimed that “if anyone thinks they can impose sanctions  on a unit of the IDF—I will fight it with all my strength.”  U.S. presidents have been unwilling to stand up to Netanyahu who has led six of the eleven different Israeli governments over the past 28 years.  This funding decision is particularly reprehensible because the battalion was responsible for the death of a 78-year-old American citizen whose stress-induced heart attack was brought on by being bound, gagged, and left on the ground by Israeli forces.  Netanyahu’s government prosecuted no one in this case.

One of the more feckless U.S. moves regarding the war in Gaza was President Biden’s decision  to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinians via a floating military pier.  U.S. officials in the Departments of State and Defense argued that the weather conditions in the Mediterranean would compromise any effort to make the pier workable.  The critics were right.  They wanted the Biden administration to put pressure on Israel to open land crossings for aid, but Biden refused to do so.  As a result, the pier was attached to Gaza’s coast line in May and abandoned in July.  

Israeli officials maintain that they are allowing aid into Gaza, but the aid is going in slowly and humanitarian conveys are still being attacked.  A UN vehicle, clearly marked, was attacked several days ago and Palestinian aid workers were killed.  Meanwhile, more than 560 schools in Gaza have been hit or destroyed, and numerous shelters have been attacked.  This points to the moral squalor of Israeli public declarations that deny the targeting of humanitarian missions.

In order to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict (and perhaps appreciate U.S. complicity), it helps to remember the first Israeli edicts against its Palestinian population more than 75 years ago.  With the creation of the state of Israel, the Knesset adopted the British Defense Regulations that enabled Israeli military authorities to close off the Arab areas and restrict entry and exit only to those with permits.  Every Arab inhabitant had to apply to the military government office or to the police in his/her district to obtain a permit to leave his/her village for whatever reason.

The Knesset added its own restrictions to the British regulations.  These enabled the Israelis to deport people from their towns or villages and to summon any person to present himself at a police station or to remain confined to his/her house.  Any Arab could be placed under administrative arrest for an unlimited time, without explanation and without trial.  Violators were tried by military courts and not civilian ones; this is still true today on the West Bank.  Tom Segev, one of Israel’s most distinguished historians, noted in his important book, “1949: The First Israelis,” that “among the soldiers and officers sent to rule over the Arabs were ones who had been found unfit for active service.”  They were vengeful, which is true today on the West Bank.  Segev is associated with Israel’s New Historians, a group challenging many of the country’s traditional narratives.

Another distinguished Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, recorded in his book, “Ten Myths About Israel,” that the discussion of the forced transfer of the Arab population in Palestine began even before Israel received its independence in 1948.  The discussions evolved into a master plan for the massive expulsion of Palestinians, which was known as Plan Delat.  Pappe notes that the Israeli Foreign Ministry created the myth that the Palestinians became refugees because their leaders told them to leave Palestine before the “Arab armies invaded and kicked out the Jews.”

The continued violence in Gaza and the renewed violence on the West Bank points to a dark future for the Middle East, particularly for Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian community.  Israel has become increasingly isolated in the international community, and the ultra nationalism of the right wing is increasingly dominating Israeli politics.  For the past thirty years, the Israelis have hidden behind false gestures of support for a two-state solution and now the possibility of a cease fire in Gaza in order to maintain military and economic support from the United States.  Sadly, it is working, and Israel shows no interest in pursuing any alternative to an endless war.

Latest economic data put question mark over China’s growth target

Nick Beams

Doubts are beginning to be raised about whether the Chinese economy will be able to reach its official growth target of 5 percent for this year as factory activity continues to fall.

A municipal worker rides past a construction site in Beijing, July 25, 2024. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

August saw the fourth consecutive monthly contraction as the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) issued by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) dropped to 49.1 from 49.4 (below 50 indicates contraction). The August result was below expectations, with Bloomberg forecasting 49.5.

The latest figures were not a one-off, or even a recent phenomenon, but part of a longer trend. The reading has been below 50 for all but three months in the period since April 2023. There was a small rise after China lifted COVID restrictions at the end of 2022—at the cost of at least one million deaths—but since then it has been very much downhill.

Other data showed that beneath the headline inflation, deflationary pressures were at work. According to analysis by Goldman Sachs economists, both input and output price sub-indexes fell. “Price indicators in the NBS manufacturing survey suggest deflationary pressures picked up significantly,” they said.

The worsening situation in manufacturing is being compounded by the fall in the housing and property sector, which has been a mainstay of the Chinese economy for more than a decade.

According to preliminary data from the China Real Estate Information Corp, reported by Bloomberg, the value of new-home sales in August from the 100 largest real estate companies fell by 26.8 percent from a year earlier, compared to a 19.7 percent decline in July.

The decline in the housing market is having a significant effect on the budgets of local governments. Goldman Sachs economists have warned that revenues from taxes and land sales will fall short of projections unless there is significant intervention by government authorities. But there is little sign of that happening with the measures undertaken so far described as insufficient.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the “festering crisis” in real estate, now into its third year, “has yet to bottom out and remains a major headache” despite some rescue efforts.

The worsening economic outlook has led to a slew of predictions that China will not meet its growth target of 5 percent this year unless there is a major intervention by the government.

Bloomberg economists said: “Looking forward, the economy will need more policy support to pull out of its extended period of weakness. Two months of weak PMI readings so far this quarter, including the latest downward surprise in the manufacturing gauge, bode poorly for the economy.”

An analysis by Goldman Sachs stated that “more fiscal easing is necessary to help secure the ‘around 5 percent’ fill-year growth target.”

Economists at the Swiss Bank UBS have predicted the economy will grow by 4.6 percent this year and 4 percent in 2025. This compares with previous forecasts of 4.9 percent and 4.6 percent respectively.

Economists at Barclays bank have taken a slightly different approach, examining tax revenue collections which they believe provide a more accurate assessment of the state of the economy than growth numbers. Their conclusion is that the situation could be more serious than growth figures indicate.

According to their findings, reported in the Wall Street Journal, the tax revenue from corporate incomes dropped by 5.4 percent in the first seven months of the year, with the fall reflected in a lowering of profit margins for companies.

“With weaker domestic demand exacerbating overcapacity issues, price wars or price cuts are becoming more widespread across industries” amid “fierce competition.”

“Falling profits will likely lead to pay cuts and layoffs, boding ill for consumption,” they said.

These gloomier views are countered by government representatives. In a video message, the Chinese finance minister Lan Fo’an emphasised the government was very much in control.

“Looking forward, China’s economic development has multiple advantages and macro control policies will continue,” he said, describing the performance of the economy in the first half of the years as “generally stable and progressing steadily.”

Lan was speaking from Cape Town, South Africa where he was attending a meeting to establish a New Development Bank sponsored by the BRICS group of countries.

There is no question that the actions of the Chinese state can play a powerful role in determining the direction of the economy. But the objective laws and contradictions of the global capitalist economy are even more powerful, and they are starting to make themselves felt.

The government is not able to resort to the major stimulus measures as in the past because it fears this will only create a debt crisis and destabilise the financial system. There are already concerns in this area.

The slowdown in the Chinese economy and the lack of profitable investment opportunities has already led to a move into government bonds, pushing up their price and sending their yields, or interest rate down. (The two have an inverse relationship.)

The People’s Bank of China is trying to halt these moves because of fears of a bond market bubble that could collapse in the wake of the issuing of more government debt. This would push down the price of bonds, raising their yields which would mean that banks, which had invested heavily in government debt, would incur significant losses.

The concern is that such banks could be placed in a similar situation to the American Silicon Valley Bank which went under in the March 2023 as a result of significant losses on its Treasury bonds.

The Chinese government’s general plan is to try to expand its way out of the slowdown by increasing exports through the development of high-tech products and basic industrial goods, in particular steel. But it is running into rising tariff walls and protectionist measures.

Protectionism is certain to be intensified in conditions of a slower global economy, including in the US.

Then there is the issue of what policies will be adopted to specifically target China by whoever wins the US presidential election. Trump has said he will increase tariffs on all Chinese imports by 60 percent while Harris’s policies will show no letup in the anti-Chinese measures enacted under Biden.

The continued slowdown, as exemplified in the most recent data, has led to the widespread view that the 5 percent growth target is out of reach. They were summed up by Wang Yan, a strategist at the global investment firm Alpine Macro, who said it was “almost impossible” to achieve.

Wang commented that Chinese policymakers appeared to be “paralysed” and lacked a coherent strategy with the piecemeal measures they had employed to so far being ad hoc and hesitant. He warned of a “slow implosion” in the period ahead.

The great fear of the ruling Chinese oligarchy if that if such a development does take place then it could lead to an explosion of class and social struggles. The political stability of the regime has largely rested on its capacity to deliver economic expansion and jobs.

Deepening crisis in New Zealand public health system

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s public health system faces a rapidly worsening crisis, with growing levels of unmet need and understaffing, as the National Party-led government ramps up its brutal austerity program. The ruling class is forcing workers to pay for the economic downturn with cuts to jobs, wages and vital public services.

Waikato Hospital [Photo: Facebook/Waikato Hospital]

In July, the government replaced the board of Health New Zealand with a commissioner, former private hospital chief executive Lester Levy, who is tasked with making $1.4 billion in “savings” across the health system.

This is to be achieved largely through job cuts. On August 28, Health NZ called for “expressions of interest in voluntary redundancy” from workers in non-clinical roles. Chief executive Margie Apa told workers in an email that this would likely be followed by “formal change consultation processes over the coming months,” i.e. mandatory cutbacks. Thousands of people could lose their jobs.

The reduction in so-called “back office” roles is accompanied by a hiring freeze in many hospitals, despite a desperate shortage of thousands of nurses and doctors.

Radio NZ (RNZ) reported on August 30 that more than 30 doctors at Gisborne Hospital had written to MPs and Health NZ calling for urgent action to address critical shortages. Senior doctor Alex Raines said the hospital had only a third of the number of anaesthetists it should have. The operating theatre was forced to run at half capacity some weeks as a result.

The Northern Advocate reported that since July night shifts at Dargaville Hospital have been run without a single doctor present. Nurses protested against the unsafe conditions, which meant critically ill patients had to be transferred to Whangarei, an hour’s drive away.

On August 30, more than 600 nurses and other workers held a 90-minute stop-work meeting to protest conditions at Waikato Hospital. Nurse Tracy Chisholm told RNZ that the emergency department alone had a shortage of 20 nurses and healthcare assistants. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) said there were about 600 unfilled nursing vacancies across the region.

Waikato Hospital was reportedly running with just 40 percent of the necessary medical registrars on August 24‒25. Doctor Natalie Quin told the Waikato Times she felt “morally impaired, because we are not practising medicine properly.” She had reported at least 10 “patient harm events” caused by understaffing. One person had waited around six weeks in hospital for coronary bypass surgery.

At Taranaki Hospital, the Resident Doctors’ Association told Stuff on August 20 that four out of the 14 medical registrar positions had been vacant for six months. The remaining 10 registrars were frequently working 60 hours a week as a result.

On August 12 the New Zealand Herald reported that patients in severe mental health crises were “waiting for up to 72 hours for care in the South Auckland region” because of a shortage of full-time doctors and nurses in the region’s 24-hour crisis response unit.

The situation in primary healthcare is equally dire, with an estimated shortage of 500 general practitioners nationwide. A recent survey by the General Practice Owners Association of 244 practices—one quarter of the total number in New Zealand—found that 89 percent had increased or were about to increase their fees and 41 percent had reduced services in the past six months.

For decades, government funding for GPs has not kept up with increased demand and cost pressures. This year’s increase was just 4 percent, which will force further cuts.

The New Zealand Herald reported this week that dozens of sick and elderly people in the working class Auckland suburb of Ōtara are regularly lining up outside Ōtara Local Doctors and Urgent Care from 6:00 a.m. The clinic is one of few that allows walk-ins and has relatively low fees. Booking an appointment elsewhere often means waiting for weeks.

Greg McIndoe, a 66-year-old who recently underwent knee surgery and has chronic pain, said the situation was “outrageous.” He had to wait for hours in the cold twice a week to see a doctor.

Healthcare workers are attempting to fight back. Earlier this year, about 2,500 junior doctors held several one-day strikes to demand a decent wage increase. Last month about 2,500 St John Ambulance workers took limited industrial action, opposing a pay freeze and calling for more government funding. The trade union bureaucracy, however, is keeping all these disputes divided from each other, preventing any effective campaign against the austerity regime.

The Public Service Association (PSA) issued a statement on August 28 calling Health NZ’s latest proposed staff cuts “unfocused,” “reckless” and “a prelude to privatisation.” The PSA, however, has worked with the government to implement more than 6,000 layoffs across multiple government departments.

Opposition Labour Party health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall also postured as an opponent of the cuts, saying “[Health Minister] Shane Reti needs to explain how a modern, efficient, patient-centred health system can function without non-clinical staff supporting the frontline.”

In fact, the National-led government is picking up where Labour left off. More than 500 “back office” job cuts were made during the 2020-2023 Labour Party-led government as part of the establishment of Health NZ through the amalgamation of the country’s district health boards.

The Labour government, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, starved the public health system of funding. The NZNO and other unions ensured that workers’ struggles were isolated and sold out.

Ardern ended the country’s zero-COVID policy in late 2021, adopting the criminal policy of mass infection that was demanded by big business. This was imposed with the crucial assistance of the trade unions, which did not lift a finger as mask mandates and other public health measures were removed.

So far more than 43,000 people have been hospitalised and over 4,100 have died due to COVID-19, placing an immense burden on the healthcare system and resulting in longer delays for thousands of patients. This avoidable disaster, alongside the cost of living crisis and increased poverty, was a major factor in Labour’s crushing defeat in the October 2023 election.

The demand for high-quality, free public healthcare, available to everyone who needs it, must be taken up by the working class in opposition to the entire capitalist political establishment including Labour and the union bureaucracy.

The government’s claim that there is “no money” to fully fund health services is a lie. What is required is the socialist reorganisation of society: The billions of dollars in the coffers of the financial elite, and the money wasted on military spending for war, must be redistributed to rebuild and expand hospitals, hire thousands more doctors and nurses and to eliminate COVID-19 and other preventable diseases.

Unstable right-wing government formed in Thailand

Ben McGrath

A new ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the Pheu Thai Party has taken shape in Thailand, nearly three weeks after the Constitutional Court removed previous prime minister Srettha Thavisin. The formation of a new government, however, will not resolve any of the issues facing the Thai ruling class amid ongoing factional conflict within its ranks.

Thailand Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Paetongtarn was elected by the lower house of the National Assembly on August 16, two days after Srettha was forced from office, on bogus ethics violations. Pheu Thai intends to finalize Paetongtarn’s administration this week by sending its list of 35 cabinet ministers to King Vajiralongkorn for royal endorsement.

The Pheu Thai-led coalition is comprised of 10 parties, down from 11 under Srettha. The military-aligned Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) was forced out of the coalition and in its place is the Democrat Party, a long-time opponent of Pheu Thai and its de facto leader Thaksin Shinawatra, the father of the prime minister. In addition, a faction has split from the PPRP, joining the new government. It is led by Thamanat Prompow who supposedly broke with the party out of anger at being excluded from the PPRP’s list of cabinet minister nominees.

This ungainly coalition gives the new government 322 seats in the lower house of the National Assembly while the opposition holds 171 seats, 143 of which are controlled by the so-called People’s Party, the latest iteration of the now-dissolved Move Forward Party (MFP). Six seats are vacant.

The conflicts and shuffling of parties in the coalition point to the highly unstable nature of the alliance formed between Pheu Thai and the traditional sections of the ruling class associated with the military and monarchy. In fact, while the new government has not even been formally established, the Thai media has reported that petitions are being filed with the Election Commission (EC) to dissolve Pheu Thai. The party is charged with being under the influence of Thaksin, who is not formally a party member which is illegal under the Political Parties Act. EC Chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong has denied seeing any petitions.

This continuing political instability followed the 2023 general election. The military used its control of the Senate at the time to block the election-winning MFP from taking power. Conscious that outright election rigging coupled with declining social conditions could set off protests bringing in the working class, the military chose to reach a deal with Pheu Thai. The latter formed a government that prominently included the PPRP as well as the United Thai Nation Party (UTN) associated with 2014 coup leader and then-outgoing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

The removal of the PPRP from the government coalition does not represent a move away from the military. In reality, Pheu Thai which was ousted in military coups in 2006 and 2014, remains at the beck and call of the military within the government represented by the UTN.

Pheu Thai is simply engaged in maneuver to isolate PPRP leader Prawit Wongsuwon, another of the 2014 coup leaders, after he did not participate in the vote to approve Paetongtarn as prime minister. Pheu Thai has also accused Prawit of orchestrating the removal of Srettha by being the driving force behind the 40 former senators who filed the ethics complaint leading to his removal from office.

Coup leader Prayut is no longer officially a member of the party, but he remains a highly influential figure. He is currently a Privy Councillor to the king. The inclusion of Thamanat’s breakaway faction from the PPRP is another sign that Pheu Thai is determined to maintain its connections to the military and the right-wing sections of the ruling class they represent.

Furthermore, as with Srettha’s cabinet, a significant number of posts in Paetongtarn’s government have been allotted to former ministers in Prayut’s military junta. Of the 35 ministers, nine served in Prayut’s cabinet, including two newcomers to the cabinet: Narumon Pinyosinwat, who has been appointed minister of agriculture and cooperatives and Chalermchai Sri-on, appointed as natural resources and environment minister.

Significantly, Natthapon Nakpanich, who has been appointed deputy defense minister, has close links to Prayut and is regarded as his protégé. Natthapon also served as secretary to outgoing Defense Minister Sutin Klungsang where he used his power to obstruct attempts to reform the military. Pheu Thai has proposed minor and largely symbolic reforms that powerful sections of the military have rejected, fearing any changes will impact their wide-ranging business interests.

The inclusion of the Democrats also demonstrates that Pheu Thai is attempting to court the most right-wing layers. The Democrats have been a longtime opposition party and were elevated to power against the People’s Power Party, the predecessor of Pheu Thai. After the military removed Thaksin in a coup in 2006, his party returned to power only to be removed from office by the Constitutional Court in 2008 and replaced with the Democrats. This culminated in mass protests in 2010 against the Democrats that were violently suppressed by the military killing 99 people.

These are the very political forces that Pheu Thai relies upon to stay in power. Paetongtarn claimed that the Democrats’ inclusion was necessary to form “a stable government” and to pass laws “to address people’s problems.” In reality, the new government will address the country’s deepening economic problems by imposing new burdens on working people.

The ruling class is conscious that it sits atop a social powder keg. Thailand is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the top one percent alone holding 56 percent of total wealth, a source of great tensions. Workers and the poor face huge levels of household debt and low wages.

The economy grew by only 1.9 percent last year. While it is projected to expand by 2.4 percent in 2024, this is nowhere near the 5 percent promised by previous Prime Minister Srettha. The economy is suffering in part due to the US-led trade war against China that is affecting countries throughout the region. Since July 2023, the working class has faced huge job cuts, with more than 2,000 factories closing and approximately 51,500 workers sacked.

The government is incapable of addressing let alone resolving the worsening social and economic crisis facing workers and the poor, and will turn to increasingly repressive measures as social tensions and political opposition grow.

Protests and general strike in Israel pose the need to break with Zionism

Thomas Scripps

People attend a rally demanding a cease-fire deal and the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the deaths of six hostages in the Palestinian territory , in Jerusalem, on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. [AP Photo/Leo Correa]

The mass protests of the past two days in Israel have exposed the broad popular opposition to the far-right Netanyahu government, but also the political impasse confronted by any oppositional movement that remains trapped within a Zionist perspective.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets on Sunday, including significant sections of workers, in what was the largest day of protest since Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began last October. The demonstrations denounced the government’s failure to secure a hostage-exchange deal and were prompted by the recovery of six dead Israelis from Gaza the day before. The Histadrut trade union federation responded by calling a general strike on Monday.

Anger was enflamed by the news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet had effectively torpedoed a hostage exchange deal just days before, on Thursday, by insisting on continued occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt. According to an Israeli Health Ministry postmortem, the six hostages had been killed as recently as Thursday or Friday, amid fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian fighters.

The events starkly exposed the Israeli government’s contempt for the lives not only of Palestinians in Gaza, but also of the hostages—whom it cynically uses as a pretext to wage a war of annihilation aiming to murder and expel as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza and increasingly from the West Bank as well. Escalating Israeli military attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as against Syria and Iran, threaten a catastrophic escalation of the conflict across the region.

Since the first and only exchange in November-December 2023—of Israeli hostages for Palestinians held captive in Israel’s prisons—every time a similar deal has appeared to be possible, the Netanyahu government has done something to sabotage it. The Israeli regime is not trying to save lives, it is massacring Palestinians and threatening a regional bloodbath of Arabs and Israelis in pursuit of its ethnic supremacist ends.

The deaths of the six hostages brought a broad section of Israeli society face-to-face with this reality. But it cannot be changed, as the current outlook of the protests suggests, by placing pressure on Netanyahu or by replacing him with other war criminals.

No progressive struggle can be taken up against the Israeli government without opposing the genocide which has so far claimed at least 40,000—and most likely closer to 200,000—Palestinian lives.

Histadrut chair Arnon Bar-David’s pledge that “we won’t allow life to be abandoned” must be treated with contempt. This is precisely what the nationalist Histadrut bureaucracy has done for the last 11 months. Ignoring the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions Gaza for international solidarity action to stop the genocide in Gaza, it has worked to divide Jewish from Arab workers and allow the massacre of innocent men, women and children to continue. The issues raised by the mass protest movement which swept Israel in the first half of 2023 are raised again, brought to a level of extreme urgency by the war.

In that movement, in which a significant percentage of Israeli society protested Netanyahu’s efforts to carry out a far-right judicial coup, defence minister Yoav Gallant, former defence minister Benny Gantz and former prime minister Yair Lapid were put forward as opposition leaders. The protest organizers based themselves on complete support for the Zionist project and refused to take up the question on the democratic rights of the oppressed Palestinian people.

That perspective is in large part responsible for the catastrophe which has since unfolded. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time:

Despite its enormous scale, however, this mass movement has a weakness that will prove fatal if not combatted: It has not so far embraced in any way the struggles of the Palestinian people…

To have any chance of success, Jewish workers and youth must cast off the blinders of Zionist ideology and adopt a socialist strategy…

It is impossible for Jewish workers and youth to defend their democratic rights under conditions where the Palestinian population of Israel and the occupied territories remains under savage military repression and increasingly brazen vigilante and settler violence. There cannot be military dictatorship in the West Bank and Gaza and democracy within Israel.

The protests were wound down, even as abuses of the Palestinians under the far-right government continued.

After the October 7 incursion, Gallant and Gantz were both happy to take part in Netanyahu’s war cabinet and its crimes, while Lapid took on the role of an unswervingly loyal “opposition.” Now they are again put forward as the answer to a crisis placed solely at the door of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and still framed solely in terms of the harm done to Israelis.

Gallant is being touted for his sole vote of opposition in Thursday’s cabinet meeting to Netanyahu’s insistence on including the Philadelphi Corridor as a condition. Gantz had left the government in June.

But this is a falling out among war criminals. Both Gallant and Gantz have been willing participants at the highest level in Israel’s genocide—Gallant, alongside Netanyahu, is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Theirs is a purely tactical disagreement, on the basis of the same Zionist perspective; and moreover, with an eye to furthering Israel’s war plans against Lebanon and Iran, which Gallant in particular feels are undermined by unnecessarily bogging down Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

The political bankruptcy of an anti-government opposition which bases itself on these figures was indicated Monday, when protests were reduced in size and the strike severely limited. Many demonstrations and stoppages had the character of a day of mourning for the killed hostages more than of a struggle against Netanyahu. Histadrut’s careful management of the movement was summed up by its compliance with a court order ending the strike at 2:30 p.m., rather than the planned 6 p.m.

Without a new axis of political struggle being taken up by the Israeli working class, in unity with and fighting for the liberation of the Palestinian masses from Zionist oppression, the Israeli regime will continue with its policy of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, whether under Netanyahu, Gallant or someone else.

As ever, Netanyahu’s immediate response to the threat to his personal political position is to escalate Israeli aggression in an effort to create the most right-wing climate possible and embolden his fascist supporters, telling a specially called news conference, “we will not surrender to pressure.”

Netanyahu knows he can act with such impunity because he has the full military and diplomatic backing of the NATO imperialist powers, which support the genocide in Gaza as part of an escalating global war, including the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.