UK Labour government refuses to pay pension compensation to millions of women

Margot Miller

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has reneged on promises made in opposition that the party would compensate women born in the 1950s who lost up to tens of thousands of pounds due to pension changes under previous governments.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on December 17 Starmer, backed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall, refused Parliament a vote on a compensation package for the cohort—known as WASPIs (Women Against State Pension Inequality)—proposed by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Starmer said, “The taxpayer simply cannot afford the tens of billions of pounds in compensation when the evidence does show that 90 percent of those impacted did know about it [changes to pensions]. That is because of the state of our economy.”

While Kendall admitted to parliament there was a 28-month delay informing women of the pension changes, in the same breath she said there was “considerable awareness” of the changes, that timely letters would have made no difference and there was no evidence of “direct financial loss.”

Labour politicians including Starmer, his Deputy Angela Rayner, Reeves and Kendall, and many other Labour MPs, all professed sympathy for the plight of the WASPI campaign group in the past. This included photo ops with WASPI women at every opportunity for years.

However, with Labour having an almost unassailable lead over the Tories in the year leading up to the July 2024 general election, the matter was getting too close for comfort for the party—pledged to “iron” fiscal discipline—and nothing on the WASPI issue appeared in its 2024 election manifesto.

The 1995 Pensions Act brought in by the Conservatives, led then by Prime Minister John Major, increased the state pension eligibility age (known as the state pension age), for women from 60 to 65 years, on the cynical grounds of achieving equality with men who retired at 65. The change was phased in from 2010 for women born between 1950-55.

These changes were accelerated by the 2011 Pensions Act under another Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, encompassing women born between 1950-1960. The state pension age for women increased to 65 by November 2018, and for women and men to 66 by October 2020. The WASPIs argue they were not given adequate notice of the changes by the DWP to enable them to adjust their future financial arrangements accordingly. Many retired without realising their state pension age had risen.

It was only from 2009 to 2013 that the DWP wrote to the women affected about the pension changes in 1995 and 2011.

How this worked out in practise is exemplified by the experience of retiree Hilary Simpson, whose story is told by the Guardian.

She retired early from employment in local government aged 55 to take on childcare responsibilities for her daughter, having calculated she could manage on the lump sum from her workplace pension until she could claim her state pension at 60. The new legislation, however, upended her plans, meaning the lump sum would now have to be stretched over eight years until she was 63. When the changes were accelerated with the 2011 Act, eight years became 10-and-a-half years.

Simpson challenged the claims by the government that 90 percent of the women affected knew about the changes. “The DWP have said they don’t know how many letters they sent out and to whom,” she said.

Further attacks on the pensions of men and women followed. The Pensions Act 2014 further raised the state pension age from 66 to 67, to be in place by 2026-28. An earlier Pensions Act 2007 established a rise in the State Pension Age from 67 to 68 by 2044-2048. The Pensions Act 2014, however, introduced five-yearly reviews and it is expected the state pension age of 68 will be in place much sooner.

A petition organised by the WASPIs has passed the necessary threshold of 100,000 votes for a parliamentary debate to be considered—to discuss a compensation scheme for the WASPI women. To date, approaching 151,000 votes from the public have been registered.

Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI). demonstration outside Parliament on the day of Labour's autumn budget, October 30, 2024 [Photo: Cllr Pat Draper/X]

The package proposed by the Ombudsman amounts to £10.5 billion for the 3.5 million women affected, which works out at a meagre payment of £1,000-2,500 for each woman.

This should be measured against the state pension totals which might have been paid but were stolen from WASPI women by the changes in legislation. For example, a woman born in 1952, who paid in the qualifying 30 years National Insurance contributions and retired at the State Pension Age of 62, would have lost two years Full State Pension—at the then weekly amount of £169.50—and robbed of £17,628 in total.

Someone whose State Pension Age rose to 65 would have been purloined of five years’ pension, or a staggering £44,070, as well as five years of well-earned retirement.

How paltry this settlement is exposed in the fact that in the run-up to the 2019 general election, Labour, then headed by the nominally left Jeremy Corbyn, pledged £58 billion—over five year—to compensate the WASPI women. The then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said Labour in government would make individual payments of an average of £15,380 to the 3.7 million women affected, with some payouts reaching £31,300. Had Corbyn won the election, there is no doubt he would have ditched this pledge—in line with his constant capitulations to the Labour right that saw him politely hand the party leadership over to Starmer, after losing the general election.

Notwithstanding the laughable pittance that the Ombudsman suggested, ignoring its recommendations is highly unusual and created further embarrassment for the government. The Ombudsman is appointed by the Crown at the prime minister’s recommendation to investigate complaints against public bodies. It is independent of the government and answers complaints to Parliament.

In the UK, the income of pensioners comes from one or more of the following sources: the state pension financed by National Insurance contributions, a workplace pension, a personal pension—or personal wealth. The poorest who survive on the state pension alone must claim welfare benefits to top up their income.

Not only is the state pension being eroded, but so are workplace pensions, with workers in the public who previously received better terms than the average in the private sector being levelled down, now having to work longer and pay higher contributions to receive smaller pensions.

This is above all due to the betrayals of the trade union bureaucracy in the public sector, which sold out the mass pension struggles by teachers, civil servants and workers in higher and further education among other sectors. The largest pension strike on November 30, 2011, involved 2.5 million workers in 20 unions.

This continued into the present decade. Central to the betrayal in 2023 by the University and College Union of its members during a strike wave over falling living standards that erupted in 2022-23 was a sellout pension deal.

Starmer’s refusal to pay compensation to the WASPI women is another signal to the ruling class—after its October budget was attacked by big business—that Labour will deepen its assault on the working class, no holds barred. It follows the sharp restriction of winter fuel allowance payments—previously worth between £100 and £300 for all retirees, including 1.8 million of the poorest—and comes alongside an announcement kicking any action on the social care crisis into the long grass.

A recent study of the sector painted a “dire” picture of provision, the lack of which had a “profound human cost and economic consequences” for the elderly and their families. Thanks to Labour, a “review” will report at the scheduled end of Labour’s first term in office, in 2028.

Impeached South Korean president blocks arrest

Ben McGrath

In a sign of the intensifying political crisis in South Korea, investigators and police attempted to execute an arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday. He is the first sitting South Korean president to be the subject of an arrest warrant. They were rebuffed however by the president’s security detail including a military detachment.

Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions demand the arrest of impeached President Yoon near the presidential residence in Seoul, January 3, 2025. The letters read “Immediately arrest Yoon Suk Yeol.” [AP Photo/Lee Jin-man]

The Seoul Western District Court issued the arrest warrant for Yoon on Tuesday at the request of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which is investigating Yoon’s failed attempt to impose martial law on December 3. The court also issued a separate warrant for investigators to search Yoon’s presidential residence in Yongsan, Seoul, which they were also unable to carry out.

The CIO requested the warrant after Yoon refused to appear for questioning three times, most recently on December 29. Yoon has been accused of insurrection and abuse of power and is already listed as a criminal suspect in the case. While sitting presidents are immune from prosecution, this does not apply to charges of insurrection and treason. Yoon has denounced the CIO, claiming it has no authority to investigate his martial law declaration. His lawyers called the arrest warrant “illegal.”

When CIO officials and the police arrived at Yoon’s residence Friday morning, they attempted to enter at around 8:00 a.m., but were blocked by the Presidential Security Service (PSS) and the 55th Security Brigade, which belongs to the Army’s Capital Defense Command, but is subordinate to the PSS. Clashes between the two sides reportedly broke out and a standoff lasted for approximately five and half hours before the CIO called off the attempt to arrest Yoon.

The PSS is responsible for the president’s security. However, it is not simply a division of bodyguards, but an independent section of the South Korean state bureaucracy. It has its own political interests while being close to the president, with influence over policy, the police and the military. The now former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who has been arrested for playing a leading role in the declaration of martial law, led the PSS from May 2022 when Yoon took office until September 2024. He is a close friend and confidant of Yoon.

The CIO released a statement afterwards saying, “We determined that executing the detention warrant would be practically impossible due to the continued confrontation, and suspended the execution out of concern for the safety of on-site personnel caused by the resistance. We plan to decide on the next steps following a review.” The warrant remains valid until Monday.

Approximately a thousand of Yoon’s supporters also demonstrated outside the residence in an attempt to block the president’s arrest. They are a collection of far-right and fascistic forces, lacking any popular support. They appealed openly to US imperialism, waving American flags alongside South Korean ones, which is common at their rallies. Some even held signs that read in English, “Stop the steal,” the same slogan used by Trump and his supporters to call for the January 6, 2021 coup attempt in Washington.

Yoon attempted to whip up this mob, telling them on January 1, “Due to internal and external forces infringing on its sovereignty and the activities by anti-state forces, South Korea is now in danger. I will fight with you to the end to protect this country.” This is the same rationale Yoon used to first declare martial law, claiming that the Democrats and their allies were “anti-state” elements who had to be suppressed by force.

Pro-Yoon demonstrations pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands that have protested each weekend in Seoul demanding Yoon’s removal from office and arrest. On December 14, the day Yoon was impeached and suspended from office by the National Assembly, two million gathered outside parliament in opposition to the president.

Yoon’s impeachment or even potential arrest does not guarantee he will be removed from power. Presently, the Constitutional Court, which has 180 days from December 14 to decide on the president’s fate, may very well allow him to return to office. With the support of the PPP and right-wing bureaucrats, Yoon has also stonewalled his impeachment proceedings and the criminal investigation into his martial law declaration, which was in effect a coup attempt.

The Constitutional Court is comprised of nine justices who are approved by the president. Three are chosen by the executive, with three recommended by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and three recommended by the National Assembly. Since October, three vacancies had existed on the court to be filled by parliament.

After Yoon’s impeachment, the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) moved quickly to fill the three vacancies. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who first replaced Yoon as acting president, refused to approve them, with the PPP claiming an acting president lacked the authority. The votes of six justices are necessary to remove a president from office, meaning only one had to side with Yoon to keep him in power.

As a result, the DP impeached Han on December 27 and he was replaced with Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok. In an apparent compromise, Choi appointed one justice recommended by the DP and another by the PPP on Tuesday. The Democrats have demanded Choi appoint the final justice recommend by their party.

However, as a capitalist party, the Democrats do not defend the democratic rights of workers and youth any more than Yoon or the PPP. Instead, the Democrats’ conflict with Yoon is over how best to impose the demands of big business.

Sections of the ruling establishment grouped around Yoon and the PPP increasingly see open dictatorship as necessary to suppress growing working-class anger to declining economic conditions and attacks on jobs. A significant strike by Samsung Electronics workers last July, a month-long auto part workers’ strike in October-November that shut down production at Hyundai, and strikes by railway workers in early December no doubt weighed on Yoon’s attempt to impose military rule.

On the other hand, the DP seeks to suppress the class struggle through phony promises of reforms and through their allies in the trade unions, such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Yoon’s often belligerent attacks on political opponents since taking office combined with worsening conditions for workers cut across the Democrats’ efforts, risking the explosion of social anger.

The DP is now rolling back protests in an attempt to head off the growth of social opposition, block opposition from growing, and prevent people from making the connections between Yoon’s attack on democratic rights and the broader crisis of capitalism internationally. They want to convince workers and youth that democratic rights can be defended within the National Assembly and the judicial system; and have turned anti-Yoon protests into campaign events and musical performances, all designed to cover up the political issues involved.

The Democrats have also worked with the KCTU to call off job actions like the December railway strike while presenting Yoon’s removal from office as practically a done deal. The KCTU initially claimed it would wage an “indefinite general strike” against Yoon. In the end, this amounted to little more than scattered protests and partial walkouts to allow workers to vent their anger while having no impact on big business or the government.

The danger of another declaration of martial law or military coup remains. If Yoon returns to power, he will do so with all the powers he previously held, including over the military. If mass protests grow against Yoon, it is also not out of the question that the military itself steps in to impose martial law, something it has considered in the past.

Taiwan Higher Education (FULL) Scholarships 2025/2026

Application Deadline: 15th March, 2025

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The students of eligible countries of the region of Asia Pacific, West Asia, Africa (Burkina Faso, Republic of Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Swaziland), Caribbean, Central America, South America, Europe can apply for this scholarship.

To be taken at (country): Universities in Taiwan

Accepted Subject Areas: For undergraduate, masters and PhD courses offered at any of the participating University in Taiwan

About Taiwan Higher Education Scholarship: International education and training has long been one of the TaiwanICDF’s core operations, among many others. Human resources development programs play a vital role in assisting partner countries to achieve sustainable development, and education is a crucial mechanism for training workforces in developing countries.

The TaiwanICDF provides scholarships for higher education and has developed undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. programs in cooperation with renowned partner universities in Taiwan.

The scholarship recipients gets a full scholarship, including return airfare, housing, tuition and credit fees, insurance, textbook costs and a monthly allowance.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters and PhD Scholarship

Who is eligible to apply? An applicant must:

• -Be a citizen of List of Countries Eligible (including select African countries) for TaiwanICDF Scholarship, and satisfy any specific criteria established by his or her country and/or government of citizenship.
• -Neither be a national of the Republic of China (Taiwan) nor an overseas compatriot student.
• -Satisfy the admission requirements of the partner university to which he or she has applied to study under a TaiwanICDF scholarship.
• -Be able to satisfy all requirements for a Resident Visa (Code: FS) set by the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) set by the Ministry of the Interior, of the ROC (Taiwan) government (this means that the TaiwanICDF has the right to revoke a scholarship offered if an applicant cannot satisfy the visa requirements).
• -Upon accepting a TaiwanICDF scholarship, not hold any other ROC(Taiwan) government-sponsored scholarship (such as the Taiwan Scholarship) in the same academic year in which the TaiwanICDF scholarship would be due to commence.
• -Not be applying for a further TaiwanICDF scholarship in unbroken succession — applicants who have already held a TaiwanICDF scholarship must have returned to their home country for more than one year before re-applying.
• -Have never had any scholarship revoked by any ROC (Taiwan) government agency or related institution, nor been expelled from any Taiwanese university.

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

Scholarship Benefits and Duration: The TaiwanICDF provides each scholarship recipient with a full scholarship, including return airfare, housing, tuition and credit fees, insurance, textbook costs and a monthly allowance.

• Undergraduate Program (maximum four years): Each student receives NT$12,000 per month (NT$144,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.
• Master’s Program (maximum two years): Each student receives NT$15,000 per month (NT$180,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.
• PhD Program (maximum four years; four-year PhD programs start from 2012): Each students receives NT$17,000 per month (NT$204,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.

How to Apply for Taiwan Higher Education Scholarship: 

• Applicants must complete an online application (found in Program Webpage link below). Then submit a signed, printed copy and all other application documents to the ROC (Taiwan) Embassy/ Consulate (General)/ Representative Office/ Taiwan Technical Mission or project representative in their country.
• Please note that each applicant can only apply for one program at a time. The applicant must also submit a separate program application to his/her chosen universities.

Visit Program Webpage for the Online Application System and more details about this scholarship.

US police killed record number of people in 2024

Jacob Crosse

End of the year statistics released by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that has been tracking police killings in the US since 2013, found that police in the United States killed over 1,250 people in 2024. This grim figure marks the deadliest year ever recorded by the organization, which tracks police killings by government records and news reports.

Police killings have risen at a steady pace over the last decade in the United States, from just over 1,000 in 2014, to over 1,200 in each of the last two years. [Photo: Datawrapper/WSWS]

Overall the research group found that there were only 13 days in 2024 in which police did not kill someone. On average, Mapping Police Violence found that someone in the US succumbs to police violence roughly every 7 hours. While the vast majority of those deaths were the results of police shootings, cops also deployed tasers, batons and their vehicles with deadly force.

Notably only 31 percent of police killings, 387 people, began with an alleged violent crime taking place. On the other hand, 18 percent of those killed by police—over 200 people—were killed after being pulled over for an alleged traffic violation or after police were called to conduct a welfare check. Another 8 percent were killed in situations in which the victim was not alleged to have committed any crime, while 17 percent were killed in situations in which police alleged the victims were perpetrating “other non-violent offenses.”

Mapping Police Violence noted that even as the rate of police killings continues to increase, where police are killing people is changing, with more deaths recorded in rural and suburban zipcodes as opposed to large cities. The top five states with the highest rate of people killed by police in 2024 include New Mexico, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.

Local police departments constituted the bulk of killings in 2024 at 58 percent, with county sheriff’s departments accounting for 31 percent of deaths.

Victims of last year’s reign of police terror included babies, toddlers and teenagers:

• One of the youngest victims this past year was 2-month-old baby Destinii, killed along with her mother Maria Pike. Both were gunned down in their Missouri apartment on November 7 after Destinii’s grandmother called the police to report that Maria had assaulted her. Nearly two months after the killing, police have yet to release the full body-camera footage or charge any officer with a crime.
• Another child who was shot and killed by police this year was four-year-old Terrell Miller of Macomb, Illinois. The boy was taken hostage by his mother’s boyfriend in their home. Police showed up to the home and within 16 seconds shot Miller and the boyfriend, killing them both. No charges have been filed against Miller’s killer, Lt. Nick Goc.
• On Thanksgiving last month in Akron, Ohio, 15-year-old Jazmir Tucker was shot and killed by police. Police claimed they heard gunshots in the area after 11:00 p.m. local time, which prompted them to investigate. Body camera footage shows police chasing after a fleeing Tucker and shooting him. None of the officers involved in the killing have been publicly identified or charged with a crime.

Keeping track of the number of people killed by police in the United States is difficult, as there is no federal government agency charged with compiling data from local police departments. Not every department keeps records and many, with the support of local press and capitalist politicians from both parties, obfuscate the lethal character of police interactions.

Furthermore, Mapping Police Violence’s figures do not take into account the many unreported killings across the United States’ sprawling prisons and jail gulag that incarcerates nearly 2 million people.

It is highly significant that police killings increased across the United States every single year under the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden. In the wake of massive anti-police violence protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, Biden and the Democrats campaigned on “reforming” the police, but, as the data shows, they have instead overseen a massive expansion in deaths with no accountability. Mapping Police Violence notes in their report that over 98 percent of cops involved in police killings between 2013 and 2023 have not been convicted of a crime.

While the mainstream press, the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left constantly seek to frame police violence as an expression of racism, the data shows that police killings occurred in every state and impacted people of every racial and ethnic background. While there are some racial disparities, the largest share of those killed by police in 2024 were identified as white, underscoring the class character of police violence.

The Biden administration and both parties rejected popular demands to “defund the police” during the George Floyd protests, instead funneling billions of dollars to hire and arm more police, including overseeing the construction of “Cop Cities” in virtually every state.

Hundreds of people gather in Atlanta's City Hall on Monday, June 5, 2023, to speak ahead of a council vote over "Cop City." [AP Photo/R.J. Rico]

While providing police all the weapons and “training” they need to suppress the working class, Biden’s Justice Department has implemented a few token “consent decrees” on police departments that have done nothing to stem police violence. Incoming President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end these toothless decrees, claiming that they are part of a “war on police.” In reality, they are a tool used by the ruling class to obscure the fact that police violence cannot be “reformed” away and is, in fact, endemic to the capitalist system that both parties uphold and defend.

Hundreds of Big Lots and Party City stores to close, as jobs bloodbath in retail accelerates

Chase Lawrence

Party City, a retail chain specializing in party goods founded in 1986 in Hanover, New Jersey, is soon to be out of business having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 21 and announced the immediate layoff of all headquarter staff, as well as distribution center workers the day before. The announcement follows on the heels of retail chain Big Lots’ announcement that it will close more than 400 of its 900 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September. Big Lots, founded in 1967 in Columbus, Ohio, as Consolidated Stores and later renamed in 2000, joins the ranks of dozens of retail outlets going out of business.

The majority of the 700 Party City stores in North America are set to close by February 28, excluding the 29 franchisee stores. The vast majority of the 6,400 full-time and 10,100 part-time Party City workers will suddenly be out of a job. Corporate employees were left without severance pay and with an immediate termination of benefits.

A Party City store in Chattanooga, Tennessee [Wikimedia Commons]

Stores outside the continental US which are not operated by Party City HoldCo will reportedly continue to operate.

The shuttering of these businesses is taking place amid a slaughter in the retail sector, including such well known chains as Macy’s, which is itself part of a broader assault on jobs. Recently hundreds of Stellantis Jeep autoworkers in Toledo, Ohio, were given layoff notices, part of 11,506 auto sector layoffs in November.

The shakeout in the retail sector is also part of a wider assault on jobs. Almost 46,000 auto layoffs in total were recorded in 2024, according to job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, including continuing layoffs at Ford, GM, Stellantis and Volkswagen Group.

Meanwhile, the tech sector worldwide saw over 150,000 layoffs among 539 tech companies this year. These layoffs contradict the claims of a “strong economy.” In reality, the US financial system is increasingly divorced from the real economy, with Wall Street kept afloat by an inflow of international investments. The situation is comparable to that preceding the stock market crash of 1929, with one Financial Times commentator calling it the “mother of all bubbles.”

A recording of the announcement of the “winding down” of Party City made by CEO Barry Litwin was posted to Tik Tok by a former employee. The closing was greeted with anger as shown in the Tik Tok comments. Some of the representative examples are listed below:

* “My daughter worked for Party City for 10 years, totally unacceptable. No severance pay or nothing, now she has to move out of her apartment and find a new career. She gave them so much how?”

* “‘You can get COBRA’ is like saying ‘You can move into a big loft in NYC’—that’s a pipe dream, it costs a fortune”

* “Worked at party city for 7 years ... found out Thursday right after clocking in. I really feel bad for all my managers most been there for 15+ and it’s their only source of income 🥲”

* “the CEO of Party City made $2,658,334 in total compensation. This included: $1,050,000 in salary, $1,561,368 in bonus, and $46,966 in other compensation…”

Party City, like many now shuttered retail chains, was a victim of financial parasitism, being taken over by private equity firms and saddled with debt. In 2012, private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners acquired majority control through a leveraged buyout, which involves a company buying out another using debt, which is then piled onto the purchased company. This “leveraging” no doubt played a role in the insolvency of Party City, with the company being forced to pay a significant amount of its profits towards debt repayments instead of investment in operating the business.

Big Lots cited high interest rates and inflation, which negatively affected sales, as a factor in its bankruptcy. A deal was reached with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, which may stop at least 200 to 400 of the stores from closing and transfer the Big Lots brand to Variety Wholesalers. This would still result in the vast majority of its 1,300 remaining stores in 48 states closing, and the laying off of a corresponding—or greater—proportion of its 27,700 workers. This year 400 stores have already been closed before the decision to liquidate was announced.

Several creditors have already filed objections to the terms of the most recent deal, presented in bankruptcy court Monday. This follows the collapse of another deal to sell to Nexus Capital Management after it demanded more equity financing, i.e., the selling of parts of its ownership to investors for cash and $20 million in savings.

The company completed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process last year, converting $1 billion out of its $1.7 billion in debt to equity shares to be owned by its lenders. Between 2022 and today, 80 stores were already closed.

According to data from research firm CoreSight, US retailers have announced more than 7,100 store closures through the end of November 2024, representing a 69 percent jump from the same period last year. The number of closings outnumbered the 5,900 openings of stores.

The chief executive of Coresight Research, Deborah Weinswig, stated that this “is the highest number of store closures seen since 2020, when the pandemic shutdown of physical stores and the resulting fallout caused mass closures.”

As CBS News reported in an article on the closings, some retailers report that while Walmart is able to find ways to appeal to financially strapped shoppers, “inflation-weary shoppers are cutting back or becoming more choosy in searching for sales and deals.”

“There is not enough growth in the retail market for every player to do well, which is why we are seeing polarized results,” said Neil Saunders, an analyst with GlobalData in a comment to CBS MoneyWatch on the closures.

In addition to a lack of sufficient growth in the retail market, the increasing dominance of e-commerce over the retail goods market has played a role in the downfall of brick-and-mortar stores.

“A lot of the store closures occurring this year are the result of companies like Shein, Temu and Amazon snapping up consumer dollars by making shopping easier and more affordable,” Weinswig said, adding that inflation has hit consumers hard.

US credit card defaults at highest level since Great Recession

Jerry White

Credit card defaults in the US reached their highest level since the 2008 financial crash during the first nine months of 2024, according to figures compiled by BankRegData and cited in a recent Financial Times article. Credit card lenders were also forced to write off $46 billion in seriously delinquent debt balances through September 2024, up 50 percent from the same period the year before, and the highest level in 14 years. 

A customer uses a Visa credit card to pay for gasoline at a gas station in Mundelein, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. [AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh]

These figures reveal widespread social distress and economic insecurity in America’s supposedly booming economy. With rising expenses and stagnant wages, tens of millions of workers and lower middle class people have been forced to rely on their credit cards to pay for food, gas, medicine, clothing and other living costs. Hit by elevated interest rates, they have not been able to make their credit card payments. 

“High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” said Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics, told the Financial Times. “Their savings rate right now is zero.” 

[Photo: Federal Reserve Bank of New York]

After government stimulus checks allowed borrowers to pay down their credit card debts in 2020 and 2021, credit card debt has risen by a combined $270 billion in 2022 and 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It surpassed the $1 trillion mark in mid-2023 and reached $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2024. The average American household credit card debt was $10,757 in the third quarter, according to personal finance web site Wallet Hub.  

“Nearly half of Americans still have debt from the holidays from last year,” said WalletHub writer and analyst Chip Lupo, adding that a third of respondents to his organization’s survey reported they would spend less this year on holiday shopping. 

Unable to pay off their balances in full, borrowers sent the credit card companies $170 billion in interest payments in 2024. As of last Friday, the average credit card interest rate was 20.35 percent, according to Bankrate.

These loan shark rates have allowed the biggest credit card lenders—Visa, Mastercard and Capital One—to reap record profits. Visa, the largest, booked $19.7 billion in 2024 profits (up 16 percent from FY 2023) and enjoyed a 55 percent profit margin (up from 52 percent in FY 2023); 2024 revenues shot up 10 percent to $35.9 billion.

But financial pressure on credit card holders has led to a spike in defaults and delinquencies. The percentage of overall loans that have been marked as unrecoverable has now hit 6.1 percent, from 5.2 percent a year ago, according to Capital One, the US’s third largest credit card lender. Credit card delinquency rates, considered one step from loans that must be written off, peaked in July, according to data from Moody’s. Rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels with $37 billion in balances at least one month overdue. 

[Photo: Federal Reserve Bank of New York]

All forms of household debt are reaching the breaking point. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s survey of household debt and credit released last month showed that aggregate balances increased by $147 billion in the third quarter of 2024, a 0.8 percent rise from 2024Q2. Balances now stand at $17.94 trillion and have increased by $3.8 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession.

A breakdown of these debts include: 

• Mortgage balances grew by $75 billion during the third quarter of 2024 and totaled $12.59 trillion at the end of September. 
• Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) rose by $7 billion, the tenth consecutive quarterly increase after 2022Q1, and there is now $387 billion in aggregate outstanding balances.
• Auto loan balances rose by $18 billion, and now stand at $1.64 trillion. 

• Student loan balances grew by $21 billion, and now stand at $1.61 trillion.
• Other balances, which include retail cards and other consumer loans, remained effectively flat, with a $2 billion increase.

Household budgets eaten up

The average family budget is being all but eaten up by high living costs, according to data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 

• The average household earned $101,805 in 2023 before taxes. Average net income was $87,869 a year, according to the BLS.  
• Out of this, the average household spent $77,280 on various expenditures in 2023, up $4,313—or 5.9 percent—from 2022.
• Housing ($25,436 or 32.9 percent), transportation ($13,174 or 17 percent) and food ($9,985 or 12.9 percent) make up the largest portions of the household budget. 

What this means is that after monthly expenditures, which have risen, households have virtually nothing left to spend on what the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as “discretionary spending.” This include elemental necessities, such as clothing, education, household goods and personal care, along with such requirements for a healthy and enjoyable life as entertainment, travel, leisure and eating out. 

“Many Americans spend a sizable amount of their income to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and a means of transportation,” the Bankrate article on the government’s household survey noted. “Inflation has cooled significantly from its 40-year-high in 2022, yet prices remain elevated on various goods and services, leaving consumers with less money in their budgets for such financial matters as savings and debt repayment.” 

It continues: “Only 16 percent of U.S. adults say they have enough emergency savings to cover between three and five months’ worth of living expenses, while 27 percent report having no emergency savings at all, Bankrate’s 2024 Emergency Savings Report found.”

In many parts of the country, after-tax household incomes are far less than the $87,869 figure cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to Smartasset’s federal income tax estimator for 2024-25 taxes, net income would be far lower in Houston ($85,569), San Francisco ($81,661), Chicago ($81,000), Detroit ($79,503) and New York City ($78,283). The subtraction of $77,280 in yearly expenses or even more in higher-cost areas is what has left many households with a negative net income, forcing them further and further into debt.

Particularly crushing has been the cost of housing, which has jumped 30.4 percent nationwide between 2019 and 2023. The average monthly rent rose to $2,009 in October 2024, while property taxes and mortgage balances increased.

A survey by the US Census Bureau showed that half of renter households (21 million) were “cost-burdened” in 2023, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing. 

But even more staggering was a November 2024 report by Redfin that showed more than one-fifth of US renters reported spending their entire regular income on rent. A Redfin-commissioned survey conducted by Ipsos in September 2024, found that 20 percent of respondents had to work second jobs to afford rent, 14 percent relied on family cash gifts and 13 percent had to pull money out of their retirement funds early.  

The high cost of housing has caused a record number of young Americans (31 percent) to move back in with their families or never move out. Nearly one-third, or 31 percent, of Generation Z adults—born between 1996 and 2012—live at home with parents because they cannot afford to buy or rent their own space, according to a 2023 report by Intuit Credit Karma. One-quarter of young adults live in a multigenerational household, up from just 9 percent five decades ago, according to Pew Research, due to financial pressures, including ballooning student debt and housing costs.

Boeing workers on the picket lines in Everett, Washington

Commenting on the precarious situation young workers in particular face, a Stellantis worker at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit told the World Socialist Web Site, “The company fired all the workers who were supplemental employees, and many still don’t have jobs. Unemployment is paying six or seven hundred dollars a week, and that doesn’t make it. No wonder people are resorting to violence and robbing stores. Something needs to change, and in a hurry.”

The rising cost of living has been a major factor in the growth of the class struggle over the last two years, including the strikes by 33,000 Boeing workers and 47,000 East and Gulf Coast port workers in 2024. As a young striking Boeing worker in Everett, Washington, told the WSWS, “Rent in the Seattle area is roughly $3-$4,000 for a single-family home. I don’t know how anyone can afford to live here. We definitely can’t.” He concluded: “New hires, old hires, retirees, we’re sticking together for a common goal, and that’s better quality of life for each of us and our families.”

These conditions led to the electoral debacle for the Democratic Party and its candidate Kamala Harris, who expressed nothing but indifference to the social catastrophe confronting the working class and a single-minded focus on expanding American imperialism’s wars.

UK Labour government expels record 13,500 asylum seekers and migrants since coming to office

Margot Miller

The UK Labour government has set a record for migrant removals, expelling almost 13,500 since it came to office in July and exceeding the previous Conservative government’s rate of deportations.

The news was reported by the Home Office this month with the headline, “Huge increase in migration returns and illegal working arrests.” Home Secretary Yvette Cooper boasted, “The number of operations and arrests are up, and we are on track to meet our target of increasing removals to the highest level in five years.”

Deportations to seven countries have been carried out, including Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria and Albania. The Guardian reported, “Sources in the [Home Office] department confirmed that 37 people were removed on the Pakistan flight. One of those forcibly removed was a refused asylum seeker whose wife was a dependant on his asylum claim”, adding “The Home Office removed him but left his wife in the UK.”

To expedite the removals, the government carried out workplace raids, targeting “nail bars, supermarkets and other relevant industries including car washes and construction.” The Home Office report continued, “…illegal working operations and arrests since the new government came into power are up by almost a third on the same period last year.”

A Home Office Immigration Enforcement vehicle in north London [Photo by Philafrenzy / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

In a December 23 update, the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement department noted that, just in London, “Nearly 1,000 enforcement visits have been carried out across the capital since the summer, thanks to a crackdown on illegal working by the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement team. Between July and November, 996 visits resulted in 770 arrests and 462 premises receiving civil penalty notice referrals.”

To beef up the capability of the Immigration and Enforcement agency further, an extra £5 million was announced for body-worn cameras to aid 1,200 frontline officers in the collection of evidence against errant employers. New fingerprint kits costing £3 million will be purchased to improve identity checks.

The government has also redeployed an extra 1,000 employees to Border Security. This enabled the return of more than 800 migrants on 33 charter flights to countries in Europe, Africa Asia and South America since July.

While denying the right of asylum to people displaced and/or without a livelihood—due, among other factors, to over 30 years of NATO wars in the Middle East and North Africa and routine imperialist plunder of the majority of the world’s economies—inhumane anti-immigrant policies are framed by Labour as preventing exploitation at work, and “smashing the [people smuggling] gangs”.

Cooper stated, “Illegal working is a blight on our economy. It is deeply exploitative and undercuts those employers who do the right thing and play by the rules.” This is a cynical ploy to blame migrants in cheap labour jobs for driving down wages, aiding the scapegoating efforts of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

To demonise asylum seekers and immigrants further, the Home Office reported that of the 13,500 removed, 2,100 were criminals convicted of “drug offences, theft, rape and murder,” without breaking down this figure.

The department is also launching a publicity campaign directed at prospective migrants warning of “exploitative practices” and “dire and inhumane living conditions” should they come to Britain. So impressed with the government’s ruthless purge of immigrants was the right-wing Daily Express that it ran with the headline: “Yvette Cooper tells illegal migrants ‘don’t come to Britain—you’ll hate it.’”

But for the mouthpieces of the most right-wing sections of the media, no number of deportations is ever enough with a constant drumbeat demanding more. The Telegraph complained that Cooper had not set a timetable for reducing small boat crossings from France, lamenting the arrival of 609 people in nine dinghies December 12—a daily record since October 18.

The nominally liberal Independent reprimanded Labour for failing to include targets to reduce migration, both legal and illegal, in the review of its six missions. The publication complained that small boat crossings are on the rise, with 34,880 people arriving this year, including 21,306 since the general election. It cautioned that former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s failure to “stop the boats” helped bring down his government.

Interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cooper declared that “border security is one of the [government’s]foundational issues, before you even get to any of the missions.”

Julia Tinsley-Kent, head of policy and communications at the Migrants’ Rights Network, accused the government of “criminalising migration”, adding “people are forced into making dangerous crossings because safe routes do not exist… Punishing migrants without permission to work or reside … pushes [them] into exploitative conditions.”

Emma Ginn, director of the charity Medical Justice, said, “The new data being celebrated by the government includes real people who have been unable to access legal representation, nor the medical and expert evidence needed to properly present their case, meaning some may face real risk on forced return to their country.

“Our volunteer doctors have visited some of them and documented their physical and psychological scars of torture as well as deterioration due to the notoriously dangerous UK immigration detention conditions. Many have been forcibly separated from their family, their friends and their community.”

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 77 people have died attempting the hazardous English Channel crossing this year. Another three were reported dead today. The IOM calls for an end to preventable deaths and wants safe and legal means of entry. But the Labour government, like its counterparts throughout the European Union, is determined to seal the borders.

On December 10, Cooper co-hosted alongside Germany a meeting in London with the Interior Ministers of Belgium, France and the Netherlands to coordinate efforts to stop migrant flows. The day previous, the UK signed a “joint action plan on irregular migration” with Germany.

In September, Starmer held a “fantastic” meeting with the Italian Prime Minister, the neo-fascist Georgia Meloni, singling out her anti-immigration policies against refugees as a model to be emulated. Meloni’s party the Brothers of Italy is the scion of Mussolini’s Republican Fascist Party.

Italy has opened two detention camps under Italian jurisdiction in Albania to hold up to 3,000 migrants at any one time while awaiting processing, at an initial cost of 16.5 million euros.

Cooper declared in November that Labour wanted to fast-track deportations of “people who are arriving from predominantly safe countries…”, adding “What Italy is looking at with Albania is being able to take those fast-track decisions”.

Regardless of the political coloration of the governments in Europe, the political establishment is adopting the policies of the far-right. Meloni’s latest fans include Spain’s Socialist Party led government, which has just granted her “one of the highest honours of the Spanish state: the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.”

The Italian premier’s politics are of a piece with those of Marine Le Pen in France and US President-elect Donald Trump. The latter has declared his administration’s aim from day one will be to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, including children born on American soil.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is to lead a US Department of Government Efficiency under Trump, is promoting the global fascist right, including, in the UK, Farage and Reform UK.