I mean the fed said the other week that they don’t want higher wage expectations to be a long-term thing in the economy. All this labor progress we’ve seen happening has happened only because it was allowed to happen. It was happening under the pretense that it is temporary and wages will not continue to go up very much. The general ‘they’ were fine with that idea. Because what has actually changed in labor politics since the pandemic? Are people more organized than before? Not really. We get hopeful and want to chock it up to a sudden rise in militancy and finding our footing, but I don’t think that’s the case. They want wages to rise at the rate of current inflation, not catch up on decades of stale wages. In other words they want min wage to go from $7.50 or whatever to $8.50, not from $7.50 to $15. They will pay $15 or $16 or $18 temporarily, but they won’t tolerate it for long. Because that is cutting into their profits even if you consider increased buying power (and therefore consumption) of the poor. The increased buying power is a bad thing to them because it means a feedback loop of people demanding to be paid more because the cost of goods is higher and that raises the cost of goods which causes more demand for higher pay to match the cost of living.

They know consumption is the engine of the economy but they don’t want consumption to grow too fast because it adds to the cost of doing business. We can all disagree with this idea or how it works, but it’s how capitalists right now are thinking. They’re going to act on how they think. So yes, they’re going to beat wages flat again even if it means bringing on a recession or whatever. This is even the view of your benevolent wonky “government intervention is good actually” liberals. At the end of the day they realize that paying people more on their terms will weaken capitalism’s hold on the country. Even if they don’t express it in those terms or can’t articulate the feeling at all. That’s what is happening.

I’m not trying to be doomer and shit on the recent labor victories. It’s just that we have to realize that we’re still not quite at a level of organization we need to be to counter this. And there is no reform to change it because this is the reform. Now it’s militant labor action or it’s nothing because they’re just going to beat everyone back again and things will go back to an acceptable level of liberalism.