The paltry wage increases of the past year have not even brought workers back to where they were before the last recession, let alone made a significant dent in the losses of the past 25 years. Over the past quarter century, there has been a nearly 30 percent reduction in the real incomes of young families. A recent Marist College poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are having difficulty paying their monthly bills, and a quarter always worry that they will come up short. Household debt has reached 91 percent of disposable personal income, compared with 65 percent in 1980. Conditions continue to deteriorate for those at the bottom of the bottom.
More people are in poverty today than before the last recession.
A study based on interviews with 28,000 people in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and food pantries found that 26 million Americans visited charitable food programs in 1997-a 15 percent increase over the year before. A central goal of the IMF model of globalization has been to increase capital mobility by eliminating barriers to the international flow of capital. The IMF's original function was to stabilize currencies so countries wouldn't have to engage in the competitive devaluation that aggravated the Great Depression of the 1930s. For the past 15 years, the IMF has played the opposite role. IMF policies are promoting, rather than preventing, competitive devaluation.