The Affordability Crisis Is Real. Only Worker Organizing Can Offer Solutions. |
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When school counselors must decide which children get to eat, it’s time to acknowledge we’re in a national affordability crisis. The problem is the economy itself — not just its current condition, but the underlying unfairness of how it is organized.
A friend recently told me a story that made this reality impossible to ignore. Her elderly parents live near an elementary school not far from the nation’s capital. For several years, they had been quietly raising money to provide groceries and basic supplies for families whose children were going hungry. When Republicans suspended SNAP benefits, the need surged overnight. What had been a steady act of care suddenly became an emergency response.
They gathered donations from grocery stores and community members and were able to support 102 children across four local schools. But more than twice that many needed help.
This meant that in the wealthiest nation on earth, school counselors — people trained to nurture children, not triage hunger — were conscripted into the role of deciding which children would eat and which children would be left to endure hunger. A nation that can feed its billionaires but not its children is not suffering from confusion; it is suffering from both a crisis of conscience and a system built to protect cruelty.
And yet, even in the face of realities like this, we are still being told that there is not a widespread affordability crisis in America.
Recently, economist Allison Schrager, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed arguing that “there is not a widespread ‘affordability crisis’ in the U.S.,” suggesting that while some households are struggling, the economy is “positive for most Americans.” She acknowledges rising food, housing, health care, and childcare costs — but insists that because “real income growth is still positive for most Americans” the situation should not be described as a broad crisis. In her telling, what millions are experiencing is less a structural failure than a matter of sticker shock, a need to readjust expectations that are too high, or simply lingering anxiety. To reach those conclusions Schrager had to pointedly ignore a recent JPMorganChase Institute report showing that real income growth has slowed to near-decade lows, with median real income for prime-age workers rising only about 2 percent after inflation — and younger workers are seeing even weaker gains.
You can hear that same distance from reality echoed at the highest levels of government. During Donald Trump’s recent national........