CPI is a snapshot, but its news isn't good

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index reports are monthly glimpses of the economy, but May's details showed inflation to be up 4.2% from 2025, and government officials point to oil prices tied to Trump’s war on Iran and escalating prices for semiconductors and computer technology linked to demands for Artificial Intelligence and data centers.

In the Midwest – in rural and urban areas – inflation is worse across the board:

National inflation for cereal is 1.9%; in the Midwest it’s 3.4%;

national inflation for dairy is down 1.0%; in the Midwest it’s 2.4%;

national inflation for housing is 3.6%; in the Midwest it’s 4.6%;

national inflation for fuels & utilities is 6%; in the Midwest it’s 7%;

national inflation for electricity is 5.9%; in the Midwest it’s 11.7%;

national inflation for apparel is 4.8%; in the Midwest it’s 6.1%; and

national inflation for medical-care services is 3.6%; in the Midwest it’s 4.8%.

(The Midwest is better than the nation in a few categories:

National inflation for fruits & vegetables is 6.1%; in the Midwest it’s 4.5%;.

national inflation for piped gas is 3.0%; in the Midwest it’s down 1.2%.

national inflation for furnishing is 3.0%; in the Midwest it’s 1.5%.)

 

Meanwhile, consumer spending increased 4.1% since 2025. However, wages are up just 0.4% from a year ago. Further, the spending may reflect gas prices (which aren’t as discretionary as buying new clothes or appliances), or indicate people spending tax refunds, using credit cards, or high-end purchases by the rich since their buying power skews the data.

Wealthy Americans throw off more than spending statistics.

Months ago, Mary Cunningham of CBS News reported that the third quarter of 2025 showed the top 1% of households in the country owned 31.7% of all the wealth in the nation – the highest share they’ve had since the Federal Reserve started tracking household wealth in 1989. That means the wealthiest 1% held about as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion.

Last month, The New York Times and the Washington Post both ran front-page stories showing that the share of the nation’s income going to workers has reached the lowest point in many years, while the share going to the richest 1%, 0.1%, and 0.00001% all have skyrocketed.

All this economic news occurs when President Trump on June 10 said, “I love the inflation,” even dismissing affordability as a “con job” (he said during a Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting) and “a fake word” (remarked during a G7 press conference June 17).

 

WAIT! THERE’S MORE (BAD NEWS)

For years, elected officials nationwide have neglected a huge issue for working families: the minimum wage, which has been $7.25/hour on the federal level since 2009. Twenty states, including Iowa and Indiana use that wage. Illinois’ minimum wage has been $15/hour since Jan. 1, 2025, and in 15 states, including Missouri, voters have passed Propositions to increase state minimum wages.

That means a full-time worker paid the federal minimum wage earns $15,960 a year before taxes — below the poverty line for a family of three – those households’ 2026 Federal Poverty Guideline is $27,320 per year. In Illinois, that minimum-wage worker would earn $31,200 before taxes, so they have a “cushion” of $3,880. Of course, if a second child arrives, or hours are cut, or a health-care need arises, the cushion vanishes.

If stability holds, however, there’s still housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development pegs the Fair Market Value for a one-bedroom apartment in Peoria at $818/month, or $9,816/year – more than 60% of the minimum-wage worker’s pay. (According to HUD, FMV for a one-bedroom apartment in Quincy is $839/mo. and in Springfield $850/mo.; Illinois’ statewide FMV for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,342/mo.)

“Our working families have spent years shouldering the cost of federal and state inaction,” said Gabriela Ramirez-Perez, an analyst with the Oklahoma Policy Institute. “They are paying the costs through financial stress, unstable housing, delayed health care, and less time with their families because they are constantly working to stay afloat.”

If there’s a “con job,” it’s targeting working people.

Illinois lawmakers miss chance to let voters decide on a millionaires tax

Illinoisans struggling with prices and property taxes may have to wait until 2028 for the General Assembly to reconsider relief for property-tax burdens by imposing a 3% surcharge on those reporting personal annual incomes of $1 million or more. The House failed to vote in time to the question to be placed on the November ballot.

The millionaires tax idea came as a possible amendment since Illinois’ constitution mandates a flat income tax rather than a graduated system with different rates for different incomes, so an amendment is required to enact an income tax change. Illinois is one of 15 states with a flat tax.

Sponsored by Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago), the new tax on the state’s wealthiest would have generated $4.5 billion a year, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.

A disappointed Ford said, “We missed an opportunity to be progressive. You don’t see that happening with Trump and these Republicans. When they have the power to do something to help their constituents, they do it.”

The tax-the-rich idea has been building steam nationwide, especially as lawmakers cope with cuts in federal programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, mandated by the Trump administration, its submissive GOP-majority Congress and their “Big Beautiful Bill” passed last year.

Six states – California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, plus Washington, D.C. – levy specific millionaire taxes, surcharges, or have income brackets targeting earners making more than $1 million, and Minnesota and Rhode Island are considering one. At local levels, “tax the rich” measures have passed in San Francisco and Portland, Ore., and in California, voters this November will vote on an additional, one-time 5% “wealth tax” on the Golden State’s 250+ billionaires, primarily to pay for health care.

“This is a moral test about whether the Democratic Party will be for the billionaire class and the donor class or whether we will be for the working class,” said U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who backs California’s 5% tax and also introduced a 5% national billionaires’ surtax bill backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Last month, at a Washington rally to reduce income inequality and the influence of multi-millionaires on government, the Machinists union endorsed that effort.

“We proudly endorse the ‘Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act’,” said IAM Legislative Director Hasan Solomon. “The economy is a game and the rules have been written for billionaires to win and workers to lose.”

 

Taxing the rich would help: Illinois report

In a report issued this Spring by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, authors Frank Manzo IV from IEPI and Bob Bruno from UIUC’s Project for Middle Class Renewal said, “Illinois has a tax system that disproportionately favors the wealthy. As a share of their incomes, middle-class and working families currently pay 5% more towards state and local taxes than households with incomes in the top 1%.

“Consequently,” continues the report (“Adopting a Millionaires’ Tax in Illinois: Impacts on Property Taxes, Public Schools, and the Economy”), Illinois has the 8^th most regressive tax system of the 50 U.S. states. A flat individual income tax and comparatively high property tax burdens are two of the system’s most regressive characteristics.”

Former Gov. Pat Quinn, who supports a millionaires tax, agrees, saying, “Illinois has an unfair tax code.”

Also, before the proposal died in Springfield, Quinn said, “To turn their backs on property taxpayers would be very disappointing. The people have spoken.”

(Indeed, voters supported non-binding referendums for a millionaires tax in 2024 and 10 years earlier.)

There are about 77,000 millionaires in Illinois, about 1.2% of income taxpayers, and creating a 3% surcharge on them “could decrease the overreliance on local property taxes for school district funding.”

Besides Republicans’ familiar suggestion to instead cut (unspecified) spending, opponents warned that millionaires would move away. Also, business interests, especially the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, argued that it would hurt small businesses (whose owners “pass through” their business incomes as personal incomes), but it’s unclear how many small businesses generate enough net income to be millionaires.

Other critics blamed taxpayers insisting on the wealthy to pay their fair share as engaging in class warfare.

One excuse for the proposal not even being voted on was the question of how to distribute the new revenue. Another version, sponsored by Rep. Natalie Manley (D-Joliet) would have split its new funds between property-tax relief and funding for K-12 education).

Also, support by House Speaker Chris Welch (D-Hillsdale) and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker seemed lukewarm. Pritzker commented in generalities, saying, “To pay the bills of the state of Illinois, it’s fairer if the wealthiest people in the state and the wealthiest corporations in the state pay more than average folks, working folks, and the most vulnerable.”

Taxing the rich a fair share would grow the economy, Manzo and Bruno show.

“Nationally, economic growth in states with millionaires’ taxes has been just as robust as in states without them,” they say. “From 2014 to 2024, the combined GDP of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia increased by 67%. By contrast, in the 46 other states, aggregate GDP improved by 66%. Illinois’ economy expanded by 49% over this 10-year period.”

Also, other economic factors would improve.

“Adopting a millionaires’ tax could grow the Illinois economy by stimulating consumer demand and increasing public investments,” says the 29-page report. “Economic research has demonstrated that low-income and middle- class families spend larger shares of their incomes while high-earning individuals save more.”

Elsewhere in Illinois, the Illinois Revenue Alliance – made up of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, SEIU Healthcare Illinois, Warehouse Workers for Justice, and various progressive community groups – in late May rallied at the state Capitol and lobbied lawmakers to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. A parade of sympathetic lawmakers trooped to the podium in Chicago first.

State Sen. Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago), a former SEIU Local 73 organizer, said her constituents “are under real pressure.

“Costs are up. Wages are stressed. And they’re having to make hard choices,” she said. “And when the federal government creates giant tax code carve-outs for giant corporations and the billionaires, the Illinois tax code is automatically adjusted [to reflect those changes].

“Our communities need a leap forward,” she added. “My colleagues and I will continue organizing, advocating, and fighting to hold billionaires accountable and build an Illinois that works for working people, not just the wealthy few.”

‘The Great Uprising’ sparked labor activism

One hundred forty-nine years ago this month, what started on July 16, 1877, as a local protest about repeated wage cuts by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Martinsburg, W. Va., within weeks became America's first nationwide strike, halting commerce across 14 states, involving other unions, and sparking violent clashes between workers and troops.

Within days, Pittsburgh’s local militia was ordered to fire on strikers and refused,  but state militia attacked, killing 20 people and causing riots, the burning of rail yards and $5 million in damages. Maryland troops on July 21 shot into Baltimore crowds, killing 9 and provoking a shutdown of railroads.

In Illinois, railroad workers stopped rail transportation and the week of July 20 saw general strikes hit Chicago and East St. Louis, joined by workers in lumber and meatpacking. That culminated in “the Battle of the Viaduct” on July 26, when – after three days of fighting, armed forces shot at thousands ofmstrikers and supporters, killing 30 and injuring about 200 other men, women and children.

By early September, Republican U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes deployed federal troops to restore order, but the months-long battles ushered in an era of class conflict in the industrial age.

Teamsters rally in ULP strike at cannabis plant

BARRY, ILL. - The temperature July 2 was 90 degrees at noon, and hundreds of striking Teamsters outside Ascend’s sprawling cannabis plant on Revolution Road a mile and a half east of Barry, Illinois’ business district rallied to show that the heat is on and time’s running out.

“We had 28 bargaining sessions, and then we went to Ascend’s headquarters on Times Square in New York, and we found out they’d hired Littler, Mendelson, the notorious union-busting law firm,” said Kyle Bollinger, Vice President of  Teamsters Local 916, based in Springfield. “Negotiations stopped. They refuse to bargain.”

Locally, retaliation has arisen, too, ranging from firing a member of the bargaining team to terminating the safety director for doing his job, Bollinger said.

“No one from the [Barry] company will sit down with us anymore,” he said.

Workers went on an Unfair Labor Practice strike June 25.

Due to a quarter mile of parked cars outside locked gates at the plant where workers’ choice for representation was voluntarily accepted by the company in the spring of 2025, picketing was congested. However, live music and speakers from the union and the plant made the event seem like a preliminary to Independence Day celebrations.

“Morale couldn’t be better,” said JP Fyans, president of Local 916. “It’s phenomenal. We’re [also] getting support from the Illinois AFL-CIO, Central Labor Councils, Teamsters Locals from all over the Midwest, and help from the International.”

Strike-benefit checks being distributed helped the mood, too.

“We’re handing out a quarter million dollars [in strike benefits],” Fyans said. “Some were down to their last gallon of gas.”

The 350 Ascend workers make about $19 an hour, but have to pay a majority of their health-insurance premiums, Fyans continued.

“How can people survive like that?” he added. “It’s unconscionable anywhere. In the richest country in the world, how can that happen?

Ascend handles cultivation, manufacturing and retail outlets, with about 50 stores in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, plus wholesale to other dispensaries. The corporation’s first-quarter report showed net revenues of $116.9 million.

Jesse Case, the International’s Food Processing Division Director, based in Cedar Rapids, came down along with other IBT Locals and representatives from Teamsters Joint Council 25 for Chicago, Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

“We’re fighting a business model in Illinois – and all over the country – that sets up with low wages and no benefits – on the backs of workers,” Case said.

“After cannabis was legalized, it became like the brewing industry after Prohibition was repealed,” he continued. “Most workers were low wage then, too. Today, the Teamsters represent about 90% of brewery-industry workers, tens of thousands of workers with good pay and decant standards.

“We want to help build middle-class jobs,” Case added.