U.S. Poor and Working Class Distress Grows
Too much month and not enough check plagued the U.S. poor and working class before the federal government shutdown and funding lapse. To wit, business is booming for America’s car repossession industry. In fact, there were 769,925 car repossessions for the third quarter of 2025 versus 706,383 for this year’s second quarter. “If all of this goes as expected, 2025 will show to be the busiest year the repo session industry has ever seen on record,” according to Recovery Database Network.
Texas has the most car repossessions by state, with 319,754, year-to-date. Florida has the second-most auto repossessions with 222,523. California, the nation’s most populous state, ranks third in total repossession volume year-to-date.
The trend of rising car repossessions has a widespread impact. Consider the financial services industry. “A crisis in the U.S. auto loan market was signaled on October 22, 2025,” according to msn.com, “when PrimaLend Capital Partners, a significant subprime auto lender with headquarters in Plano, Texas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. PrimaLend’s demise highlights the mounting stress among subprime borrowers—those with bad credit—who depend on financing to purchase cars through “buy-here-pay-here” (BHPH) dealerships.”
Subprime lending, recall, was the match that lit the fire of the crash in housing prices that caused the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Democratic President Obama, elected on his campaign pledge of “hope and change,” delivered a bailout for mortgage lenders and a sellout for foreclosed home buyers. That political decision to aid Wall Street instead of Main Street helped to create the socioeconomic conditions for the election of President Trump, twice.
Sadly given the weak supply of mass transit in the U.S., driving a personal car is a necessity to get to and from work for scores of Americans. At the same time, the success of the corporate-government war on labor unions has driven growth of nonunion employment. The union membership rate of 20.1 percent in 1983 fall to 9.9 percent in 2024, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This widespread trend has led to a term to describe employed Americans who can’t make ends meet: the working poor.
Amazon.com, Inc. is the second-largest nonunion U.S. employer, with 1.1 million employees, according to the World Population Review. Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon.com, is one of the world’s richest men with an estimated wealth of over $200 billion.
The biggest private-sector nonunion employer, and largest retailer, in the U.S. is Walmart Inc., with 1.6 million workers. The Walton Family owns the company, and holds wealth in excess of $400 billion.
Nonunion workforces and billionaire owners are no accident. Further, a so-called free market doesn’t create such radical inequality. Taxpayers subsidize this inequality between employees and employers.
The LA Times reported that public funding helps such employers as Amazon and Walmart offset employees’ low wages. “The beneficiaries of what can properly be defined as corporate welfare include some of America’s biggest employers, such as Walmart, McDonald’s and Amazon. All three consistently land at or near the top of lists of major corporations with significant shares of their workers collecting public assistance.”
Unionizing corporate behemoths as Amazon and Walmart is how to pressure such employers to pay employees higher wages and better benefits. On that note, Walmart is the largest employer of black workers in the country.
We turn to research from Hayley Brown and Jordan Billings of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, based in Washington, DC. “After controlling for other factors, Black workers with union representation enjoy a 13.2 percent hourly wage premium relative to their peers without union representation. This amounts to an extra $3.73 per hour.”
Too much month and not enough check adds to working class stress in many ways. A big factor turns up in the most recent data for inflation, a general rise in prices. “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “after rising 0.4 percent in August.” The 4.1 percent rise of gas prices in September was the biggest hike of all consumer items for the month.
Increased inflation arrives as the federal government shutdown continues, halting funding for food assistance programs such as CalFresh in the Golden State, called food stamps previously. CalFresh is part of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. An estimated 5.5 million people in California use CalFresh monthly, ABC10.com reports.
There are 42 million Americans, one in eight of the nation’s population, who receive such food assistance.
President Trump appointee Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued the following statement about funding federal food assistance during the government shutdown on the website of the Dept. of Agriculture. “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
Taking money away from the economy reduces consumption, or buyer demand. This is bad news for consumers and the businesses they patronize. Historically, weakening consumption can trigger a recession, a big fall in economic activity.
In the meantime, President Trump is deploying guardsmen to fight crime in American cities. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is deploying the state’s National Guard to help with meal preparation. Gov. Newsom has prioritized $80 million of state resources to offset the federal defunding of SNAP/CalFresh during the budget impasse between Democrats and Republicans. However, that amount is 0.08 or eight percent of the federal share of monthly funding for SNAP/CalFresh.
What does this defunding of federal food assistance mean for nine of 10 SNAP/CalFresh recipients. The recipients are kids, the elderly and infirm who rely upon federal food assistance.
Can charities, churches/mosques/synagogues backfill 90 percent of paused federal funding for food assistance? That question looms large for the 5.5 million SNAP recipients in the Golden State and 42 million such Americans across the U.S.
Over 20 states have sued the Trump administration, stating that the USDA and its acting head Rollins have broken federal law stopping funding for food assistance while there are contingency funds to operate the program. The multi-state coalition is seeking an immediate temporary restraining order to stop the USDA’s policy choice to starve SNAP recipients.
In the meantime, the Trump administration, with its point man Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager with a net worth of an estimated $600 million now, is overseeing a $20 billion bailout for the Argentine economy. What is really going on? “The bailout would deliver a major windfall to Rob Citrone,” CNN reported, “a billionaire hedge fund manager with significant investments in Argentina.”
Fascists are harvesting working class discontent, offering false causes for workers’ cost-of-living struggles. Immigration is President Trump’s favorite false cause. He campaigned on scapegoating noncitizen immigrants as criminals, a threat to the American people. That playbook incorporates the Drug War, blending it with the War on Terror, in a campaign to sow fear of the brown and black Other among white Americans. This is the politics of nationalism and racism to divide the poor and working classes of multiple ethnic backgrounds in economic distress.
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