Fed Raises Interest Rates to Reassure Finance Capital, Workers to Bear the Cost
On September 16, the Federal Reserve Board raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percent, the first rate hike in three years. Minutes from the meeting which were released in early October indicate that the board of governors expects to impose another rate increase before the end of the year. They meet again on October 28 and December 9.
The rate increase, while justified as a means to fight inflation, was primarily meant to reassure international financial markets that the U.S. will make good on its debt, which has spiraled due to the combination of tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending.
Higher interest rates are essentially a tax imposed on working people, who will pay higher rates on credit cards and mortgages while also bearing the brunt of slower job growth. (When interest rates are higher, it is more expensive for businesses to borrow money, and they are less likely to expand and hire new workers.)
Rising Energy Prices Erase All Wage Gains Since Trump’s Inauguration
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September jobs report and Consumer Price Index numbers shows that over the past year, inflation has increased by 3.7 percent, while hourly wage rate increases have fallen to only three percent. This means that the average American worker has seen a 0.7 percent real decline in the value of their wages since September 2025. Or, to put it another way, there has been no net increase in real wages since Trump took office in January, 2025.
McDonald’s Using AI to Gouge Consumers
In another sign that mature businesses will attempt any tactic to maximize profit, fast food company McDonald’s is now using dynamic pricing based on AI-gathered information. Algorithms track sales across 14,000 restaurants and bring in outside data, such as publicly-posted prices by competitors, to determine how much locals are willing to pay for an item on the menu. A recent article in Reuters notes that comparing two restaurants two miles apart, one is selling a Big Mac for a 21 percent markup over the second. Dynamic pricing has become commonly used by online retailers and rideshare apps like Uber, but the expansion into brick-and-mortar retail is a relatively recent dynamic.
Water Bills Up 62 Percent in Last Decade
A new study by Food & Water Watch has found that water bills for U.S. households have increased by 62 percent over the past ten years. By comparison, food prices have increased by 30 percent and overall consumer prices by 39 percent in the same period.
“Corporate water abuses, federal disinvestment and climate change are supercharging water rate hikes across the country,” said study co-author Mary Grant, the water program director at Food & Water Watch. “Corporate control of water systems exacerbates this affordability crisis, as big water monopolies take away local control, prioritize profit and hike water prices even higher.” The study found that corporate-owner, for-profit water companies charged, on average, 67 percent higher rates than publicly-owned systems.
Damaging New Rules on Student Loans Take Effect
A new Education Department rule finalized in September means that for the first time, the government will judge eligibility for student loans based upon the “earnings potential” of graduates of the program. Essentially, the department will now look at the average earnings of graduates of a major or degree. If, for example, graduates of a particular bachelor's program make less on average than those with only a high school diploma, the program will be ineligible for federal loans.
A defense of the new rule published earlier this year by an American Enterprise Institute fellow who was one of its architects noted the bulk of impacted students were enrolled in “undergraduate certificates” (often at for-profit institutions) in areas like cosmetology and massage therapy, occupations that required no educational background prior to the last few decades of degree inflation. However, the author’s own study also notes that almost two thirds of Master’s degrees in areas like social work and mental health fail to meet the earnings threshold, as the average graduate makes less money than the median worker with just a college degree. Given the pervasive underfunding of social and mental health services, it’s unlikely that the pay scale of these degrees will improve, meaning a critical shortage of new workers in these fields is the most likely outcome.
Scammers Rob SNAP Recipients While Trump Administration Does Little to Stop Them
Propublica has published an expose on the growing issue of food stamp theft. This is not the theft fearmongered about in right-wing media — recipients using food stamps towards improper purchases — but organized theft of SNAP benefits from recipients. In 2025,this totalled $470 million in benefits, with nearly one million households having had some money stolen. Typically this happens when the mag-stripe information on a card is intercepted (often due to purchases at a disreputable store), with a third party draining the account by purchasing large amounts of baby formula, energy drinks, or other valid SNAP purchase. The thief then resells the purchased product for profit.
The most outrageous aspect of this SNAP theft is it would be easy to solve if electronic benefit transfer cards integrated the same sort of chip technology now otherwise universal for credit and debit cards. Indeed, a handful of states, including California, have introduced said cards (which in the case of California, reduced SNAP theft by 83 percent). However, cuts to SNAP funding under the “One Big Beautiful Bill” mean that the vast majority of states are blocked from implementing similar programs. In addition, 2025 cuts made by Elon Musk’s short-lived but highly destructive “Department of Government Oversight” have decimated the number of staff who oversee SNAP. Finally, Trump reversed a Biden-era policy which allowed for recipients to be reimbursed for stolen benefits, meaning that even in the rare cases these scammers are caught, no restitution is paid back to those who had to do without food assistance due to theft.