Wall Street Journal announces the era of the "mega layoff"

[jmbar2]

Article from World Socialist Website
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/18/kmxb-a18.html

“Instead of laying off people in more incremental—and less disruptive—waves, employers are seizing on the potential financial upsides of severing swaths of their workforces at once,” the paper notes. “That is a departure from not long ago, when mass layoffs registered as a sign of trouble or mismanagement and that a company needed to take drastic measures to right its performance. Now, such a company is more likely to get a big stock bump and praise from investors for acting boldly.”

The Journal cites immediate jumps in share values following recent mass layoffs at tech firms Block and Snap. After Block announced plans to lay off 40 percent of its workforce, executives from other companies “[came] out of the woodwork,” according to one executive. The purpose, according to the article, was to ask “for the playbook on how they might replicate such sweeping cuts at their own companies.”

This means, on the one hand, mass unemployment, lower pay, longer hours and a vast increase in surplus value extraction through new technology. On the other hand, it means the seizure of natural resources, markets and supply chains from national rivals. This is seen most sharply in Trump’s war against Iran, which is a struggle for control over oil routes, shipping lanes, strategic minerals and industrial supply chains.

These policies cannot be imposed democratically. This is what explains the rise of Trump, and the substantial support he receives from oligarchs such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Trump, whose political outlook is steeped in fascism and who openly threatens genocide against targets of foreign conquest, is the necessary political expression of capitalism at the point where it can continue only through a war on society.

Bernie was right. He still is. We have to dismantle this system before it destroys everything good on earth.