The Biden administration continues to signal that its economic vision departs dramatically from the neoliberal orthodoxy that has dominated the country’s politics for decades, displaying at least a moderate commitment to redistributing wealth and recalibrating the balance of economic power. Seeking to reframe the economic narrative in a policy memo unveiled on Tuesday, key White House advisers asserted that emerging data indicates that the sprawling spending package adopted in the spring is driving broad-based growth and prosperity.  While the memo acknowledges that pandemic-induced labor shortages have caused a degree of consumer inconvenience and frustration, it cast this as a “positive development” which operates to boost wages for working people.  The memo emphasizes the need to continue to inject public spending into the economy, fueled by higher taxes on corporations and the rich.

Striking a similar chord, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen delivered a speech at the national chamber of commerce on Tuesday in which she informed the corporate sector they must contribute more in taxes in order to fund Biden’s ambitious domestic program, while lamenting the soaring inequality that has resulted from the neoliberal assault and the erosion in labor’s bargaining power (though, to be sure, she did not use that specific language).

Thousands of McDonald’s workers initiated a strike in more than a dozen cities across the country today, designed to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meetings this week.  Progressive icons Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), seeking to ratchet up the pressure on the multinational fast-food giant, plan to join the strikers as they demand higher wages.  “The time is now to end starvation wages in the richest country in the world,” Sanders said in a press release.