American Capitalism’s Immoral Response to COVID-19

Quotes from The Virus and Capitalism.

America’s unique, right-wing authoritarian, self-enriching, gobble-up, neoliberal, form of capitalism is helping it’s wealthy owners again while ignoring and abusing most citizens.    Back in 2008, the neoliberal puppets bailed out the banks and screwed families out of their homes.  Today they are trying to bailout companies who just got huge tax breaks and failed to create their own rainy day funds while leaving citizens to self-quarantine, “social-distancing,” or die prematurely in a profit-over-people healthcare system.

“The U.S. is in the midst of a full-blown public health crisis made worse by systemic political dysfunction.”

Millions of fellow citizens may die due lack of a “robust government response.”  National emergencies can only be responded to by our national government.  The critical question is will the response help the 1% or the 99%?  

And who we elect to national leadership will be critical to changing America’s uniquely ugly form of capitalism.

“The official plan to date is financial, to bail out Wall Street and the airlines, a payroll tax cut and token checks to the masses, and hope that it all works out.”

The “payroll taxe cuts” will help defund Social Security and Medicare.  These right-wing authoritarian capitalists always defund public services to end or privatize them, like public schooling and creating mass student debt.
The “token checks” are a one time placation in a long-term, abusive, crisis.

“In lieu of providing an adequate level of healthcare to address the pandemic, which even hardened D.C. hacks know can’t be conjured out of thin air in a timely enough fashion, what is left is ‘social distancing.’ This is polite speak for quarantines variably undertaken.

“The strategy of ‘flattening the curve,’ of slowing the spread of the virus so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed at any one time, could bring the mortality rate in the U.S. down by matching healthcare need to capacity.  But implied in the structure of the economic stimulus is a couple of weeks at home watching Netflix and then it’s back to the races. This is a low probability outcome. Eighteen months, the anticipated duration of the pandemic if effective action to mitigate it is taken, means that a radically changed world will emerge from the other side.”

Question is who will we elect to be there with those of us who survive the pandemic?  Someone who perpetuates our uniquely, deadly, authoritarian, protect-the-rich, economic system or someone who would make it more democratic and fair for all?

“ … here we are ten years later and the previously bailed out are once again telling us that the Federal government has to bail out corporations and the rich to ‘save the economy.’ ‘The economy’ is indeed in trouble, but it is in trouble because of the fragility created to benefit corporations and the rich, not because stock prices have fallen.

“ … The problem is that four decades of neoliberalism have instantiated the ethos that the role of government is to make rich people richer.

“More broadly, through the self-serving mythology of rugged individualism, capitalism has been used to shape and reshape social relations. This makes its dependence on serial bailouts both ridiculous and pathetic. [Capitalism,] Conceived several centuries ago to shift power from Aristocrats to a burgeoning business class, without a large and intrusive government to prevent consolidation and self-dealing, it quickly creates a new Aristocracy to close the door behind it. What is left is the privileged, remote and self-dealing oligarchy that now stands before us.”

In normal times, this uniquely American, authoritarian, economic system creates massive inequality.  It times like this, it accelerates that creation of inequality.  Its immorality becomes even more depraved.

“During ‘normal’ times, when this oligarchy isn’t acting to destroy other nations and the world, malgovernance for its own benefit is made the ordinary working of government. For instance, the U.S. military is wildly overfunded while the healthcare system is structured to let the people die at a politically acceptable pace. During ‘not normal’ times, a hierarchy of privilege is set in motion. First, save the wealth of the rich through bailouts. Second, secure the rights of corporations to profit from catastrophe. Last, let the people die at a politically acceptable pace.”

The massive mismanagement of the pandemic in America could produce politically UNacceptable numbers of  American deaths before the November election.

“The risk for the rich is that the logic of the guillotine begins to make sense. The risk for the rest of us can be counted in the sick and dying.”

Minimizing premature deaths has always been part of healthcare for all.  The absence of such healthcare means even more unwarranted premature American deaths are likely during this mismanaged pandemic.

“Donald Trump’s clumsy effort to corner the market in virus test kits for ‘American’ corporations has meant that we simply don’t have them. Obamacare certainly hasn’t produced any. The strategy that is unfolding of ad hoc quarantines and wishful thinking will either be converted into a robust response or the existing political order will end.

“The question of bailouts is fundamentally different from that of taking care of people. An adequate response to the pandemic will require years of dedicated effort, not tossing a trillion dollars at ‘the economy’ and hoping for the best. Social distancing and quarantines might require income and material support for tens of millions of people for as long as eighteen months.”

To change our uniquely authoritarian, American economic system that maximizes inequality into a more moral system that will work, long-term, for the 99% and one that will minimize premature, unwarranted American deaths will require significant voter turnout to significantly change who runs the federal government.  

Saving American lives can’t morally be done incrementally.