The establishment survey showed the economy added 379,000 jobs in February. In addition, the figures from December and January were revised up by 38,000. This brings the average job gain over the last three months to 79,700. Employment in the survey stands at 9,475,000 below its year-ago level.
The household survey showed the unemployment edging down to 6.2 percent, while the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) also ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 57.6 percent. That is down 3.5 percentage points from its year-ago level.
Small Businesses and Older Workers Hit Hardest
Small businesses continue to be hard hit in the recession. The number of incorporated self-employed is down by 797,000 over the last year, or 12.3 percent. There is relatively little change in the number of unincorporated self-employed, but these businesses tend to be smaller and are often part-time, like selling items on the web.
By age group, workers over age 55 and workers between the ages of 20 and 24 have been hit hardest. Employment for workers over age 55 fell by 6.5 percent over the last year. The drop for the 20–24 group was even larger at 7.4 percent, but this is a much smaller group of workers. Workers between the ages of 35–44 have fared best, with a drop in employment of 3.7 percent.
Share of Long-Term Unemployed Continues to Rise
The share of long-term unemployed rose by 2.0 percentage points to 41.5 percent. This is far higher than in prior recessions, where the share tended to peak not much over 20 percent, except the Great Recession, with a peak near 45 percent. This indicates that unemployment is highly concentrated among people who lost their jobs near the start of the recession, rather than workers going through relatively short spells of unemployment.
The share of the unemployed who are short-term layoffs fell sharply to 22.3 percent. The share, due to voluntary quits, rose 0.6 percentage points to 7.0 percent. This is still an extraordinarily low level. If we exclude the lows hit in the Great Recession, it would be necessary to go back to July of 1983, when the share hit 6.9 percent, to find a lower level.
Asian American Unemployment Rate Falls to 5.1 Percent
Unemployment rate for Asian Americans fell 1.5 percentage points to 5.1 percent. The unemployment rate for Asian Americans is typically slightly lower than for whites, but in the pandemic recession it has often been higher. The February drop again puts it slightly lower than the 5.6 percent unemployment rate for whites.
Another notable change was a 1.0 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate for workers with less than a high school degree to 10.1 percent. This is the highest since September, although the series is highly erratic, so this could be reversed.
Restaurants and Hotels Lead Employment Gains
Restaurants added 285,900 jobs in February, with hotels adding another 35,700. This obviously reflects gains in controlling the pandemic, but the two sectors together are still down 2,677,000 from a year ago. The temp sector was another big job gainer, adding 52,700. The sector has added 371,400 jobs since September, an average of 74,300 a month.
Retail added 41,100 jobs, putting it 362,600 below its year-ago level. Manufacturing added 21,000 jobs in February, but it is still 561,000 jobs below its year-ago level. Construction lost 61,000 jobs, but this was almost certainly due to the bad weather that hit during the reference period. State and local governments laid off another 83,000 workers in February, putting employment in the sector down 1,391,000 since pandemic started.
Wage Growth Looks Strong
The annual rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (December, January, and February) with the prior three months (September, October, November), was 5.7 percent. This is somewhat above the 5.3 percent year-over-year growth, but that figure is skewed by the loss of many low-paid jobs.
Hours Fall in February
The length of the average workweek fell by 0.3 hours in February. This is almost certainly due to the weather. However, the drop in hours put the index of aggregate hours 0.4 percent lower in February than in November. This is noteworthy because output was almost certainly considerably higher in February than in November, implying large gains in productivity.
Productivity data are notoriously erratic, but we did have 2.4 percent growth over the four quarters of 2020, after a rise of 1.9 percent in 2019. Productivity growth had averaged just 0.9 percent from 2009 to 2018. If higher rates of productivity growth can be sustained, it should alleviate concerns about inflation.
Generally Solid Jobs Story in February
The data in this report are better than was generally expected, given the continued high levels of unemployment insurance claims. However, the economy still has very far to go before it can be considered anything close to normal.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) said in a virtual meeting with President Joe Biden on Monday that he wanted the stimulus package to be narrower in its aid to the public, and that he wanted cuts to the unemployment checks included in this round of funding.
Manchin joined a group of centrist Democrats who said that they’re going to push for less aid in the upcoming $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Manchin specifically said that he wanted the coronavirus aid included in the bill to be “targeted,” reports Roll Call.
The bill currently includes $400 unemployment checks per week through August, which is already a cut from the CARES Act from last year that gave unemployed people $600 checks a week.
In the meeting, Manchin said he’d prefer that the checks were $300 instead, in response to largely Republican fears that unemployed people were making more than they would if they had a job. As of 2018, according to OpenSecrets, Manchin was worth over $7.6 million.
Manchin reiterated his alignment with Republicans on the next round of stimulus checks at Monday’s meeting, saying that he wanted the income threshold for the $1,400 checks to be lowered. Republicans have previously proposed that the threshold be lowered from individuals making $75,000 a year to individuals making $50,000 a year, a threshold that Manchin embraced, but which Democrats had previously rejected.
Over the past several weeks of negotiations over the stimulus package, called the American Rescue Plan, Manchin has stood against many of the Democratic and progressive ideas that have been proposed in the relief bill — including some that emerged while Donald Trump was president. Progressives have warned that Manchin’s insistence on lowering the income eligibility for the relief checks, and his opposition to the $15 federal minimum wage and the abolition of the filibuster, have made him a target for possible primaries from the left.
Manchin argues that his ideas about cuts to the stimulus are in service of “helping the people that need help the most,” he said on Monday. But basing aid on Republican talking points about cutting down unemployment benefits, some argue, isn’t the best path forward for the economy or for helping people who are hurting during the pandemic.
Some people who received the initial round of $600 unemployment checks, for instance, said that the checks were a lifeline while they were furloughed and making less than what they normally would, or when they were also helping to support those who weren’t fully unemployed but had their work hours cut due to COVID.
Many economists have also roundly rejected the idea that the extra unemployment checks discourage people from finding work. Josh Bivens, a research director at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog last year that, “In normal times, economists and policymakers have focused a lot of attention (almost surely too much) on the incentive effects of [unemployment insurance] benefits.” But studies have found that, “The negative economic impacts of these incentive effects have always been exaggerated,” says Bivens, and that they’re negligible, especially under the exigent circumstances caused by the pandemic.
If the idea of the stimulus package is to stimulate economic activity, the unemployment checks also help with that. As Bivens also notes, unemployment benefits are very efficient in increasing household spending. Bivens points to a House testimony by Harvard economist Jason Furman in which Furman presents projections showing that if the U.S. were to keep the $600 unemployment checks until 2022, the checks alone would support 3 million jobs.
Similar analyses have not been done on the smaller checks, but it’s natural to assume that the economic benefits would be lower if the checks are lower. Manchin, however, may not be as worried about the economic benefits of the stimulus as he is about government spending; recent reporting by West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette-Mail found that Manchin has an aide text him how much the national debt has grown every morning.
When the third round of relief checks was first being discussed in Washington, Manchin initially balked at the amount of money the checks would cost the federal government when asked about it by The Washington Post. He later clarified that, if they were found to stimulate the economy, then he would be in favor of them.
But the previous rounds of stimulus checks — which went to the higher threshold of income earners that Manchin has been opposed to — do have the effect of stimulating the economy even if they do end up as savings, experts have found.
The American Rescue Plan (ARP) was passed in the House this past week and now heads to the Senate, where it will no doubt be changed before it becomes law some time in mid-March. The current unemployment benefits expire on March 14.
While we don’t know what the final bill will look like, at least now we can get an idea of what is in it. Overall, as expected, the provisions in the bill will help to provide some financial assistance to some people, but they won’t solve the crises we face. And the Biden administration is backtracking on promises made on the campaign trail.
As Alan Macleod writes, Biden has abandoned raising the minimum wage, ending student debt and the promised $2,000 checks. His focus is on forcing people back to work and school even as new, more infectious and more lethal variants of the virus causing COVID-19 threaten another surge in cases and deaths. There is only one promise Biden appears to be keeping, and that is one he made to wealthy donors at the start of his campaign when he said, “nothing would fundamentally change.”
Despite this, people are organizing across the country for their rights to economic security and health and an end to discrimination. These struggles are necessary as we cannot expect either of the capitalist parties to act in the people’s interest. But together, we can demand that one of the wealthiest nations on earth upholds its responsibility to provide the basic necessities for its people. This is consistent with a People(s)-Centered Human Rights approach.
What is and isn’t in the ARP?
The current version of the American Rescue Plan contains provisions that would provide money to people earning less than $75,000 per year. One is the one-time $1,400 check. Another is raising the tax credit for families with children, which will benefit those who file tax returns but leave out the millions of poor people who don’t.
The ARP will also extend unemployment benefits until the end of August and increase the enhanced benefits to $400/week. Unlike the previous bills, this one includes workers who left their jobs because of unsafe conditions and those who had to leave work or reduce their hours to care for children. The benefits are retroactive for some workers who were denied benefits.
While this will temporarily improve the economic situation for many people, it is not a plan to address the poverty crisis in the United States nor is it sufficient to support people through the current recession and pandemic. People will still face barriers to receiving the aid. Instead of making the programs something that people have to apply for, the government could provide monthly checks to everyone with incomes under a certain amount automatically. Numerous examples show that putting money into people’s hands, such as through a guaranteed income or giving unrestricted lump sums, improves their well-being.
An increase in the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, a promise of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, is in the House version of the bill, but it will not be in the Senate version unless the White House or Democrats intervene, which they seem unwilling to do. The minimum wage increase is being blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian, but the Vice President could override the decision or the Democrats could take steps to work around the Parliamentarian, as has been done in the past on other issues. They are choosing not to take this stand.
The ARP also fails to extend the eviction moratorium, which will expire at the end of March. While it does contain funds for rental assistance, they are being given to the Treasury Department to disburse to the states, so it is not clear how these funds will help people directly. A recent study found that corporate landlords received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks last year but continued to evict thousands of people. When the eviction moratorium ends, those who cannot pay the back rent risk being evicted.
The health benefits in the ARP are not only inadequate but they are set to further enrich the medical-industrial complex, as I explain in “Biden’s Health Plan Shifts Even More Public Dollars into Private Hands.” The ARP is fulfilling a laundry list provided by private health insurers, hospitals and medical lobbying groups. It will subsidize the cost of insurance premiums but leave those who have health insurance still struggling to pay out-of-pocket costs and at risk of bankruptcy if they have a serious accident or illness.
And finally, another group that is being left out is those who have student debt. I spoke with Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice on Clearing the FOG this week. He said the current student loan burden is likely over $2 trillion and that the vast majority of debtors will never be able to repay . Collinge argues that it is imperative the Biden administration cancel student debt using an executive order, which he has the power to do, rather than leaving it to Congress. If the President does it, then the debt disappears (tax payers have already paid for the loans), but if Congress does it, which is unlikely to happen, they would have to offset the ‘cost’ through cuts to other programs or by raising taxes. Collinge also explains that cancelling student debt would be a significant economic stimulus.
All in all, the current ARP is another attempt by Congress to throw more money at a failed system that doesn’t change anything fundamentally. We must demand more.
The case for wealth redistribution
Lee Camp recently made the case for a massive change in the direction of wealth redistribution based on a new study that finds “the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality has grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.” This amounts to over $1,000 per month per person in wealth that has been redistributed to the top or almost $14,000 per year.
It is time to reverse the direction of this wealth redistribution from one of consolidation at the top to one that creates greater wealth equality. This could be accomplished in a number of ways. In the middle of the last century, it was done through extremely high taxes on the wealthy and government investment in programs for housing and education. Camp advocates for taking all wealth over $10 million and redistributing it to the bottom 99.5% in a way that benefits the poorest the most.
Raising wages is another way to redistribute wealth. Professor Richard Wolff explains there are ways to raise wages without harming small businesses by providing federal support to them to offset the costs. Think of it as a reversal of the hundreds of billions in subsidies that have been given to large corporations, which they use to buy up and inflate the value of their stocks, to the small and medium businesses. It is smaller businesses that are most likely to keep wealth in their communities, unlike large corporations that extract wealth, and are the major drivers of the US economy. Small businesses alone comprise 44% of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
If workers earned higher wages, it would also save the government money that is currently spent on social safety net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps for low-wage workers. These programs enable large corporations to profit off worker exploitation, especially Walmart, Amazon and McDonalds, according to the DC Report.
Robert Urie points out that another price society pays for the gaping wealth divide is state violence and incarceration. He writes, “At $24 per hour, the inflation and productivity adjusted minimum wage in the U.S. from 1968, workers were still being added to employer payrolls. The point: $24 – $7.25 = $16.75 per hour plus a rate of profit is one measure of economic expropriation from low wage workers in the U.S. Maintaining an unjust public order is critical to the functioning of this exploitative political economy. Most of the prison population in the U.S. comes from neighborhoods where the minimum wage affects livelihoods.” Imagine the many ways that greater economic security would positively benefit families and communities.
People are fighting back
In our current political environment, we cannot expect Congress and the White House to do what is necessary to protect the health and security of people without a struggle that forces them to do so. There are many ways people are fighting locally for their rights through resistance and creating alternative systems. Here are a few current examples.
On February 16, fast food workers in 15 cities went on strike to demand $15 an hour. Other low-wage workers joined them. Last Monday, in Chicago, Black owners of McDonalds franchises began a 90-day protest outside of the McDonalds headquarters because of discrimination against them. They say, “McDonald’s has denied the Black franchisees the same opportunities as white operators and continually steer them to economically depressed and dangerous areas with low volume sales.”
In Bessemer, Alabama, workers are conducting a vote to start the first union for Amazon employees. If they succeed, it will be an amazing feat considering that Alabama is a right-to-work state and Amazon is doing what it can to stop them. In Arizona, another right-to-work state, workers at two universities are leading an effort to unionize all higher education employees in the state. They are concerned that federal funding provided to keep universities open will not be used in a way that protects all workers. They cite recent practices that prioritize the financial well-being of the universities over worker health and safety.
Some workers are taking power in other ways. Bus drivers in Silicon Valley organized with the support of community members to stop fare collections and only allow boarding in the rear, moves designed to aid passengers during the recession and protect drivers during the pandemic. They were committed to doing this whether management agreed to it or not. Others are building worker-owned platform cooperatives to challenge platform corporations that exploit their labor such as Spotify and Uber.
Others are working to meet people’s basic needs through mutual aid. Food not Bombs has been feeding people throughout the pandemic in various cities. In Santa Cruz, CA, they are out every day to feed the houseless despite being hassled by the city and moved around. A rural area in Canada that includes 65,000 people pulled together it local resources to make sure everyone is fed through a food policy council of elected officials, organizations and stakeholders. They reallocated their budget from events and travel to food security. They opened their seed banks to support local gardening efforts and commandeered unused buildings as spaces for assembling food boxes that were delivered to those in need.
These examples illustrate the tremendous power people have to force changes and create support networks in their communities when they organize together. While we should continue to expose and pressure Congress and the White House to invest in programs that provide for people’s needs, that is a function of government after all, we also need to organize in our communities to build popular power and create alternative systems that will slowly build the society we need.
Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.
A December 2017 statement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights notes that, while the US manages to spend “more [money] on national defence than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan combined”, US infant mortality rates were, as of 2013, “the highest in the developed world”.
The Special Rapporteur provides a barrage of other details from his own visit to the US, during which he was able to observe the country’s “bid to become the most unequal society in the world” – with some 40 million people living in poverty – as well as assess “soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction”.
Capitalism, it seems, is a deadly business indeed.
A demonstrator from the Occupy Wall Street campaign seen with a dollar taped over his mouth as he stands near the financial district of New York September 30, 2011. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
How the Cookie Crumbles
She’s 80, comes from Ayr, Scotland, lives in a sea town along the Oregon Coast. She is caretaker for her 55-year-old nephew. Her heart-failed husband, liver shot through, dialysis weekly, is another of her charges.
Imagine, she and her family ran a small chain of shops — clocks, another locksmith, another fish and chips. That was in Bonnie Scotland.
Her sister married a bloke in the US Air Force, and she shipped out with him. Pregnant. Child Drew, early on, in Tucson at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, he was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. Life for her changed, and then her sister promised if anything happened to this sister, Aunt Regina would take care of Drew. That was a long long time ago.
Regina’s sister and her sister’s husband immolated in a crash coming back from El Paso. Boy Drew left with a younger sister — the boy age 20, sis 16.
For 35 years, our Regina and her Bob raised the boy. Drew is now 55, and part of my job is to support him in his job at a grocery store. He’s been there more than 15 years, and he makes $12.01 an hour.
Forget that economic injustice for a moment. Listen to how the crumbling cookie goes in predatory capitalism — Regina has not been back to the old country in 20 years. She has two knees that are shot. She needs two replacements, but she is the caretaker for the chronically-sick husband. Drew lives with them, getting his two-times a week work at the grocery store as a bagger.
He’s got the infectious personality, and he also has some “issues” glomming onto female staff. Regina was not told that adults with Downs Syndrome many times have lost the synoptic connections tied to urgency for urination and defecation.
Sweet drinks he gulps down, like a lost man in the Sahara. He scarfs down or wolfs down his food.
Like anyone, Drew wants to be in a relationship, married, on some piece of property with a horse, dogs and big garden. He works eight hours a week, and receives under $800 in social security payments.
The state pays Aunt Regina for his care. Her biggest worry is Drew losing his job because of the bathroom accidents or the sexual harassment.
Regina is kind but firm, and her bedside manner isn’t from the latest holistic and enlightened training around people who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“I tell Drew, that if he messes up one more time, the grocery store will fire him. The job is more than pocket change for him. He gets out, has responsibilities, is growing some from the integrated employment, and, mind you this is a big AND, I get him out of the house for a few hours a week so I can gain some sense of sanity. I don’t know if he has to be put into a state institution.”
Luck of the draw, luck of the gene expression, luck of the accidental car mortalities, luck luck luck.
That’s the way the cookie crumbles, and in capitalism, we are not judged by how we treat our aged, infirm, vulnerable, youth, sick, disabled, poor. The worse we treat “them,” the more “they” have to struggle, the more daily fear “they” have of failing, faltering, flipping out mentally, the more successful those Capitalists and those Investors and those Finance Wizards and those Upper Economic Class are!
Redistribution of wealth for “them” is taking every last penny from “them,” us. Working people at $12.01 an hour after 15 years in a national/international chain.
A mentality that posits that “they” meant to do that, defecate in their pants, or, oh, “they” know better, and, oh, “they” are gaming the system and pulling the wool over your bleeding heart social services worker heads.
Heartless in a Time of Plague
Our Scottish Regina is worried about what will happen to Drew once she kicks the bucket, or when she is no longer physically capable of carrying on and running a household with a very demanding Drew and a very failing Bob, her 86-year-old husband.
We talk about the old country’s National Health Service. We talk about the failures of a society that has been ripped open time and time again by the purulent investors — another word for making money anyway they can.
Gutting medical care, gutting entitlement programs, gutting progressive taxation, gutting the measures for health and safety for and by the public. Where oh where will Drew go once his aunt and uncle pass on?
Think of every dollar and penny pinched, and then think of how much we the taxpayer shell out for every nanosecond of the crimes of corporations eating at the belly of communities, and every penny taken in light speed for everything run by the imposters, the misanthropes.
Every million$ here, every billion$ there. Grifters and grabbers. How much did the first Billionaire’s “impeachment” cost us? How much does an Alex Jones or Tom Brady or Michelle Obama get paid for their insipid bolstering of their self-referential mythology? Each speech? Each rot gut book penned?
Every rivet sunk into a Hellfire missile, every pound of fuel used in US Military Terrorism Toys, every nanosecond million made through illegal and unethical investing through algorithm?
That Moon shot by India, or that Mars rover by Japan, or Israel gunning for more surveillance. How much is every human lifetime worth, if we are lumped together in that big pile of “other” and “non-human”?
That heartless cookie crumbling capitalism is rotten to the core. The joke is, though, by the filthy rich, the Art of War Friedman’s and Bezos and all the Google middling’s and upper crust, that if all the billions were taken from the filthy rich, and dumped into the majority on planet earth — the poor, the uneducated, the misbegotten, the terminal, the dysfunctional, the Jerry Springer protagonists and antagonists, in five years all that and more would be back in the hands of the Star Chamber 1,000 or 2,000 Multi-Billionaires.
“We’d just get it all back, because the masses are inherently stupid, know nothing about the value of a dollar, would buy all the junk and shit and whoring dreams we create to sell. We’d have all that so-called ‘redistributed’ wealth back in our hands.”
That myth is coupled with another one, where the rich and the rest of us, having collectively, as much as the 1,000 or millionth richest? Christian Parenti lays it out simply and clearly here:
The 85 richest in the world probably include the four members of the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart, among the top ten superrich in the USA) who together are worth over $100 billion. Rich families like the DuPonts have controlling interests in giant corporations like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and United Brands. They own about forty manorial estates and private museums in Delaware alone and have set up 31 tax-exempt foundations. The superrich in America and in many other countries find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter much of their wealth in secret accounts. We don’t really know how very rich the very rich really are.
Regarding the poorest portion of the world population—whom I would call the valiant, struggling “better half”—what mass configuration of wealth could we possibly be talking about? The aggregate wealth possessed by the 85 super-richest individuals, and the aggregate wealth owned by the world’s 3.5 billion poorest, are of different dimensions and different natures. Can we really compare private jets, mansions, landed estates, super luxury vacation retreats, luxury apartments, luxury condos, and luxury cars, not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in equities, bonds, commercial properties, art works, antiques, etc.—can we really compare all that enormous wealth against some millions of used cars, used furniture, and used television sets, many of which are ready to break down? Of what resale value if any, are such minor durable-use commodities? especially in communities of high unemployment, dismal health and housing conditions, no running water, no decent sanitation facilities, etc. We don’t really know how poor the very poor really are.
The books and discourse and deep discussions and analyses have already been posited and published, and yet, we are in 2021, and the school system, the media system, the propaganda machines of government-military-resource extraction-big ag/med/pharma/AI/finance continue to cobble truth, censor the reality of the penury system that is consumer-corporate-criminal-corrupt Capitalism.
Here, a hodgepodge of readings ramifying the thesis in this essay of mine —
Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff: Capitalism Does Not Work for the Majority of the People
Make No Mistake: The Rule Of The Rich Has Been A Deadly Epoch For Humanity
Michael Parenti: Does Capitalism Work? (2002)
The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism
Capitalism: The Systematic Poverty and Exploitation of Human Beings by Finian Cunningham
Michael Parenti: These Countries Are Not Underdeveloped, They Are Overexploited (1986)
Luxury Eco-Communism: A Wonderful World is Possible
The Growing Disparity In Living Conditions and Its Consequences by Rainer Shea
Covid-19 and the Health Crisis in Latin America by Yanis Iqbal
The Start Of The Great Meltdown For Industrial Civilization by Rainer Shea
MFTN: Poverty Will Kill More Of Us Than Terrorism
The Rich Are Only Rich If We Let Them Be by Dariel Garner
Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger + How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
Wealth Belongs To All Of Us – Not Just To The Rich by Dariel Garner
We Are So Poor Because They Are So Rich by Dariel Garner
It all comes back to the rackets — war, banking, big ag, law, prisons, military, computing, finance, insuring, retail, lending, investing, for-profit medicine, education, utilities.
The rackets of putting garnishments on all of our wages. The punishment rackets of fines, foreclosures, levies, taxes, fees, surcharges, add-ons, user fees, disposal fees, tolls, late fees, interest fees, penalties, wage attachments, wage theft, any-government-revenue/policing/judicial entity having the legal right to crack into any savings or checking or real estate holding they want to….And steal!
Imagine that freedom, uh? My Drew or my Don, they work for pittances, and they have their measly wages garnished if they make too much above the allowable social security benefit level. Imagine all of the flimflam, all those middle and peripheral and shadowy and underhanded people and agencies each taking a gram of flesh until that human life has been pecked away.
Stuck in a closet somewhere. Huddled around a TV, surrounded by the deadly products of a food industry responsible for billions dead. Food (sic) more deadly than cancer sticks, AKA cigarettes.
Think hard how those children-who-come-to-me-as-adults as their social services manager, wanting me to help them find jobs in a dog-eat-dog culture, where the cookie isn’t just crumbling, but rather smashed into smithereens by the capitalists. All those poisons in food, all the polluting, toxin-laced, dam-building, river-tainting, air-staining processes that bring us better living with plastics-fastfood-shelf lives of a decade. Better living through chemistry, pharmaceutics, chronic illness, disease management, pain regulating.
Then, we cannot discuss the possibilities of a society with more and more allergies, more and more chronic illnesses, more and more learning disabilities, more and more developmental disabilities, more and more intellectual disabilities, more and more trauma and PTSD and generalized anxiety and physiological premature weathering.
And poverty does more than just kills. Poverty eats at the soul, drives people to unsafe harbors like consumerism, disposability, obsessions, addictions, inattentiveness, collective Stockholm Syndrome, perversions, empty calories-entertainment-thinking.
There are numbers just for one aspect of our consumer-retail-exploitative societies competing in a trans-national gallery of dirty capitalism — 4.2 million premature deaths annually? Five million? More? Exposure to air pollution caused over 7.0 million deaths and 103.1 million disability-adjusted life years lost in one year.
Attributed to dirty (polluted) air. Not dirty water. Not dirty food. Not dirty drugs. Not smoking. Not boozing. Not war.
The study uses existing data from IHME on global burden of diseases (Mortality and Disability Adjusted Life Years) related to air pollution such as Trachea, Bronchus and Lung cancer, COPD, Ischemic heart disease and Stroke. This study shows that air pollution is one of the major environmental risk factors for the global burden of disease in 1990-2015 and has remained relatively stable for the past 25 years. By region, the largest burden of disease related to air pollution is found in Western Pacific and South-East Asia, reflecting the heavy industry and air pollution hotspots within the developing nations of these regions. Moreover, the rates of Disability Adjusted Life Years increased because of increase in pollution, especially in South-East Asia region, African region, and Eastern Mediterranean region where populations are both growing and ageing.
I’ve written about this for years — how there is so much disconnect in Criminal Capitalism, where the marketing ploys and psychological tricks force babies and then toddlers and then kindergarteners and then grade schoolers and then more and more millions of growing minds to adapt to counterintuitive thinking, to accept death, slow or otherwise, as part of the social contract. Dog-eat-dog, predation, big fish/small pond, and the roots of America after decimating Turtle Island, one smoke and mirror show after another snake oil sales pitch.
Which sane or humane person would accept a PayDay loan scam? Which humane person would accept forced arbitration clauses? Which caring human would not endorse clean, well-run, full coverage public transportation? Which caring mother would not demand prenatal care, and medicine and clinics on demand? Where is the logic of old men and old women (look at the senate, the congress, the administration) running the lives of the unborn, newborn and youth into the ground.
Even the thirty-somethings in Brooks Brothers suits look, sound, smell, and espouse OLD. I don’t mean old and wise, or elder thinkers, or experienced and well traveled. I mean old in decayed.
If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with old minds and new programs. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but a new program.
The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people.
— Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
These flimflam artists, these liars and cheaters and pontificators and media monsters, they are antithetical to a good governance, good society, good people.
They not only do not know the stories of Drew and his Aunt Regina and Uncle Bob, but they have no forward-thinking solutions to the aging old foster parents and the still healthy middle-aged Drew. With all his beauty. With all his kindness. With all his adept knowledge of how to get on, get along, get his day going. Drew, born in the cookie crumbles crap shoot. Regina, who was on her way back to the UK, Scotland, when she answered the call to take care of Drew and his sister.
This story is repeated a million times a month, worldwide. The penalty for living, for being human, for being not one of them (rich, powerful, greed-wielding) and for stopping their lives to do the right thing.
You wake up one day and believe you have a worthy life. You wake up and take account of what good you have done. You wake up and look in the mirror and wonder what it is you actually dreamt, thought, spoke, cared for, read, built, protected, grew, sheltered, did, held sacred, envisioned, husbanded, parented, fostered, ate, drank, created.
Did any of that living have purpose, or some connection to the humanity that is the real culture of Homo Sapiens, mother culture?
Daily, I have a million intersections with culture and cultures — Big D for deaf or small d for disabled? Brain-injured at birth, or hit by a truck at age 11. Traumatic Brain Injury from an early childhood beating, or massive psychological trauma from a rape at age 20. Born with any number of diagnosed maladies, or any expression of “being born on the autism spectrum.” Fragile X or fetal alcohol affective disorder. Or Downs Syndrome.
The luck of the draw is one enormous field of chance, and the outcomes are not just tied to the abilities — emotional, spiritual, economic, personal — of those you call family, but how the society at large and each community gauge the value of life, the value placed on those whose luck of the draw came up short in some areas.
But the world is fragile, and those on some neuro typical scale and those atypically neuro, can we build our culture together, and heal and protect and shelter and engender and facilitate and teach and learn from?
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.
Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before.
Between February and May 2020, the number of unemployed workers soared more than threefold — from 6.2 million to 20.5 million. The jobless rate spiked in a similar fashion from 3.8% to 13.0%. In late March, weekly unemployment claims reached 6.9 million, obliterating the previous record of 695,000, set in October 1982. Within three months, the pandemic-produced slump proved far worse than the three-year Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Things have since improved. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced in December that unemployment had fallen to 6.7%. Yet, that same month, weekly unemployment filings still reached a staggering 853,000 and though they fell to just under 800,000 last month, even that far surpassed the 1982 number.
And keep in mind that grim statistics like these can actually obscure, rather than illuminate, the depths of our current misery. After all, they exclude the 6.2 million Americans whose work hours had been slashed in December or the 7.3 million who had simply stopped looking for jobs because they were demoralized, feared being infected by the virus, had schoolchildren at home, or some of the above and more. The BLS’s rationale for not counting them is that they are no longer part of what it terms the “active labor force.” If they had been included, that jobless rate would have spiraled to nearly 24% in April and 11.6% in December.
Degrees of Pain
To see just how unevenly the economic pain has been distributed in America, however, you have to dig far deeper. A recent analysis by the St. Louis Federal Reserve did just that by dividing workers into five separate quintiles based on their range of incomes and the occupations typically associated with each.
The first and lowest-paid group, including janitors, cooks, and housecleaners, made less than $35,000 annually; the second (construction workers, security guards, and clerks, among others) earned $35,000-$48,000; the third (including primary- and middle-school teachers, as well as retail and postal workers), $48,000-$60,000; the fourth (including nurses, paralegals, and computer technicians), $60,000-$83,000; while employees in the highest-paid quintile like doctors, lawyers, and financial managers earned a minimum of $84,000.
More than 33% of those in the lowest paid group lost their jobs during the pandemic, and a similar proportion were forced to work fewer hours. By contrast, in the top quintile 5.6% were out of work and 5.4% had their hours cut. For the next highest quintile, the corresponding figures were 11.4% and 11.7%.
Workers in the bottom 20% of national income distribution have been especially vulnerable for another reason. Their median liquid savings (readily available cash) averages less than $600 compared to $31,300 for those in the top 20%.
Twelve percent of working Americans can’t even handle a $400 emergency; 27% say they could, but only if they borrowed, used credit cards, or sold their personal possessions.
Under the circumstances, it should scarcely be surprising that the number of hungry people increased from 35 million in 2019 to 50 million in 2020, overwhelming food banks nationwide. Meanwhile, rent and mortgage arrears continued to pile up. By last December, 12 million people already owed nearly $6,000 each on average in past-due rent and utility bills and will be on the hook to their landlords for those sums once federal and state moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures eventually end.
Meanwhile, low-income workers struggled to arrange child-care as schools closed to curtail coronavirus infections. Women have borne the brunt of the resulting burden. By last summer, 13% of workers, unable to afford childcare, had already quit their jobs or reduced their hours, and most held low-wage jobs to begin with. Forty-six percent of women have jobs with a median hourly wage of $10.93 an hour, or less than $23,000 a year, far below the national average, now just shy of $36,000. In some low-wage professions, like servers in restaurants and bars, women are (or at least were) 70% of the workforce. A disproportionate number of them were also Black or Hispanic.
Before the pandemic, 57% of women in low-wage occupations worked full-time and 15% of them were single parents. Close to one-fifth had children under four years old and contend with full-time care that, on average, costs $9,598 yearly. If that weren’t enough, at least 25% of such low-wage jobs involved shifting or unpredictable schedules.
Much has been made recently of the wonders of “telecommuting” to work. But here again there’s a social divide. People with at least a college degree, who are more likely to possess the skills needed for higher-paying jobs, have been “six times more likely” to telecommute than other workers. Even before the pandemic, 47% of those with college degrees occasionally worked from home, versus 9% of those who had completed high school and a mere 3% of those who hadn’t.
Now, add to the economic inequities highlighted by the pandemic slump those rooted in race. Black and Hispanic low-income workers have been doubly disadvantaged. In 2016, the median household wealth of whites was already 10 times that of Blacks and more than eight times that of Hispanics, a gap that has generally been on the increase since the 1960s. And because those two groups have been overrepresented among low-wage occupations most affected by unemployment in the last year, their jobless rate during the pandemic has been much higher.
Unsurprisingly, an August Pew Research Center survey revealed that significantly more of them than whites were struggling to cover utility bills and rent or mortgage payments. After Covid-19 hammered the economy, a much higher proportion of them were also hungry and had to turn to food pantries, many for the first time.
In these months Americans who are less educated, hold low-income jobs, and are minorities — Asians excepted, since they, like whites, are underrepresented in low-wage professions — have been in an economic Covid-19 hell on Earth. But isn’t the American social safety net supposed to help the vulnerable in times of economic distress? As it happens, at least compared to those of other wealthy countries, it’s been remarkably ineffective.
Sizing Up the Social Safety Net
In a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015, Bernie Sanders observed that Scandinavian governments protect workers better thanks to their stronger social safety nets. Hillary Clinton promptly shot back, “We are not Denmark. We are the United States of America.” Indeed we are.
This country certainly does have a panoply of social welfare programs that the federal government spends vast sums on — around 56% of the 2019 budget, or nearly $2.5 trillion. So, you might think that we were ready and able to assist workers hurt most by the Covid-19 recession. Think again.
Social Security consumes about 23% of the federal budget. Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program together claim another 25% (with Medicare taking the lion’s share).
Social Security and Medicare, however, generally only serve those 65 or older, not the jobless. With them excluded, two critical areas for most workers in such an economic crisis are healthcare and unemployment insurance.
About half of American workers rely on employer-provided health insurance. So, by last June, as Covid-19 caused joblessness to skyrocket, nearly eight million working adults and nearly seven million of their dependents lost their coverage once they became unemployed.
Medicaid, administered by states and funded in partnership with the federal government, does provide healthcare to certain low-income people and the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) also required states to use federal funds to cover all adults whose incomes are no more than 30% above the official poverty line. In 2012, though, the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn’t be compelled to comply and, as of now, 12 states, eight of them southern, don’t. (Two more, Missouri and Oklahoma, have opted to expand Medicaid coverage per the ACA, but haven’t yet implemented the change.) People residing in non-ACA locales face draconian income requirements to qualify for Medicaid and, in almost all of them, childless individuals aren’t eligible, no matter how meager their earnings.
While Medicaid enrollment does increase with rising unemployment, not all jobless workers qualify, even in states that have expanded coverage. So unemployed workers may find that they earn too much to qualify for subsidies but not enough to purchase private insurance, which averages $456 a month for an individual and $1,152 for a family. Then there are steeply rising out-of-pocket expenses — deductibles, copayments, and extra charges for services provided by out-of-network doctors. Deductibles alone have, on average, gone up by 111% since 2010, far outpacing average wages, which increased by only 27%.
The American health care system remains a far cry from the variants of universal health care that exist in Australia, Canada, most European countries, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. The barrier to providing such care in the U.S. isn’t affordability, but the formidable political power of a juggernaut healthcare industry (including insurance and drug companies) that opposes it fiercely.
As for unemployment insurance, the American version — funded by state and federal payroll taxes and supplemented by federal money — remains, at best, a bare-bones arrangement. Coverage used to last a uniform 26 weeks, but since 2011, 13 states have reduced it, some more than once, while also paring down benefits (especially as claims soared during the Great Recession).
So if you lose your job, where you live matters a lot. Many states provide benefits for more than half a year, Massachusetts for up to 30 weeks. Michigan, South Carolina, and Missouri, however, set the limit at 20 weeks, Arkansas at 16, Alabama at 14. The weekly payout also varies. Although the pre-pandemic national average was about $387, the maximum can run from $213 to $823, with most states providing an average of between $300 and $500.
Except in unusual times like these, when the federal government provides emergency supplements, unemployment benefits replace only about a third to a half of lost wages. As for the millions of people who work in the gig economy or are self-employed, they are seldom entitled to any help at all.
The proportion of jobless workers receiving unemployment benefits has also been declining since the 1980s. It’s now hit 27% nationally and, in 17 states, 20% or less. There are multiple reasons for this, but arguably the biggest one is that the system has been woefully underfunded. Taxes on wages provide the revenue needed to cover unemployment benefits, but in 16 states, the maximum taxable annual amount is less than $10,000 a year. The federal equivalent has remained $7,000 — not adjusted for inflation — since 1983. That comes to $42 per worker.
The $2-trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act and the subsequent $900-billion Pandemic Relief Bill did provide federal funds to extend unemployment benefits well beyond the number of weeks set by individual states. They also covered gig workers and the self-employed. However, such exceptional and temporary rescue measures — including the one President Joe Biden has proposed, which includes a weekly supplement of $400 to unemployment benefits and seems likely to materialize soon — only highlight the inadequacies of the regular unemployment insurance system.
Other parts of the social safety net include housing subsidies, the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), Temporary Aid to Needy Families, and childcare subsidies. After surveying them, a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study concluded that they amounted to an ill-funded labyrinthine system rife with arcane eligibility criteria that — the elderly or the disabled aside — actually aids fewer than less half of low-income families and only a quarter of those without children.
This isn’t an unfair assessment. The Government Accountability Office reports that, of the 8.5 million children eligible for child-care subsidies, only 1.5 million (just under 18%) actually receive any. Even 40% of the kids from households below the poverty line were left out.
Similarly, fewer than a quarter of qualified low-income renters, those most vulnerable to eviction, receive any Department of Housing and Urban Development subsidies. Because median rent increased 13% between 2001 and 2017 while the median income of renters (adjusted for inflation) didn’t budge, 47% of them were already “rent burdened” in the pre-pandemic moment. In other words, rent ate up 30% or more of their annual income. Twenty-four percent were “severely burdened” (that is, half or more of their income). Little wonder that a typical family whose earnings are in the bottom 20% had only $500 left over after paying the monthly rent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even before Covid-19 hit.
SNAP does better on food, covering 84% of those eligible, but the average benefit in 2019, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted, was $217, “about $4.17 a day, $1.39 per meal.” Mind you, in about one-third of recipient households, at least two people were working; in 75%, at least one. Not for nothing has the term “working poor” become part of our political vocabulary.
Is Change in the Air?
During crises like the present one, our moth-eaten safety net has to be patched up with stopgap legislation that invariably produces protracted partisan jousting. The latest episode is, of course, the battle over President Joe Biden’s plan to provide an additional $1.9 trillion in relief to a desperate country.
Can’t we do better? In principle, yes. After all, many countries have far stronger safety nets that were created without fostering indolence or stifling innovation and, in most instances, with a public debt substantially smaller relative to gross domestic product than ours. (So much for the perennial claims from the American political right that attempting anything similar here would have terrible consequences.)
We certainly ought to do better. The United States places second in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s overall poverty index, which includes all 27 European Union countries plus the United Kingdom and Canada, as well as in its child-poverty-rate ranking.
But doing better won’t be easy — or perhaps even possible. American views on the government’s appropriate economic role differ substantially from those of Canadians and Europeans. Moreover, corporate money and that of the truly wealthy already massivelyinfluence our politics, a phenomenon intensified by recent Supreme Court decisions. Proposals to fortify the safety net will, therefore, provoke formidable resistance from armies of special interests, lobbyists, and plutocrats with the means to influence politicians. So if you’re impatient for a better safety net, don’t hold your breath.
And yet many landmark changes that created greater equity in the United States (including the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women voting rights, the New Deal, the creation of Medicaid, and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s) once seemed inconceivable. Perhaps this pandemic’s devastation will promote a debate on the failures of our ragged social safety net.
We are public opinion scholars at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In cooperation with our partners at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Public Radio, we conducted a survey in July and August of last year to try to understand how the first round of aid had affected American families in need. What we found shocked us then and feels relevant now as the government negotiates its next steps.
Despite trillions of dollars in government assistance, about two-thirds of families that suffered job losses or reduced wages during the pandemic still reported facing serious financial hardship.
Many people were struggling — and still are — just to pay for basic necessities, like food and rent.
The First Round of Pandemic Aid
Congress passed most of the initial relief in March, including direct payments to qualifying families, expanded unemployment benefits and loans to small businesses that turned into grants if they kept workers on their payroll.
By July 1, when we began our survey, most Americans entitled to a direct check should have received it, and unemployed adults were still receiving supplemental aid of $600 a week on top of state benefits.
We wanted to understand the financial burdens experienced by American families that were economically harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. And we wanted to see whether the government aid was helping the people who needed it most.
Using a nationally representative, randomized survey design, we contacted 3,454 adults and asked them about the financial problems facing their households. We focused on the 46% who said they or other adults in their household either lost a job, had to close a business, were furloughed or had their wages or hours reduced since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. We published our findings in the economic affairs journal Challenge in January.
Serious Financial Problems
While it seems like a no-brainer that Americans weren’t ready for the unexpected employment disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was surprising to us that federal aid and charitable assistance seemed to be doing so little to support the people it was intended to help.
We found that the aid didn’t put much of a dent in the financial problems faced by families earning less than $100,000, whether because relief was delayed or wasn’t spent, the amount wasn’t adequate or the funds never made it to the intended recipients.
Among households with employment or wage losses during the pandemic, 87% of those earning less than $30,000 a year and 68% of those earning $30,000 to $99,999 told us they were still facing serious financial problems. And more than half of households in these income brackets reported they had already used up all or most of their savings – or they didn’t have savings to begin with. That share jumped to over three-quarters for people with incomes under $30,000.
Savings take years or decades to accumulate, so it’s likely these households are in even worse trouble now. What’s more, significantly less aid has been provided from the federal government since we conducted our survey.
Many Americans Still Need a Lifeboat
Our findings suggest there is a definite need for further government aid on a large scale for tens of millions of families.
A useful way to think about this is how the government provides relief after a natural disaster. In disasters, cash payments are often sent directly to those in need, like lifeboats launched to rescue people at risk of drowning.
Southwest Harbor, Maine – As Congress gets set to debate the Biden Pandemic relief package, one of the favorite Republican lines is the contention that an economic recovery is already well underway. Pouring more money into an accelerating economy is likely to induce seventies style inflation. It is time, they argue, for a little cautionary austerity. However politically efficacious this line may be, rosy portraits of an expanding economy hide the chronic weakness of the US economy and especially the burdens imposed on poor and minority communities.
Fear of inflation on the part of Republicans is insincere and ill timed.
The social and economic destruction engulfing the U.S. and dozens of other countries remains out of everyone’s control and more chaos, instability, and insecurity now mark the global landscape.
The ruling elite have repeatedly shown their inability to tackle any serious problems effectively. They are at a loss for how to deal with current problems and refuse to consider any alternative to their obsolete economic system. The best they can do is recycle old ideas to maintain their class power and privilege. Their efforts to block the New focus mainly on promoting disinformation about “new and better forms of capitalism,” including oxymorons like “inclusive capitalism,” “responsible capitalism,” and “ethical capitalism.”
Since the outbreak of the “COVID Pandemic” in March 2020 every week has been a roller coaster for humanity. The economy and society keep lurching from one crisis to another while incoherence and stress keep amplifying. It is said that 1 in 6 Americans went into therapy for the first time in 2020.
Unemployment, under-employment, inequality, mental depression, anxiety, suicide, environmental decay, inflation, debt, health care costs, education, and poverty are worsening everywhere. Thousands of businesses that have been around for years keep disappearing left and right.
Top-down actions in response to the “COVID Pandemic” have made so many things worse for so many people. Many are wondering which is worse: the covid-19 virus or the top-down response to the pandemic. Governments everywhere have steadfastly refused to mobilize the people to solve the many problems that are worsening. The moral climate is low and more people are worried about the future.
An atmosphere has been created whereby people are supposed to feel like the exhausting “COVID Pandemic” will last forever and we can all forget about getting back to any normal healthy non-digital relations, activities, and interactions. No society in history has worn face masks for an entire year. We are told over and over again that there is no returning to anything called “normal.” Moving everything online and repeatedly asserting that this is great, “cool,” and wonderful is proving to be unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. People want and need real, direct, non-digital connections and interactions with other human beings. Life behind a screen is not life.
Even with all the restrictions and shutdowns the virus, according to the mainstream media, continues to wreak havoc at home and abroad. It is almost like none of the severe restrictions on people’s freedoms made any difference. People have had to endure this humiliation while also not being permitted any role in deciding the aim, operation, and direction of the economy or any of the affairs of society; they are left out of the equation every step of the way and not even asked for superficial “input” that always goes unheeded anyway. Existing governance arrangements are simply not working to empower people or affirm their rights. The people’s interests and will are blocked at every turn by an outdated political setup that advances only the narrow interests of the rich.
Despite intense pressure to blindly rely on the rich and their political representatives to “figure things out,” this is not working. Nor does it help that the mainstream media approaches multiple crises and issues with endless double-talk, disconnected facts, catchy sound-bites, dramatic exaggerations, angry voices, political axe-grinding, and lots of confusion. Coherence and a human-centered outlook are avoided at all costs. People are constantly left disoriented. Jumping arbitrarily and rapidly from one thing to another in the most unconscious way is presented as useful analysis and information. This is why sorting out basic information has become a full-time job for everyone. People are understandably worn-out and overwhelmed. Disinformation overload degrades mental, emotional, and physical health.
The world has become an uglier and gloomier place—all in the name of “improving health.” It is no surprise that a recent Gallup Poll shows that the majority of Americans are extremely dissatisfied with government, the economy, the culture, and the moral climate.
In this hazardous unstable context, there are two ever-present key pieces of disinformation operating side by side. Both are designed to deprive working people of any say, initiative, outlook, or power.
First there is the “once everyone is vaccinated things will be much better” disinformation. This ignores the fact that capitalist crises have endogenous causes not exogenous causes and that the economic crisis started well before the “COVID Pandemic.” More than 150 years of recessions, depressions, booms, busts, instability, chaos, and anarchy have not been caused by external phenomena like bacteria, germs, and viruses but by the internal logic and operation of capital itself. A so-called “free market” economy by its very nature and logic ensures “winners” and “losers,” “booms” and “busts.” It is called a “dog-eat-dog” fend-for-yourself competitive world for a reason. The modern idea that humans are born to society and have rights by virtue of their being is alien to “free market” ideology.
Despite the fact that millions have been vaccinated at home and abroad, poverty, inequality, unemployment, debt, and other problems continue to worsen. Businesses continue to suffer and disappear. Hospitality, leisure, recreation, and other sectors have been decimated in many countries. Air travel is dramatically lower. So are car sales. It is not enough to say, “Yes, the next few months will be rough and lousy economically speaking but we will get there with more vaccinations. Just be patient, it will all eventually work out.” This is not what is actually unfolding. The all-sided crisis we find ourselves in started before the “COVID Pandemic” and continues unabated. Such a view also makes a mockery of economic science and the people’s desire to decide the affairs of society and establish much better arrangements that exclude narrow private interests and do not rely on police powers.
In the coming months millions more will be vaccinated but economic decline and decay will continue. Both the rate and amount of profit have been falling for years. And owners of capital are not going to invest in anything when there is no profit to be had and when it is easier instead to balloon fictitious capital and pretend everything is a stock market video game. The lack of vaccinations did not cause the economic collapse the word is currently suffering through, nor will more vaccinations reverse economic decline and decay. The “COVID Pandemic” has largely made some people vastly richer and millions more much poorer. The “COVID Pandemic” has significantly increased inequality. Unfortunately, the so-called “Great Reset” agenda of the World Economic Forum and Pope Francis’s recent call for a “Copernican Revolution” in the economy will make things worse for millions more because they will perpetuate the existing moribund economic system. Such agendas are designed to fool the gullible, block working class consciousness and action, and keep the initiative in the hands of the global oligarchy.
The same applies to so-called “stimulus packages.” Various versions of these top-down monetary and fiscal programs have been launched in different countries, and while they have assuaged some problems for people, they have not been adequate or fixed any underlying problems. They have not prevented poverty or mass unemployment. Economies remain mired in crisis. In most cases “stimulus packages” have made things worse by increasing the amount of debt that many generations will have to repay. This is in addition to the many other forms of debt Americans suffer from and rent payments that will one day have to be paid.
Many are also wondering why trillions of dollars can be printed and instantly turned over to the banks and corporations with no discussion but the same cannot be done for social programs, public enterprises, and the people. Why, for example, can all not get free healthcare or have taxes eliminated? Why can’t various forms of personal debt be wiped out instantly? If the government can print money for “them” why can’t they print money for “us”? Who is government supposed to serve? Billionaires?
Nether the CARES Act of 2020 nor the stimulus package passed in December 2020 nor the one President Biden is pushing for in March 2021 will be adequate or solve any major problems. Many felt that the $600 stimulus checks that went out in December 2020 were pathetic and insulting.
The problem lies with a socialized productive economy run by everyone but owned and controlled by a tiny handful of competing private interests determined to maximize profit as fast as possible regardless of the damage to the social and natural environment. There is no way for the economy to benefit all individuals and serve the general interests of society so long as it is dominated by a handful of billionaires. The social wealth produced by workers cannot benefit workers and the society if workers themselves do not control the wealth they produce and have first claim to.
The outlook, agenda, and reference points of the rich must be rejected and replaced by a human-centered aim, agenda, direction, and outlook. The current trajectory is untenable and unsustainable. The situation is dangerous in many ways, but perhaps one good thing to come out of the accelerated pace of chaos, anarchy, and instability are the contradictions that are presenting new opportunities for action with analysis that favors working people.
Since January 4, 2021, student protests have been going on in Turkey. At Bogazici University in Istanbul, rectors are elected through free and fair elections by faculties. The only time in the institution’s history when these democratic processes were suspended was in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état. In today’s time, it is again being done.
Curtailing Academic Autonomy
On January 1, 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed a rector to Bogazici without any consultations with the university staff or students. The appointee, Professor Melih Bulu, has been a member of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) since its foundation in 2002 and had run a campaign for nomination for the parliamentary elections in 2015. The appointment of Bulu is another step in Erdogan’s attempt to extend his influence over Turkey’s social and cultural life.
He also faces allegations of plagiarism in his PhD thesis. Bogazici University faculty fear a number of negative consequences, including hiring based on political affiliation; malicious investigations against critical faculties; budget cuts to humanities and social sciences; and opening up the university’s iconic campus for private developers.
Students addressed an open letter to the president.
This appointment makes anyone who has even the tiniest sense of justice revolt with indignation…Your attempts to pack our university with your own political militants is the symptom of the political crisis that you have fallen into. Do not mistake us for those who obey you unconditionally. You are not a sultan, and we are not your subjects.
Agitations have escalated sharply as the government seized artwork with LGBT+ flags displayed at a student exhibition. Erdogan said there was “no such thing” as LGBT+ in a “moral” country such as Turkey and called the protesters “terrorists”. He has also accused them of taking instructions from “those in the mountains,” a reference to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Hundreds of students from Bogazici have been arrested as they have joined demonstrations. They have been tear-gassed, shot at with rubber bullets, had snipers trained on them and been sexually assaulted and forced to strip while in custody. Undeterred, the protests have now culminated in the formation of a new opposition alliance, the United Fighting Forces (BMG). The alliance includes the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), Partizan, the Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Istanbul neighborhoods have lent the students support, banging pots and pans from their balconies at 9 p.m.
Origins of Authoritarianism
The AKP emerged on the Turkish political scene in 2001. It stitched together narrower Islamist political parties such as Refah (Welfare), Dogru Yol Partisi (True Path) and Fazilet (Virtue). In 2002, the AKP won the parliamentary election with a parliamentary majority – 34% percent of the vote translated, because of Turkish electoral rules, to 60% of the seats in the parliament.
After its first electoral victory, the AKP continued to receive 35 – 50% of all votes until the presidential elections in 2014, when the party leader Erdogan received more than 50% of votes and became the president of the Turkish Republic. Afterwards, in 2015, the AKP became the first party in a general election and regained the parliamentary majority in a snap election in the same year.
In the 2010s, the AKP altered the balance of power in Turkey. In 2014, it broke off relations with one of its closest allies, the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, and accused him of masterminding the failed coup attempt of July 2016. When the AKP came to power in early 2000s, they had popular support but not the support of the military and bureaucratic cadres. Therefore, they made an alliance with Fethullah Gulen, a former imam who led a tight community, and who had become rich and powerful beginning in the 1980s by investing money in education.
The Gulen movement provided the AKP with loyal military personnel, judges, teachers, police, and other bureaucratic personnel, and in return the AKP allowed Gulen members to control these institutions. Gulenists initiated high-profile trials against all actors that could challenge the AKP. The Ergenekon and Balyoz trials targeted high-level military officers, journalists, and opposition lawyers for plotting a coup against the government.
The Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK) trial targeted pro-Kurdish intellectuals and activists. Gulen-affiliated lawyers used fabricated evidence, and violated the rules of the trial procedure. Yet, from 2014, this alliance broke down due to internal power struggles. Gulenists released voice recordings related to major AKP corruption scandals. In return, the AKP declared war on the Gulen movement. They took over their television stations, newspapers, universities, schools, and major holding companies and began to clear them from the military, police forces, and judiciary.
With the military coup attempt of July 2016, Turkey took a major turn. Since the power of the military had been lessened over the preceding decade, the incidence took all observers by surprise. This diminishment in power led the military – notorious for being able to carry out successful coups – to attempt a poorly coordinated intervention. Within a few hours, Erdogan pointed the finger at Gulen and called upon citizens to descend into the city centres and stop the coup.
Erdogan’s followers blocked tanks and lynched soldiers, many of whom did not even know that they were part of a coup. As soon as the threat had passed, Erdogan declared a state of emergency and forcefully purged anyone he viewed as being linked to the Gulen movement, along with other Kurdish and left-wing opposition members.
In the post-coup-attempt purges, some 150,000 government personnel were dismissed, 100,000 individuals were detained and 50,000 arrested, 149 media outlets were shut down, 150 journalists jailed, 17 universities closed, 8,000 academic personnel were dismissed, vast quantities of property were confiscated, and close to 1,000 allegedly Gulen-affiliated businesses e taken over by the state. During emergency measures, access to Twitter and YouTube was also blocked
Economic Troubles
Beneath the cacophony of authoritarian measures, a neoliberal economy is fully operational, pushing people into hardships of various kinds. The policies implemented by Erdogan in the pandemic have left millions of workers unemployed or on unpaid leave with only $156 monthly in 2020, increased to approximately $200 in 2021. The government extended this unpaid leave until July 2021. Millions have also been forced to take a short-time working allowance.
The cost of living is rapidly increasing. The Turkish Statistical Institute estimated that Turkey’s 2020 inflation rate stood at 14.6% – nearly three times more than the official 5% target of Central Bank (TCMB). Turkey is one of a few countries with a double-digit inflation rate. Many studies suggest the real inflation figure is much higher.
The Inflation Research Group (ENAG) has used the standards of “Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose” (COICOP) of the United Nations (UN) Statistics Department, a common inflation calculation method adopted by many countries. It calculated the 2020 annual inflation rate at 36.72%. The ENAG found that annual price increases for staple products was even higher: 55% for butter, 80% for sunflower oil, 66% for olive oil, 35% for cheese, 67% for olives, 53% for chicken and 130% for eggs.
Rising Resistance
Erdogan, and the right-wing regime he leads – comprised of AKP and its fascistic ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – urgently need the appearance of grandeur, as the situation is rather grim: poor handling of COVID-19, falling approval ratings, a severe economic crisis, and an emboldened opposition. Aware of its precarious position, the ruling bloc has consolidated its methods of authoritarian governance, repressed dissidents domestically, passed laws to weaken civil society and opposition mayors, and used chauvinist and sexist propaganda.
From the start of the protests, students have situated their resistance as part of the bigger fight against authoritarianism and made links beyond the university. They have named Bulu a “trustee rector” in reference to the government-imposed trustees that have replaced almost all the democratically elected Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors. The initial protests that started at Bogazici University have spread to all major cities – including Ankara, Izmir and Bursa – with thousands on the streets and not only students. Protests like these will keep intensifying as the dynamic of neoliberal authoritarianism clashes head-on with the revolutionary aspirations of the people.
Since January 4, 2021, student protests have been going on in Turkey. At Bogazici University in Istanbul, rectors are elected through free and fair elections by faculties. The only time in the institution’s history when these democratic processes were suspended was in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état. In today’s time, it is again being done.
Curtailing Academic Autonomy
On January 1, 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed a rector to Bogazici without any consultations with the university staff or students. The appointee, Professor Melih Bulu, has been a member of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) since its foundation in 2002 and had run a campaign for nomination for the parliamentary elections in 2015. The appointment of Bulu is another step in Erdogan’s attempt to extend his influence over Turkey’s social and cultural life.
He also faces allegations of plagiarism in his PhD thesis. Bogazici University faculty fear a number of negative consequences, including hiring based on political affiliation; malicious investigations against critical faculties; budget cuts to humanities and social sciences; and opening up the university’s iconic campus for private developers.
Students addressed an open letter to the president.
This appointment makes anyone who has even the tiniest sense of justice revolt with indignation…Your attempts to pack our university with your own political militants is the symptom of the political crisis that you have fallen into. Do not mistake us for those who obey you unconditionally. You are not a sultan, and we are not your subjects.
Agitations have escalated sharply as the government seized artwork with LGBT+ flags displayed at a student exhibition. Erdogan said there was “no such thing” as LGBT+ in a “moral” country such as Turkey and called the protesters “terrorists”. He has also accused them of taking instructions from “those in the mountains,” a reference to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Hundreds of students from Bogazici have been arrested as they have joined demonstrations. They have been tear-gassed, shot at with rubber bullets, had snipers trained on them and been sexually assaulted and forced to strip while in custody. Undeterred, the protests have now culminated in the formation of a new opposition alliance, the United Fighting Forces (BMG). The alliance includes the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), Partizan, the Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Istanbul neighborhoods have lent the students support, banging pots and pans from their balconies at 9 p.m.
Origins of Authoritarianism
The AKP emerged on the Turkish political scene in 2001. It stitched together narrower Islamist political parties such as Refah (Welfare), Dogru Yol Partisi (True Path) and Fazilet (Virtue). In 2002, the AKP won the parliamentary election with a parliamentary majority – 34% percent of the vote translated, because of Turkish electoral rules, to 60% of the seats in the parliament.
After its first electoral victory, the AKP continued to receive 35 – 50% of all votes until the presidential elections in 2014, when the party leader Erdogan received more than 50% of votes and became the president of the Turkish Republic. Afterwards, in 2015, the AKP became the first party in a general election and regained the parliamentary majority in a snap election in the same year.
In the 2010s, the AKP altered the balance of power in Turkey. In 2014, it broke off relations with one of its closest allies, the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, and accused him of masterminding the failed coup attempt of July 2016. When the AKP came to power in early 2000s, they had popular support but not the support of the military and bureaucratic cadres. Therefore, they made an alliance with Fethullah Gulen, a former imam who led a tight community, and who had become rich and powerful beginning in the 1980s by investing money in education.
The Gulen movement provided the AKP with loyal military personnel, judges, teachers, police, and other bureaucratic personnel, and in return the AKP allowed Gulen members to control these institutions. Gulenists initiated high-profile trials against all actors that could challenge the AKP. The Ergenekon and Balyoz trials targeted high-level military officers, journalists, and opposition lawyers for plotting a coup against the government.
The Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK) trial targeted pro-Kurdish intellectuals and activists. Gulen-affiliated lawyers used fabricated evidence, and violated the rules of the trial procedure. Yet, from 2014, this alliance broke down due to internal power struggles. Gulenists released voice recordings related to major AKP corruption scandals. In return, the AKP declared war on the Gulen movement. They took over their television stations, newspapers, universities, schools, and major holding companies and began to clear them from the military, police forces, and judiciary.
With the military coup attempt of July 2016, Turkey took a major turn. Since the power of the military had been lessened over the preceding decade, the incidence took all observers by surprise. This diminishment in power led the military – notorious for being able to carry out successful coups – to attempt a poorly coordinated intervention. Within a few hours, Erdogan pointed the finger at Gulen and called upon citizens to descend into the city centres and stop the coup.
Erdogan’s followers blocked tanks and lynched soldiers, many of whom did not even know that they were part of a coup. As soon as the threat had passed, Erdogan declared a state of emergency and forcefully purged anyone he viewed as being linked to the Gulen movement, along with other Kurdish and left-wing opposition members.
In the post-coup-attempt purges, some 150,000 government personnel were dismissed, 100,000 individuals were detained and 50,000 arrested, 149 media outlets were shut down, 150 journalists jailed, 17 universities closed, 8,000 academic personnel were dismissed, vast quantities of property were confiscated, and close to 1,000 allegedly Gulen-affiliated businesses e taken over by the state. During emergency measures, access to Twitter and YouTube was also blocked
Economic Troubles
Beneath the cacophony of authoritarian measures, a neoliberal economy is fully operational, pushing people into hardships of various kinds. The policies implemented by Erdogan in the pandemic have left millions of workers unemployed or on unpaid leave with only $156 monthly in 2020, increased to approximately $200 in 2021. The government extended this unpaid leave until July 2021. Millions have also been forced to take a short-time working allowance.
The cost of living is rapidly increasing. The Turkish Statistical Institute estimated that Turkey’s 2020 inflation rate stood at 14.6% – nearly three times more than the official 5% target of Central Bank (TCMB). Turkey is one of a few countries with a double-digit inflation rate. Many studies suggest the real inflation figure is much higher.
The Inflation Research Group (ENAG) has used the standards of “Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose” (COICOP) of the United Nations (UN) Statistics Department, a common inflation calculation method adopted by many countries. It calculated the 2020 annual inflation rate at 36.72%. The ENAG found that annual price increases for staple products was even higher: 55% for butter, 80% for sunflower oil, 66% for olive oil, 35% for cheese, 67% for olives, 53% for chicken and 130% for eggs.
Rising Resistance
Erdogan, and the right-wing regime he leads – comprised of AKP and its fascistic ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – urgently need the appearance of grandeur, as the situation is rather grim: poor handling of COVID-19, falling approval ratings, a severe economic crisis, and an emboldened opposition. Aware of its precarious position, the ruling bloc has consolidated its methods of authoritarian governance, repressed dissidents domestically, passed laws to weaken civil society and opposition mayors, and used chauvinist and sexist propaganda.
From the start of the protests, students have situated their resistance as part of the bigger fight against authoritarianism and made links beyond the university. They have named Bulu a “trustee rector” in reference to the government-imposed trustees that have replaced almost all the democratically elected Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors. The initial protests that started at Bogazici University have spread to all major cities – including Ankara, Izmir and Bursa – with thousands on the streets and not only students. Protests like these will keep intensifying as the dynamic of neoliberal authoritarianism clashes head-on with the revolutionary aspirations of the people.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage points in January to 6.3 percent. Much of this decline was due to people leaving the labor market as the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) only rose by 0.1 percentage point. The EPOP now stands at 57.5 percent, 3.6 percentage points below its year-ago level.
The establishment survey showed an increase of just 49,000 jobs, with the private sector only accounting for 6,000 of these jobs. There were sharp downward revisions to job growth for both November and December, so the level of private sector jobs reported for January was 198,000 below the November level.
The January employment level left the economy with 2,981,000 fewer jobs than when President Trump took office. This makes him the first president to leave office with a loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover.
The household survey continues to show unusual patterns among the unemployed. Long-term unemployment (more than 26 weeks) accounts for an extraordinary 39.5 percent of the unemployed. While the peaks in the Great Recession were higher, hitting 45.5 percent in April of 2010, in prior recessions the share of long-term unemployed typically peaked not much over 20 percent.
This indicates that many of the people who lost their jobs in the original shutdowns at the start of the pandemic still have not found new employment. In prior recessions, even severe ones, people tended to experience shorter spells of unemployment and then find new jobs.
On the positive side, there is an extraordinarily high share of the unemployed who report being on temporary layoffs. This stood at 27.0 percent in January, it peaked at 14.5 percent in the Great Recession. This could mean that many of the unemployed will quickly return to their former jobs once the pandemic is controlled.
Another extraordinary feature is the small share of unemployment due to voluntary quits. This stands at just 6.4 percent, indicating people see their labor market prospects as grim. When the overall unemployment rate was at the same level in 2014, voluntary quits accounted for 8.9 percent of unemployment.
Among various demographic groups there was a 0.7 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate for Blacks, but this still stood at 9.2 percent. This was most due to a decline of 1.0 percentage point in the unemployment rate for Black men to 9.4 percent, as the rate for Black women edged up 0.1 percentage point to 8.5 percent. The reported rate for Black teens fell by 7.9 percentage points to 17.3 percent, but this was just reversing an almost identical increase reported for December.
The unemployment rate for Asian Americans rose by 0.7 percentage point to 6.6 percent, so it now is higher than the 5.7 percent rate for whites, reversing the normal pattern. There was a 0.7 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate for Hispanic to 8.6 percent, but this followed a rise of 0.9 percentage point reported in December.
On the establishment side, state and local education were the big job gainers, adding a total of 85,500 jobs, presumably associated with a return in class instruction. Outside of education, state and local governments shed 19,000 jobs.
Construction and manufacturing both lost jobs in January, reversing their pattern of healthy job growth since May. The sectors lost 3,000 and 10,000 jobs, respectively. Manufacturing employment in January was 150,000 below the level when Donald Trump took office. Coal mining added 300 jobs in January, but employment in the sector was still down 8,500 jobs from when Trump took office.
The retail sector lost 37,800 jobs in the month, all of it due to job loss in general merchandise stores and electronic and appliance stores. The former partially reversed a sharp gain reported for December, which likely reflects unusual seasonal patterns.
Hotels and restaurants shed 37,700 jobs in January after a loss of 433,700 jobs in December. This is due to the resurgence of the pandemic. Health care lost 29,600 jobs. Nursing and residential care facilities drove this drop with a decline of 31,000 jobs. Employment in the sector is down 305,400 from the year-ago level.
On the plus side, the relatively high-paying professional and technical services sector added 40,100 jobs after adding 60,700 jobs in December. The temp sector added 80,900 jobs, bringing its gain over the last four months to 305,400 jobs.
Wage growth looks surprisingly healthy. The annualized rate of growth comparing the last three months (November, December, January) with the prior three months (August, September, October) was 4.5 percent. Some of this is due to composition effects as the loss of low-paying restaurant jobs boosted the average, but even taking out 0.5 percentage point, it still leaves a very healthy growth rate.
Another notable item is an increase of 0.3 hours in the length of the average workweek. It now stands 0.7 hours above the year-ago level. This goes opposite the usual pattern where hours usually fall in a recession. This means both more unemployment than would otherwise be the case, and that most workers are not sharing the pain.
This is a very mixed report. The private sector has been very hard hit by the resurgence of the pandemic in the last two months, although the effects are heavily concentrated in a small group of industries. Nonetheless, the sectors that had shown strength, especially construction and manufacturing, weakened in January. That is serious grounds for concern.
The events of January 6, 2021 in Washington D.C. were historic and will be analyzed for some time to come. Many were rattled and shaken to their core by what unfolded that day in the nation’s capital. Others were excited, relieved, and hopeful.
Since then, all sorts of disinformation, confusion, and illusions have filled mainstream accounts of what happened that day and why, but it is already clear that certain things are emerging that once again do not bode well for the people. It is always important to ask: “when a major event happens, who ultimately ends up benefitting from it?”
As with past events and crises, and keeping in mind the role and significance of “disaster capitalism,” it is not unreasonable to assume that the events of January 6, 2021 will be used by the rich and their political and media representatives to expand police-state arrangements under the banner of high ideals (e.g., “protecting the citadel of democracy” and “our democracy is in peril”). The irony of the situation did not escape numerous world leaders and millions around the globe who proclaimed in unison: “Finally the U.S. is getting a taste of its own medicine. The U.S. has actively organized ruthless coups, conflicts, wars, rebellions, and insurrections in more than 100 countries over the past 200 years.” For many, the events of January 6 further lowered the credibility of “representative democracy” in the “bastion of democracy.”
Further degrading the legitimacy of outmoded governance arrangements, the world saw how Washington D.C. was recently turned into a large military camp with armed soldiers and armed state agents everywhere. Many police and military forces will remain in and around the area well after the January 2021 presidential inauguration and contribute to establishing a “new normal” of police presence. How does this look at home and abroad? Like a robust vibrant democracy which is the envy of the world, or a scandalous troubling situation? The massive militarization of Washington D.C. has only added to the dystopian, humiliating, and bizarre life everyone has been forced to endure since March 2020 when the never-ending and exhausting “COVID Pandemic” started in earnest.
But contrary to media accounts the struggle today is not between democrats and republicans. It is not between those who support Trump or revile him. It is not between racists versus anti-racists, pro-diversity or anti-diversity advocates, or “progressives” versus “right-wingers.” Nor is it between “right-wing thugs” versus the police, or ANTIFA versus right-wing militias. These are facile dichotomies that consolidate anticonsciousness and further divide the polity. Such superficial characterizations miss the profound significance of what is unfolding—an intense legitimacy crisis—and the fact that no one is talking about how to empower the people as sharp conflicts among factions of the ruling elite intensify and ensnare people. Ramzy Baroud reminded us recently that:
While mainstream US media has conveniently attributed all of America’s ills to the unruly character of outgoing President Donald Trump, the truth is not quite so convenient. The US has been experiencing an unprecedented political influx at every level of society for years, leading us to believe that the rowdy years of Trump’s Presidency were a mere symptom, not the cause, of America’s political instability.
In the current fractured, chaotic, and dangerous context, all manner of inflammatory and provocative remarks are still being made by a range of politicians, media outlets, and “leaders.” Words like “treason,” “insurrection,” “violent mob,” “coup,” “rebellion,” and “sedition” are being thrown around loosely and quickly. There is no sense of how such discourse takes us all further down a dangerous road. Different individuals, groups, and factions are being lumped into overly-simplistic categories and classifications while ignoring the long-standing marginalization of the polity as a whole and the continued failure of “representative democracy.”
In this foggy context, it can be easy to forget that whether you are a democrat, republican, or something else, the economy and society are not operating in your interests. Debt, poverty, inequality, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, under-employment, stock market bubbles, environmental decay, and generalized anxiety continue to worsen nationwide and harm Americans of all political stripes while the rich get much richer much faster. Existing governance arrangements marginalize more than 95 percent of people. Working people have no real mechanism to effectively advance their interests in the current political setup. They are reduced to perpetually begging politicians and “leaders” to do the most basic things. There is an urgent need for democratic renewal.
In the coming months we will not only see more economic collapse but also more police-state arrangements put in place in the name of “security” and “democracy.” A main focus will be “domestic terrorism,” leading to the further restriction of freedom of speech and criminalization of dissent. Freedom of movement will also be constrained. This will be far-reaching, affecting everyone, even those currently throwing around words like “sedition,” “coup,” and “insurrection.” Already, the atmosphere has been chilled; many are more carefully self-monitoring their speech and actions so as to not be targeted by the state.
At the end of the day, conflicts, divisions, social unrest, political turmoil, and economic deterioration will not go away so long as the existing authority clashes with the prevailing conditions and the demands emerging from these conditions. Objective conditions are screaming for modernization and solutions that the rich and their entourage are unable and unwilling to provide.
Unemployment, under-employment, hunger, homelessness, poverty, debt, inequality, despair, and generalized anxiety do not care if you are black or white, democrat or republican, right-wing or left-wing, a “Trumper” or “anti-Trumper.” Concrete conditions are screaming for the affirmation of basic rights like the right to food, shelter, education, healthcare, work, and security.
Their struggles and demands may take different forms and express themselves in different ways, but it is the long-standing absence of these rights that people from all walks of life are striving to bring into being.
And while their policies may differ in some respects, the different factions of the rich and their political representatives have only more of the same to offer people: more inequality, more debt, more under-employment, more worry and insecurity, more stock market bubbles, and more empty promises. Lofty phrases and grand “plans” from the rich and their representatives won’t change the aim and direction of the economy. People are not going to suddenly become empowered because one party of the rich or the other holds power now. Divisions, dissatisfaction, and marginalization are not going to disappear just because a different section of the rich wields power. Many believe that the road ahead will be very rocky.
Democratic renewal does not favor the rich or their representatives, it is something only working people themselves will benefit from and have to collectively fight for. In this regard, it is key to consciously reject the aims, outlook, views, and agenda of the rich and develop a new independent aim, politics, outlook, and agenda that favors the polity and the public interest.
The closure of high street stores leaves 20,000 jobs at risk amid rising unemployment under the pandemic.
On 25 January, Debenhams announced it would close all stores after online company Boohoo bought the chain. This will most likely result in the loss of 12,000 jobs as Debenhams stores disappear from the high street.
In July, the Sunday Times reported that Boohoo were paying workers “as little as £3.50 an hour” as they worked in poor conditions at a Leicester factory.
The job losses are another blow in a period of increasing redundancies across the retail sector and rising unemployment.
Dave Gill, national officer of the Union for Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), called for government action to help retail workers. He said:
Nearly 180,000 retail job losses and around 20,000 store closures last year were absolutely devastating and lay bare the scale of the challenge the industry faces. Each one of those job losses is a personal tragedy for the individual worker and store closures are scarring our high streets and communities.
Debenhams has gone then. 12,000 jobs lost. That's 12,000 more people applying for jobs that aren't there. My heart goes out to all them.
Devastating news for 12,000 Debenhams workers today.
We need better regulation of fast fashion, a strongly unionised retail sector, and a plan from government to save jobs and prevent the collapse of the high street.
As well as Boohoo buying Debenhams, Asos is currently in negotiations to buy parts of the Arcadia brand, including Topshop. Arcadia Group employs around 13,000 people whose jobs will be at risk in a deal with the online retailer.
Many other retailers faced administration during 2020, including Bonmarché, Peacocks and Jaeger, and Harveys Furniture. Several of these retailers had to close stores as a result, meaning store employees were very likely laid off.
The Centre for Retail Research estimated that there were 176,718 retail jobs lost during 2020 due to coronavirus (Covid-19). On top of this, it said:
The first half of 2021 looks much like 2020, only worse. We expect there to be 200,000 job losses in the sector.
Love waking up to find out I’ve pretty much lost my job if only the company would have the decency to keep the staff update to date with changes, instead of us having to read everything in the media #arcadia#Debenhams
Redundancies are rising across the UK, particularly among young people. According to the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate was 5% in the three months leading up to November 2020.
Similarly, the redundancy rate climbed to a “record high of 14.2 per thousand”.
In December, the Bank of England said it expected more jobs to be lost among the hospitality, leisure, construction, and retail sectors.
The chancellor extended the Job Retention Scheme until the end of April 2021 in December.
However, if the redundancy trend continues as it is, more intervention will be required to save the jobs and livelihoods of those working in the sectors most affected by the pandemic.
My aunts worked at Debenhams for 16 years and she’s just lost her job
NOTE: Margaret Flowers and Askia Muhammad will co-host an inaugural special on Pacifica Radio on Wednesday, January 20 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm Eastern. It can be heard on WBAI and WPFW. The theme will be Dr. King’s triple evils and what Biden’s cabinet picks tell us about what we can expect from this administration. Guests include Dr. Greg Carr, Abby Martin and Danny Sjursen.
Also, on Tuesday, January 26 at 8:00 pm Eastern, Popular Resistance will co-host a webinar, “COVID-19: How Weaponizing Disease and Vaccine Wars are Failing Us.” The webinar will be co-hosted by Margaret Flowers and Sara Flounders and it will feature Vijay Prashad, Max Blumethal, Margaret Kimberley and Lee Siu Hin. All are editors or contributors of the new book “Capitalism on a Ventilator.” Register at bit.ly/WeaponizingCOVID.
This week we celebrate the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and witness the inauguration of our next president, Joe Biden. This inauguration will be unique, first, for being held during a pandemic and, second, for its heightened security in fear of another attack by Trump supporters. Downtown Washington, DC is normally secured during an inauguration and people must pass through checkpoints to get into the Mall and parade route, but this time is different.
There are 25,000 members of the National Guard on duty in the city to protect the President and Members of Congress. But even this does not guarantee security. The FBI is screening every national guard member for ties to right wing militias and groups responsible for the January 6 assault on the Capitol. The ruling class experienced what it is like when those who are supposed to protect you don’t.
This insecurity is another facet of a society in break down. As Dr. King warned us over 50 years ago:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-centered’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. . . . A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Migrants march from Honduras to the United States with the hope of a better reception under a Biden administration (Luis Echeverria)
The pandemic and recession have exposed more widely what many communities have known for a long time, that corporate profits are more important than their lives and that lawmakers serve the wealthy class. During the pandemic, the rich have gotten richer, the Pentagon budget has ballooned with bi-partisan support and the people have not received what they need to survive. Unemployment, loss of health insurance, hunger and poverty are growing while the stock market ended the year with record highs.
Many are hopeful that a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic President will turn this around, and it is reasonable to expect there will be some positive changes. The Biden administration claims it will take immediate action to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, extend the break on student loan payments, provide a one-time $1,400 payment and invest more in testing and vaccine administration, among other actions.
These actions are welcome, but they are a far cry from what is necessary. A family with two parents working full time for minimum wage will still live in poverty, even at $15/hour. The majority of people in the United States, 65%, support giving $2,000/month to every adult during the pandemic. This is supported by 54% of Republicans polled and 78% of Democrats. People with student loans are calling for them to be cancelled, not delayed. And, as I wrote in Truthout, Biden’s priority for managing the pandemic is on reopening businesses and schools, not on taking the public health measures that are called for such as shutting down with guarantees of housing and economic support and nationalizing the healthcare system, as other countries have done.
What is required is massive public investment in systemic changes that get to the roots of the crises we face. In addition to the triple evils that Dr. King spoke about, racism, capitalism and militarism, we can add the climate crisis. An eco-socialist Green New Deal such as that promoted by Howie Hawkins would get at the roots of each of these crises.
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute argues that the economy can handle a massive investment of public dollars without fear of negative consequences, such as inflation, because for too long the economy has been starving the public while funneling wealth to the top. It is time for redistribution of that wealth to serve the public good.
In fact, Sam Pizzigati of Inequality.org writes that throughout history, governments have fallen when they fail to address wealth inequality and meet the people’s needs. This is the finding of a recent study called “Moral Collapse and State Failure: A View From the Past.” They write that the fall of pre-modern governments “can be traced to a principal leadership that inexplicably abandoned core principles of state-building that were foundational to these polities, while also ignoring their expected roles as effective leaders and moral exemplars.”
From Socialist Alternative
So far, it looks like what we can expect from the Biden Administration is a few tweaks to the system to placate people and relieve some suffering but not the system changes we require. Biden is actively opposed to national improved Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, two proposals that a majority of people, especially Democrats, support. Mark Dunlea explains why the Biden climate plan is inadequate for the dire situation we face.
Biden’s cabinet picks and language make it clear that the United States’ aggressive foreign policy of regime change and wars for resources and domination will continue. Samantha Power, a war hawk, has been chosen to head the USAID, an institution that invests in creating chaos and regime change efforts in other countries. Victoria Nuland, who was a major leader of the US’ successful coup in Ukraine that brought neo-Nazis to power, has been picked for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Biden’s choices for CIA Director, Mike Morell, and Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, are both torture proponents. Abby Martin of Empire Files exposes the dark backgrounds of several other nominees for Biden’s cabinet, including Antony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser, Linda Thomas-Greenfield for United Nations Ambassador and Michael Flourney to head the Pentagon.
It also doesn’t appear that Democrats in Congress will show the necessary courage to fight for what the people need. Danny Haiphong of Black Agenda Report writes about the “Obama-fication” of “The Squad” and how they serve to protect the status quo and weaken the progressive movement. It is important to understand how they are the “more effective evil,” or as Gabriel Rockhill explains, they are the arm of liberal democracies that convince people to consent to the neo-liberal capitalism that is destroying our lives and the planet. This is how Western fascism rises within legislative bodies. Already, we are seeing champions of national improved Medicare for All, Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal, back down to a position of lowering the age of Medicare eligibility, which would not solve our healthcare crisis, only delay that solution.
Chris Hedges often warns us that we need to know what we are up against if we are to effectively challenge it. Dr. King warned us that our nation was heading toward spiritual death if we did not get to the roots of the crises, the triple evils. He demonstrated that social movements should not align themselves with capitalist political parties because then the movement becomes subservient to their interests and compromises its own interests. And he told us what we must do. Prior to King’s death, he was organizing an occupation of Washington, DC to demand an end to poverty.
During the Biden administration, many of the progressive forces will work to weaken those of us who make demands for bold changes. They will try to placate us with a diverse cabinet of women and people of color who were chosen because they support capitalism, imperialism and systemic racism despite their identities. Chris Hedges describes this as a form of “colonialism.”
Our tasks are to maintain political independence from the capitalist parties, struggle for systemic changes and embrace a bold agenda that inspires people to take action. Through strategic and intentional action, we can achieve the changes we need. We have a key ingredient for success – widespread support for the changes we need. Now, we only need to mobilize in ways that inspire people and that have an impact – strikes, boycotts, occupations and more that are focused on improving the lives of everyone.
We can turn things around and reduce the suffering that is driving the polarization and trend towards violence in our country. It’s time to embrace our radical Dr. King.
Have you ever found yourself surrounded by masked rioters being chased by flag-waving patriots and thought, I’ve seen this movie before?
I woke up this morning dreaming that I was speaking at one of your rallies. I thought then, well, if I probably won’t be getting an invitation to speak at one of them, what would I say if I were to be asked to share some words?
Contrary to popular opinion in kindergarten, words are far more powerful than either sticks or stones, and I think this is something that most of us actually already know. Words can be used to divide and rule entire societies, it seems. We can have some people on some TV networks saying some sets of words, with other people on other networks using different vocabulary, and a different perspective, to talk about the same issues, and pretty soon we can achieve an endless series of tragic physical results from such words.
So I especially like to avoid alarm-bell words that require lots of defining if you’re going to use them successfully, or else no one really knows what they mean. If I do use such a word, I’ll tend to define it clearly first, unless I’m writing for a very particular audience. I’m mostly talking about “ism” words such as as socialism, anarchism, communism, capitalism, fascism, nationalism, supremacism, racism, anti-racism, sexism, progressivism, conservatism, liberalism, elitism.
Other words are important, or at least to some people they can be, so I’d want to first say that I’m so sorry Aaron Danielson was killed. Without getting into the details and not having been present, many of us were expecting something like this to happen. Whether the next person killed at a protest was going to be shot or run over was unknown, but that someone else would be killed was just a matter of time.
Many people, of course, avoided downtown that day, knowing there would be lots of armed people with different opinions all in the same place at the same time, shouting at each other and worse. Other people, perhaps people with stronger political convictions than most, can’t stay home. Such as many of the folks who I hope might be hearing these words right now.
There are a lot of people, from a wide variety of political orientations, who would think it pointless for me to even attempt to communicate with you. They think the divide is too great. They’re expecting all the predictions of civil war to come true. They think folks like you and I live in our insulated little echo chambers, in different worlds, and we couldn’t even communicate with each other if we tried. And then, going to protests, as you and I have done so often, any of us can bear out the fact that there is a whole lot more bear mace being sprayed in different directions than anything resembling communication going on. Looking at my YouTube channel, the comment section on certain songs largely consists of people exchanging death threats with each other.
But I think the folks who think we’re hopelessly polarized and have no grounds for communication are completely wrong. I think we live in the same world, and we face the same sorts of problems, and could benefit from the same sorts of solutions, too, and I think many of you already agree with this notion. That’s what I would really want to focus on, if I were speaking at one of your rallies.
I think about so many of the rallies when I’ve seen you guys around, and I don’t want to judge too much by appearances, but to me you look mostly like members of the working class. Some of you might be rich, I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet that at least 99% of you aren’t. Many of you are military veterans, which is also true of no small number of those among the ranks of the groups you oppose.
Being members of the working class living in the Portland area, as so many of you are, and as I and most of my friends are, I’ll bet there are a whole lot of things we have in common.
I’ll bet half of us live in the same sorts of two-story, wooden, grey, Class C apartment complexes that you can see lining most of the major roads in most of the neighborhoods of both Portland and across the river in Vancouver. I’ll bet many of us have the same landlord, in the form of an investment group, such as Prime or Randall. I’ll bet our apartment complexes are managed by the same stingy management company, such as CTL. And I’ll bet your rent also doubled over the past ten years, and this development has caused you great consternation, made you angry, made you want to find solutions.
Oh, and did you happen to notice that during the time your rent doubled, Obama was in the White House? Hard not to notice coincidences like that.
And while your rent was doubling during the Obama years, maybe you, like me, were having kids, making a family, hoping to move into a bigger place, maybe to buy a house, only to see any such hopes dashed by the reality that the cost of buying a house or renting a bigger apartment was out of the question, if you didn’t have a six-figure income.
And during that decade, who was running the city you lived in, where the rents and the taxes kept going up and up, while your income did not? Democrats. I noticed that, too.
When you look around your neighborhood at all the construction sites here in the booming Pacific Northwest, and you see the workers, and when things break at your apartment complex and you see who comes to do repairs, and who maintains the grounds, did you notice that most of the people doing most of the work are immigrants? I noticed that, too.
And who are the people always advocating for the rights of immigrants, and for taking in more immigrants and refugees, while the cost of living keeps going up and jobs are as scarce as they are? Democrats, once again, as I know you have observed.
Have you ever wondered, if we had a lot less immigration in this country, what that might do to wages in the construction industry? They’d go up, right? That’s obvious, isn’t it? Same for other industries, too, right?
A lot of people look at all of this, they put two and two together, and they conclude that the policies of the Democratic Party are not very conducive to our survival. If they want to do things like welcome lots of immigration, export jobs with free trade deals, and govern cities in such a way that the rent doubles every ten years, maybe it’s very reasonable to conclude that the Democratic Party isn’t representing the interests of the general population. Did you reach that conclusion at some point along the line?
And then someone comes along who wants to deal with this mess, to do something on behalf of most people, drain the swamp, build the wall, stop the flood of immigrants taking so many of the jobs, end the endless wars and stop policing the world, get out of free trade deals, put up tariffs, and try to make moves to reverse the trend of everything going in the wrong direction all the time, and for supporting his evidently reasonable policies, you are called every bad name in the book.
But then, as you have been giving your support to this president, you may have also been noticing that many of the policies he’s been talking about are opposed not only by the Democrats, but, at least until very recently, by most of the Republican leadership as well. You may also have begun to notice that the man doesn’t necessarily support the things he says he supports, and he hasn’t drained the swamp at all. Am I right? Or did I just lose you there? I’m just guessing there are a lot of you who realize, on some level, along the line, that Trump is mostly just saying the things he thinks you want to hear, and then governing on behalf of big business, like very rich politicians have done in DC for a very long time.
Being a history buff, if I were speaking at one of your rallies I’d want to try to talk about what I see as some pretty clear historical parallels between now and a century ago. Trump seems new and unconventional in many ways, but this kind of societal divide between large groups of economically struggling Americans on different sides of issues like immigration goes way back.
Exactly one hundred years ago here in the Pacific Northwest and around the United States, as well as across Canada, conflict raged in the streets. Veterans of the First World War made up the ranks of many of the people involved on all sides of it. The cities were full of returning soldiers, many of whom were sick with the Spanish Flu. Disease was rampant, there was insufficient housing, and not enough jobs, either. At the same time, a massive influx of immigrants from war-torn Europe was coming, along with the returning soldiers from the war.
It was a situation designed for conflict, and conflict there was. On one side were people who viewed themselves as patriots, who wanted to control the dramatic impact that widespread immigration was having on the job and housing markets, and in society generally. On the other side was a labor union led largely by immigrants, who said everyone — the working class throughout the world, regardless of nation, race, gender or other such factors — should be organized into One Big Union.
This movement saw the First World War and immigration from Europe that was going on at the time as just two more ways the ruling class was trying to divide the working class, and have us fighting each other, whether on different sides of trenches in European wars, or in competition over low-paying jobs here in the US, in order to make sure those jobs keep on paying badly, and the owners make more profits. Instead of opposing immigration, they organized immigrants along with everyone else. They had learned that they had to make a choice between supporting their nation, in the sense of supporting the imperial goals of their governing elite, or supporting their class, and they chose the latter.
Today, there is no massive, ecumenical movement of the working class for us all to join. No such alternative like that currently exists. When it did exist, laws were passed, called the Alien and Sedition Acts, and a national police force was formed — called the FBI — in order to destroy the movement. Union halls across the country were burned to the ground, and union organizers of all races were lynched under bridges here in the Pacific Northwest.
But the kind of vision that formed this movement that was so targeted by the authorities back then has in the past been so powerful that it has brought down governments, it has forced the world’s biggest corporations to make massive concessions, it has reshaped entire societies for the better. It has also brought down upon it such terrible repression, it has been so targeted by the authorities and so alternately vilified and silenced by history, that even the very concept that the movement ever existed seems like a utopian fantasy, not like a practical reality that has shaped the world as we know it, perhaps more than any other force besides gravity.
I may be a geek, but if I had the chance to speak at one of your rallies, I’d want to talk about patterns. There is a pattern happening here, and these consistencies between Portland in 1920 and Portland in 2020 are not accidental. The dynamics of the conflicts in this society now are created by the same sorts of people who were creating them back then. In many cases, their direct descendants. These things tend to run in the family, as does inherited wealth.
Why does the political elite enact policies intended to create these conflicts, and why do they then make moves to exacerbate them? In the back of our minds, I think we all know the answer. If I were speaking at one of your rallies, and I asked this question, would anybody shout, “divide and conquer,” or am I being overly optimistic? Because it seems to me that as long as those who, for example, support increasing immigration and those who support decreasing immigration can be in conflict with each other over the scraps dropped from the table of the ruling class, the ruling elite wins.
The ruling class logic is so simple and effective on us, it’s hard to even see it’s there. Most Mexicans accept such low wages because they’re either undocumented and living in the shadows of the law, or they’re competing with people who are in that situation. And, as you know too well from personal experience, in all likelihood, the rest of us are competing with them, too. And unless we take the concept of exclusion to its logical conclusion and we really think laws and walls are going to keep out the hundreds of millions of people just on the other side of the southern border who also need to feed their children, or unless we believe genocide is the actual solution here, then all the people living in this country are going to have to have the opportunity to work, and if they’re going to work, they’re going to have to be paid, and if they’re going to be paid, then whatever they’re paid is what you’re going to get paid, too. So if you want to be paid well, and to live in an affordable place, you have to stand up for everyone else’s rights to a living wage and decent housing. That’s what these conflicts in other societies have taught us. The ruling elite here learned those lessons from history, too, which is why they divide and rule the way they do.
I’m a musician, by profession, and before the pandemic I used to tour a lot. Ireland is one of the places where I have the most fans. There are reasons for this, both political and cultural, but I’ll save that discussion for another time. Point is, I have a fairly deep familiarity with some other countries where I have spent a lot of my time over the decades, working. In a part of Ireland called Northern Ireland, which is more a political term than a geographical one, the population is fairly evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. The Catholics there have long lived as second-class citizens, and what has come to be known as the Troubles, which resulted in thousands of people being killed in Northern Ireland from the 1970’s to the 1990’s, was largely about Catholics having equality with Protestants.
So, you can see if you look at it that there is this, even now, a simmering conflict going on between two groups of people in this very conflicted part of the world that we call Northern Ireland. If you’re part of the society, you will likely have developed ideas about the folks who live on the other side of the wall — those Protestants only care about other Protestants, or those Catholics are criminally inclined, etc. — and you likely will have developed a sort of bipolar, Catholic/Protestant view of the world, as a sort of default, whether you feel passionately about it or not.
But if you back up and look at it from the outside — even if you just go work in England for a few years, like so many Irish do, from both sides of the sectarian divide — what you’ll see looking back at Northern Ireland are two groups of people we call Catholics and Protestants, one group of which is generally a little better-off than the other, but what you’ll notice most of all is that the majority of both Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants are poor by European standards. I heard one speaker at a union rally in Derry note that the Catholic community in Northern Ireland has the fifth worst quality of housing in Europe, while the Protestants have the sixth worst housing standards.
Back to the US. Contrary to the rhetoric, our ruling elite consists of millionaire Democrats as well as millionaire Republicans. The Congress consists almost entirely of millionaires, the Democrats being slightly richer than their Republican counterparts. And history shows us in abundance that different elements of the two groups of millionaires are always vying, over the years, decades, and centuries, to convince us all that they represent us, or different elements of us, the people of this country. What they’re doing in their efforts to appeal to different segments of society, in effect, is practicing divide and rule politics. Who they’re trying to divide from whom doesn’t even vary that much over the years, though the dynamics evolve somewhat.
What I’d most want to get across, if I were ever to have access to your attention, is that the reason they need to divide us is because they can’t afford to have us be united. And the reason they can’t afford to see us united is because they don’t rule on our behalf, they rule on behalf of the 1%. Neither party represents us, the working class majority, of whatever color or gender. And Trump doesn’t, either, no matter how much he may succeed in painting himself as an outsider or a rebel of some kind.
What the elite from both ruling parties want is division. What they want is for us to shout at each other and shoot each other. They will try in so many different ways to make that happen. They — and their friends who run the major social media platforms, with their conflict algorithms, and their friends in the corporate media, whether CNN or Fox — will do their best to reduce the debate to some people calling others fascists who love racism, while others are called communists who hate freedom, or anarchists who love chaos and arson.
What they fear most, I would conclude, is a united working class. Or, to put it another way, a working class that is aware of its own existence. Or, to put it another way, class solidarity, and especially international class solidarity. What they love most are pawns.
A self-funding national infrastructure bank modeled on the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt would help solve two of the country’s biggest problems.
Millions of Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, and government relief checks and savings are running out; meanwhile, the country still needs trillions of dollars in infrastructure. Putting the unemployed to work on those infrastructure projects seems an obvious solution, especially given that the $600 or $700 stimulus checks Congress is planning on issuing will do little to address the growing crisis. Various plans for solving the infrastructure crisis involving public-private partnerships have been proposed, but they’ll invariably result in private investors reaping the profits while the public bears the costs and liabilities. We have relied for too long on private, often global, capital, while the Chinese run circles around us building infrastructure with credit simply created on the books of their government-owned banks.
Earlier publicly-owned U.S. national banks and U.S. Treasuries pulled off similar feats, using what Sen. Henry Clay, U.S. statesman from 1806 to 1852, named the “American System” – funding national production simply with “sovereign” money and credit. They included the First (1791-1811) and Second (1816-1836) Banks of the United States, President Lincoln’s federal treasury and banking system, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932-1957). Chester Morrill, former Secretary of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, wrote of the RFC:
[I]t became apparent almost immediately, to many Congressmen and Senators, that here was a device which would enable them to provide for activities that they favored for which government funds would be required, but without any apparent increase in appropriations. . . . [T]here need be no more appropriations and its activities could be enlarged indefinitely, as they were, almost to fantastic proportions. [emphasis added]
Even the Federal Reserve with its “quantitative easing” cannot fund infrastructure without driving up federal expenditures or debt, at least without changes to the Federal Reserve Act. The Fed is not allowed to spend money directly into the economy or to lend directly to Congress. It must go through the private banking system and its “primary dealers.” The Fed can create and pay only with “reserves” credited to the reserve accounts of banks. These reserves are a completely separate system from the deposits circulating in the real producer/consumer economy; and those deposits are chiefly created by banks when they make loans. (See the Bank of England’s 2014 quarterly report here.) New liquidity gets into the real economy when banks make loans to local businesses and individuals; and in risky environments like that today, banks are not lending adequately even with massive reserves on their books.
A publicly-owned national infrastructure bank, on the other hand, would be mandated to lend into the real economy; and if the loans were of the “self funding” sort characterizing most infrastructure projects (generating fees to pay off the loans), they would be repaid, canceling out the debt by which the money was created. That is how China built 12,000 miles of high-speed rail in a decade: credit created on the books of government-owned banks was advanced to pay for workers and materials, and the loans were repaid with profits from passenger fees.
Unlike the QE pumped into financial markets, which creates asset bubbles in stocks and housing, this sort of public credit mechanism is not inflationary. Credit money advanced for productive purposes balances the circulating money supply with new goods and services in the real economy. Supply and demand rise together, keeping prices stable. China increased its money supply by nearly 1800% over 24 years (from 1996 to 2020) without driving up price inflation, by increasing GDP in step with the money supply.
HR 6422, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2020
A promising new bill for a national infrastructure bank modeled on the RFC and the American System, H.R. 6422, was filed by Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., in March. The National Infrastructure Bank of 2020 (NIB) is projected to create $4 trillion or more in bank credit money to rebuild the nation’s rusting bridges, roads, and power grid; relieve traffic congestion; and provide clean air and water, new schools and affordable housing. It will do this while generating up to 25 million union jobs paying union-level wages. The bill projects a net profit to the government of $80 billion per year, which can be used to cover infrastructure needs that are not self-funding (broken pipes, aging sewers, potholes in roads, etc.). The bill also provides for substantial investment in “disadvantage communities,” those defined by persistent poverty.
The NIB is designed to be a true depository bank, giving it the perks of those institutions for leverage and liquidity, including the ability to borrow at the Fed’s discount window without penalty at 0.25% interest (almost interest-free). According to Alphecca Muttardy, a former macroeconomist for the International Monetary Fund and chief economist on the 2020 NIB team, the NIB will create the $4 trillion it lends simply as deposits on its books, as the Bank of England attests all depository banks do. For liquidity to cover withdrawals, the NIB can either borrow from the Fed at 0.25% or issue and sell bonds.
Modeled on its American System predecessors, the NIB will be capitalized with existing federal government debt. According to the summary on the NIB Coalition website:
The NIB would be capitalized by purchasing up to $500 billion in existing Treasury bonds held by the private sector (e.g., in pension and other savings funds), in exchange for an equivalent in shares of preferred [non-voting] stock in the NIB. The exchange would take place via a sales contract with the NIB/Federal Government that guarantees a preferred stock dividend of 2% more than private-holders currently earn on their Treasuries. The contract would form a binding obligation to provide the incremental 2%, or about $10 billion per year, from the Budget. While temporarily appearing as mandatory spending under the Budget, the $10 billion per year would ultimately be returned as a dividend paid to government, from the NIB’s earnings stream.
Since the federal government will be paying the interest on the bonds, the NIB needs to come up with only the 2% dividend to entice investors. The proposal is to make infrastructure loans at a very modest 2%, substantially lower than the rates now available to the state and local governments that create most of the nation’s infrastructure. At a 10% capital requirement, the bonds can capitalize ten times their value in loans. The return will thus be 20% on a 2% dividend outlay from the NIB, for a net return on investment of 18% less operating costs. The U.S. Treasury will also be asked to deposit Treasury bonds with the bank as an “on-call” subscriber.
The American System: Sovereign Money and Credit
U.S. precedents for funding internal improvements with “sovereign credit” – credit issued by the national government rather than borrowed from the private banking system – go back to the American colonists’ paper scrip, colonial Pennsylvania’s “land bank”, and the First U.S. Bank of Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary. Hamilton proposed to achieve the constitutional ideal of “promoting the general welfare” by nurturing the country’s fledgling industries with federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other internal improvements; protective measures such as tariffs; and easy credit provided through a national bank. Production and the money to finance it would all be kept “in house,” without incurring debt to foreign financiers. The national bank would promote a single currency, making trade easier, and would issue loans in the form of “sovereign credit.” ’
Senator Henry Clay called this model the “American System” to distinguish it from the “British System” that left the market to the “invisible hand” of “free trade,” allowing big monopolies to gobble up small entrepreneurs, and foreign bankers and industrialists to exploit the country’s labor and materials. After the charter for the First US Bank expired in 1811, Congress created the Second Bank of the United States in 1816 on the American System model.
In 1836, Pres. Andrew Jackson shut down the Second U.S. Bank due to perceived corruption, leaving the country with no national currency and precipitating a recession. “Wildcat” banks issued their own banknotes – promissory notes allegedly backed by gold. But the banks often lacked the gold necessary to redeem the notes, and the era was beset with bank runs and banking crises.
Abraham Lincoln’s economic advisor was Henry Carey, the son of Matthew Carey, a well-known printer and publisher who had been tutored by Benjamin Franklin and had tutored Henry Clay. Henry Carey proposed creating an independent national currency that was non-exportable, one that would remain at home to do the country’s own work. He advocated a currency founded on “national credit,” something he defined as “a national system based entirely on the credit of the government with the people, not liable to interference from abroad.” It would simply be a paper unit of account that tallied work performed and goods delivered.
On that model, in 1862 Abraham Lincoln issued U.S. Notes or Greenbacks directly from the U.S. Treasury, allowing Lincoln’s government not only to avoid an exorbitant debt to British bankers and win the Civil War, but to fund major economic development, including tying the country together with the transcontinental railroad – an investment that actually turned a profit for the government.
After Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the Greenback program was discontinued; but Lincoln’s government also passed the National Bank Act of 1863, supplemented by the National Bank Act of 1864. Originally known as the National Currency Act, its stated purpose was to stabilize the banking system by eradicating the problem of notes issued by multiple banks circulating at the same time. A single banker-issued national currency was created through chartered national banks, which could issue notes backed by the U.S. Treasury in a quantity proportional to the bank’s level of capital (cash and federal bonds) deposited with the Comptroller of the Currency.
From Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (1932-57) to HR 6422
The American president dealing with an economic situation most closely resembling that today, however, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. America’s 32nd president resolved massive unemployment and infrastructure problems by greatly expanding the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) set up by his predecessor Herbert Hoover. The RFC was a remarkable publicly-owned credit machine that allowed the government to finance the New Deal and World War II without turning to Congress or the taxpayers for appropriations. The RFC was not called an infrastructure bank and was not even a bank, but it served the same basic functions. It was continually enlarged and modified by Pres. Roosevelt to meet the crisis of the times until it became America’s largest corporation and the world’s largest financial organization. Its semi-independent status let it work quickly, allowing New Deal agencies to be financed as the need arose. According to Encyclopedia.com:
[T]he RFC—by far the most influential of New Deal agencies—was an institution designed to save capitalism from the ravages of the Great Depression. Through the RFC, Roosevelt and the New Deal handed over $10 billion to tens of thousands of private businesses, keeping them afloat when they would otherwise have gone under ….
A similar arrangement could save local economies from the ravages of the global shutdowns today.
The Banking Acts of 1932 provided the RFC with capital stock of $500 million and the authority to extend credit up to $1.5 billion (subsequently increased several times). The initial capital came from a stock sale to the U.S. Treasury. With those modest resources, from 1932 to 1957 the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was financed with bonds sold to the Treasury, some of which were then sold to the public. The RFC ended up borrowing a total of $51.3 billion from the Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public.
Thus the Treasury was the lender, not the borrower, in this arrangement. As the self-funding loans were repaid, so were the bonds that were sold to the Treasury, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The RFC was the lender for thousands of infrastructure and small business projects that revitalized the economy, and these loans produced a total net income of over $690 million on the RFC’s “normal” lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime). The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms, and much more–all while generating income for the government.
HR 6422 proposes to mimic this feat. The National Infrastructure Bank of 2020 can rebuild crumbling infrastructure across America, pushing up long-term growth, not only without driving up taxes or the federal debt, but without hyperinflating the money supply or generating financial asset bubbles. The NIB has growing support across the country from labor leaders, elected officials, and grassroots organizations. It can generate real wealth in the form of upgraded infrastructure and increased employment as well as federal and local taxes and GDP, paying for itself several times over without additional outlays from the federal government. With official unemployment at nearly double what it was a year ago and an economic crisis unlike the U.S. has seen in nearly a century, the NIB can trigger the sort of “economic miracle” the country desperately needs.
The notion that the covid-19 pandemic was “the great equalizer’ should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our societies.
That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a repeat of the same shameful scenario.
For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,” telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.
“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all going down together,” CNN reported at the time.
Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are both famous people with a massive social media following but also because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric.
In truth, however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by governments, celebrities and wealthy “influencers” worldwide.
But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such outrageous claims.
Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives on less than US$5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.
The plight of many of the world’s poor is compounded in the case of war refugees, the double victims of state terrorism and violence and the unwillingness of those with the resources to step forward and pay back some of their largely undeserved wealth.
The boat metaphor is particularly interesting in the case of refugees; millions of them have desperately tried to escape the infernos of war and poverty in rickety boats and dinghies, hoping to get across from their stricken regions to safer places.
Sadly familiar sight
This sight has sadly grown familiar in recent years not only throughout the Mediterranean Sea but also in other bodies of water around the world, especially in Burma, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have tried to escape their ongoing genocide. Thousands of them have drowned in the Bay of Bengal.
The covid-19 pandemic has accentuated and, in fact, accelerated the sharp inequalities that exist in every society individually, and the world at large. According to a June 2020 study conducted in the United States by the Brookings Institute, the number of deaths as a result of the disease reflects a clear racial logic.
Many indicators included in the study leave no doubt that racism is a central factor in the life cycle of covid.
For example, among those aged between 45 and 54 years, “Black and Hispanic/Latino death rates are at least six times higher than for whites”. Although whites make up 62 percent of the US population of that specific age group, only 22 percent of the total deaths were white.
Black and Latino communities were the most devastated.
According to this and other studies, the main assumption behind the discrepancy of infection and death rates resulting from covid among various racial groups in the US is poverty which is, itself, an expression of racial inequality. The poor have no, or limited, access to proper healthcare. For the rich, this factor is of little relevance.
Moreover, poor communities tend to work in low-paying jobs in the service sector, where social distancing is nearly impossible. With little government support to help them survive the lockdowns, they do everything within their power to provide for their children, only to be infected by the virus or, worse, die.
Iniquity expected to continue
This iniquity is expected to continue even in the way that the vaccines are made available. While several Western nations have either launched or scheduled their vaccination campaigns, the poorest nations on earth are expected to wait for a long time before life-saving vaccines are made available.
In 67 poor or developing countries located mostly in Africa and the Southern hemisphere, only one out of ten individuals will likely receive the vaccine by the end of 2020, the Fortune Magazine website reported.
The disturbing report cited a study conducted by a humanitarian and rights coalition, the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), which includes Oxfam and Amnesty International.
If there is such a thing as a strategy at this point, it is the deplorable “hoarding” of the vaccine by rich nations.
Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni of the PVA put this realisation into perspective when she said that “rich countries have enough doses to vaccinate everyone nearly three times over, while poor countries don’t even have enough to reach health workers and people at risk”.
So much for the numerous conferences touting the need for a “global response” to the disease.
But it does not have to be this way.
While it is likely that class, race and gender inequalities will continue to ravage human societies after the pandemic, as they did before, it is also possible for governments to use this collective tragedy as an opportunity to bridge the inequality gap, even if just a little, as a starting point to imagine a more equitable future for all of us.
Poor, dark-skinned people should not be made to die when their lives can be saved by a simple vaccine, which is available in abundance.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). This article is republished with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.
In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.
The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.
None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … butthere is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.
The notion is quite literally insane.
GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.
The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.
As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.
People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.
Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.
They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.
The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)
And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.
And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.
Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.
Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.
Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.
From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.
You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.
If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids. If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!
Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!
That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!
As U.S. death tolls from Covid 19 spiral towards three or four thousand a day, health officials urge us to stop breathing on each other while saying nothing about the vast majority being dependent employees or small entrepreneurs, not free agents, thus unable to cheerfully comply with draconian public health orders that torpedo our jobs and businesses while remaining silent on how the bills are supposed to get paid.
While one searches in vain for intelligent commentary in the corporate media about this dilemma, ordinary Americans are well aware of the problem, as well as of the contempt with which they’re being treated. Consider Dave Morris, owner of the D & R Daily Grind Restaurant and Cafe in Portage, Michigan, who interrupted a local CBS News broadcast last week to explain why he was defying shutdown orders. In two minutes he told more economic truth than one hears in a year of listening to the experts on corporate media.1
Morris: Our government leaders have abandoned me.
Reporter: Are you the owner?
Morris: They took four trillion dollars of stimulus money. They gave it to who? Special interest groups and campaign donors. I’m Dave Morris. I own the place.
Reporter: So what’s going on?
Morris: What’s going on? You know what’s going on.
Reporter: You tell me.
Morris: Hey, we got a government that has taken the stimulus money. They gave it to special campaign donors. They gave it to special interests. They abandoned me and they had put me in a position where I have to fight back. O.K.?
Reporter: Do you feel that this is the right thing to do?
Morris: Absolutely. I feel everybody needs to stand up. Hey, listen. There was enough money to give every family, every family in this country $20,000 to go home for two months. They chose to give it to special interests, and campaign donors, the Kennedy Space Center, and they abandoned us. You could’ve given me money [and] I’d gladly walk away for sixty days and let the virus settle down. [But] I’m not going to do it alone, O.K.?
Reporter: Are you going to continue to violate the state’s orders and stay open?
Morris: State order (tone of disgust). This isn’t an order. This is a conspiracy. This is a tyranny.
Reporter: What do you want to tell other restaurant owners?
Morris: (raising his arms) Wake up! Stand up! This is America. Be free! I got patriots coming out supporting me the last two days. You know what? It’s a great thing. Wake up! This is America. Don’t let them ramrod you. This is crazy when you turn around and you watch what’s going on Westnedge Avenue. The big department stores, the train stations, the airports. Side by side eating meals for four hours. And you’re going to blame me? Come on! (sarcastic) Come on! This is not right and you guys know it. Everybody knows it. Stand up, America. Give us the money to shut this thing down and calm this virus, but don’t take it out on a select few.
Reporter: Is there anything else you want to add, sir?
Morris: That’s it, brother (smile). I’m glad you listened to me. Thank you. Hey, I’m really a generous guy.
Reporter: The entire Western Michigan just listened to you. You’re live on T.V. right now.
Morris: I’m glad to hear that, O.K.? I’m really a good guy. I’ve been married thirty-eight years. I got a wife, three kids; I got four great-grandchildren. Let me tell you something: I got a good life and I’ve worked hard for it. I’m not giving up easily. I’m not going down alone. They want me to go down and be quiet. They never want to hear from me again. I’m not going to put up with it. It’s time to rise up. Shut it all down or don’t shut any of us down. (emphasis added) That’s the only way to get control of a virus.
Of course, Morris is wrong in attributing policy to a conspiracy, which it is not, but that’s merely a technical point. (The problem is not the government per se, but the massive private concentrations of wealth that dominate the government). He is completely right that current policy is disingenuous and hypocritical, not to mention nearly impossible for the economically dependent to adhere to, that is, a large majority of the American population.
So let’s stop pretending that the American people are “stupid” for not complying with such policy. And remember that this is the policy that first said masks were useless and now says they’re essential; that first denounced large congregations of people as deadly, super-spreader events, then praised huge gatherings of Black Lives Matter protesters for risking infection in pursuit of a noble cause; that first urged everyone to “follow the science,” then let airports and bars be open while schools remained closed.
This is what we get when we divorce “science” from any rational analysis of society and politics. The feigned neutrality that results is an elaborate rationalization of the favoritism-for-the-rich that dominates the disastrous status quo. It’s also a prominent feature of the Osterholm Update, a weekly podcast by public health expert Dr. Michael Osterholm (recently appointed to Joe Biden’s Covid 19 Advisory Board), about the latest developments in our battle with coronavirus.
Dr. Osterholm loves to pretend that’s he’s above the political fray, just calling “balls and strikes,” not making value judgments. But that stance itself rests on a value judgment about value judgments; i.e., that public health officials ought not to make them. But if the medical experts are unwilling to call out the government for failing to give proper economic support to American workers during the prolonged quarantine policy they insist we all embrace, the policy of physical distancing means very little, in spite of its medical utility. After all, what good does it do to tell people to stay home, when they have no money to pay rent with? Everyone knows they’re going to go out and work, since they have no other way to stay housed. And even when they’re home, the wage-dependent are often sharing cramped space and stagnant air with other tenants, because with rents high and wages low it takes many tenants to keep the rent paid. Therefore, it should be obvious that non-union workers – virtually the entire private sector in the United States – are the least able to live in the uncrowded, well-ventilated spaces our public health authorities say are medically necessary, because maximizing private gain requires the opposite. Space, like everything else in this profit-obsessed culture, has to be paid for, and poor people can’t afford nearly enough of it.
In 1949, the National Housing Act established the goal of a decent home in a suitable living environment for all. Most people would surely include sunlight and uncrowded space in that definition, both known to be essential to good health, and especially useful in resisting the spread of coronavirus. But seventy-one years after passing that act, we are far from achieving that sensible housing goal. While the stock market booms and home sales soar, millions of renters are paying more than half their income for poor quality housing in polluted neighborhoods that should have been declared a national health crisis long before coronavirus appeared on the scene.2
So we can’t just call “balls and strikes,” we have to get our hands dirty and comment on the perverse values of the politicized culture within which we all live and work. The bottom line here literally is profit, which is more important than human life. That’s why there’s no coherent coronavirus policy, no sensible economic relief package, and no end of news stories telling us Americans continue dying in grotesque numbers.
“Angry Man Interrupts Live Newscast With A Surprisingly Rational Point,” The Rational National, December 4, 2020.
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