Category: health care Page 12 of 35

There’s no question that the US response to Covid-19 has been awful.

So, is it just that American elites are incompetent?

Well, as of the end of April:

The total amount of wealth controlled by US billionaires’ swelled by more than $565 billion since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.

So, why would America’s richest want to handle Covid well? Small businesses being closed is an advantage to billionaires, who control the large businesses that keep going and take over market share.

And while we don’t have figures for the top three percent or so, I’m willing to bet they are doing better as well. Plus they get to work from home and have everything delivered to their doorstep while stocking their industrial fridges with ice-cream. It’s hard for them. Honest.

Now, there’s a core point here that is important: If you are American, you cannot count on your leadership, of any variety, to look after you. You cannot even count on them to be neutral. If there is a way for them to benefit, including benefit to the people who own them (most politicians are owned in the US, and if you do not believe this you are pathetically naive), they will hurt or impoverish or kill you.

Little matters to your elites except the well-being of themselves and their close associates. To the extent they have an ideology, their ideology tells them it is right for the strong to take from the weak, and that everything they have they deserve, while those who lose deserve to lose. This is true of Republicans, but it is as true of most Democrats. Oh, they’ll give a little bit of pity money, but they won’t stop the processes in place that destroy lives and kill people. Indeed, they speed those processes on–as Pelosi and Biden have throughout their career.

When you are making your planning you must take this into account. Power companies won’t clear brush or replace infrastructure they know will lead to massive wildfires (PGE in California) because they have executive bonuses to pay. Executives of pharma companies will raise prices on life saving drugs they didn’t even research like insulin. Developers and landlords will hold properties off the market to keep prices up, and will force long term tenants out so they can raise rents.

There is little of consequence that people with power in America will not do to those without power.

The rule of power, as composed by Thucydides twenty-five hundred years ago, is as follows:

The Powerful Do As They Will: The Weak Suffer As They Must

Most social progress can be defined as creating norms and institutions which reduce that truth. American elites have spent the last 40 years returning it to dominance, with a plurality to bare majority of American voters complicit. Fools in the middle class thought that helped both them and the rich would keep helping them. But what helped them 5% a year helped the rich 20% a year, and soon the rich took off, decided they didn’t need the middle class (they can do the same work for less) and started liquidating them. During OK times, a percentage point every couple years: during crises, far more.

(Trump’s numbers actually show the middle class more than the poor drove his rise, because they were scared and went with someone who sounded different. Though some poor did the same. But Trump is VERY late stage in this process.)

If you are to survive this era, let along prosper, you must understand this in your bones: emotionally. America’s elites, business and political and ideological (media), are your enemies, committed to eating the poor and middle class (who get eaten all the time, metaphorically. “Eat the rich” is an aspirational goal, not a reality.) When you make your personal life plans, understand this. You must be useful to the rich to prosper and the second they do not need you, they will discard you. This goes even for many elite lackeys (see what has happened to media jobs, and they were on their knees fellating their masters even as the axe fell.)

If you wish to oppose the rich you must also understand this. There is no making peace with this elite, they may occasionally throw you a bone to disperse you, but their overall ethos will not change. Nothing short of replacing them with an entirely new ruling class and structure will work. If you have not done so, if you have not destroyed the rules that run this particular America and world; if you have not replaced the actual people, then you have not won the war, you have just been given some scraps to placate you and make you stand down whatever alliance you have built.

It’s you, or it’s the rich and their lackeys. It is that simple.

So, in June 30 percent of Americans couldn’t make their rent. July 25th, federal eviction protection ends. There may be another check, but another $1,200 (or even $2k) isn’t going to cut it, just as people couldn’t pay rent event with the $600 unemployment benefit top-up.

Covid now has more active cases than the previous peak. Less people are dying, because the new victims are mostly young (and due to the lag) but even non-fatal cases of Covid are nasty and can leave the victim with symptoms for months (or longer, we don’t know yet). Indeed, evidence is coming back that cases with no symptoms still do damage.

Even if there is an extension of eviction protection and some new checks, that will only push the problem back. People can’t make rent, and aren’t going to be able to. Because there are so many people competing for jobs (which are bouncing back somewhat), they have no wage leverage.

So, expect a huge wave of evictions, homelessness, and hunger. Food banks will be overwhelmed, people will go hungry.

Your lords and masters have decided that if you aren’t useful to them (aren’t employed, can’t make rent) that you don’t deserve anything, including life. This has been the case for a long time, it’s just that, in the middle of a pandemic, they see a lot of you as useless eaters towards whom they have no responsibility.

Besides, why should they care? Billionaires have actually gained wealth during the pandemic. Covid isn’t much of a problem for the rich, it’s mostly an opportunity.

Be aware, in your personal life, that this is coming down the stream. It is not going to be stopped. If there is an extension of the moratorium and a bit more benefits AND the economy continues to reopen (already being reversed in some states) then that might mitigate the homelessness somewhat, but will result in more deaths and long-term health problems from Covid.

This is going to lead to more, not less, riots. You should be ready for that, and for the possibility of civil disorder causing infrastructure and logistics problems. Stock up, have plans to shelter in place, and also to leave. Keep your head down. Make sure you are on good terms with your neighbours, friends, and so on. When shit really goes bad, the people who do okay are those other people care about.

I really hope I’m wrong about this, but the numbers on this are staggering. Assume that even five percent of Americans lost their housing over two months, that would be almost 17 million people. Each doubling is another 17 million. A ten percent loss is 34 million.

If anything like that happens, I cannot see how it does not turn into mass hunger and civil disorder.

Be prepared.

And if you are one of those who will be homeless, my genuine and true sympathy.