“We are only as safe as the least insured person in America,” Bernie Sanders, in one tweet, succinctly captured the individualist United States’ failed safety net amidst a coronavirus pandemic with now 10,502 cases occurring while 27 million are uninsured and the working-class grocers, delivery drivers and caretakers are on the front-lines as emergency workers — without a living wage. It turns out that the working-class is what keeps the global economy running, and while thousands of mass layoffs or unpaid leaves are taking place, corporations are begging for bailouts, asking employees to share their sick leave hours, and corporations are profiting off the global crisis. Corporations are doubling the price of potential coronavirus treatment chloroquine, and Wall Street is pressuring healthcare firms to hike up prices. The USDA is also fighting to purge food stamps recipients despite the pandemic. Capitalism and unfettered corporate greed is literally endangering millions of lives.
This crisis makes Bernie Sanders’ platform and 50 year long fight for economic justice seem moderate. The COVD-19 pandemic has exposed the corporate greed of crony capitalism and failings of a privatized healthcare system with a middle-man insurance industry that leaves 27 million uninsured and 500,000 bankrupt yearly, all while ranking 37th in healthcare globally.
“Every worker deserves a living wage, paid leave, health care, and a union—at all times, not just during a national crisis.” – Bernie Sanders
Coronavirus has exposed the corporate rot and greed of this nation and the government isn’t doing enough to help families struggling without employment and healthcare. While businesses beg for bailouts after just a few weeks with no profits, it is the working-class — who are somehow supposed to have 3-6 months of savings — who need a New Deal to survive. Are the 27 million uninsured, thousands laid off, thousands more put on unpaid leave because of the deliberate destruction of our unions expected to deal with a crisis that could be bigger than the Great Depression with the United States’ weak safety net?
The crisis has led to bipartisan calls for a temporary establishment for the socialized programs progressives have been fighting for such as Medicare for All, paid sick leave, internet as a utility, and more. The COVD-19 pandemic has made presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ progressive platform look moderate. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, Americans — whose wages have stagnated as inflation has risen 657% in the past 50 years don’t have healthcare, live paycheck to paycheck, and those 40% who don’t have $400 in savings — can’t pay $1,600 for COVD-19 testing alone.
Progressives were right about everything. They were right about universal healthcare, unions, corporate greed and the working-class holding the true economic power that keeps nations running — and deserving fair pay for it. We can’t survive without the “proletariat.”
The Government’s Failed Response
President Trump’s 8 week delayed and inadequate coronavirus response has already cost 174 lives. He fired the entire pandemic response team in 2018 and called in a hoax at a campaign rally in January this year. Then he insisted that his January 31st decision to restrict travel from China had contained the outbreak. By February 29, officials reported the first coronavirus death in the U.S. The bill that the House passed this week only guarantees paid coronavirus sick leave to around 20% of American workers and they’re still debating over sending $1,000 to every U.S. household for a pandemic that could last up to 18 months (the time it could take for a vaccine to be produced.)
Privatized Healthcare Failing
The free market has failed the health, ability to sustain a living, and education of Americans. The United States privatized, most expensive healthcare system per capita — ranking 37th globally is facing shortages. We received supplies from Italy as healthcare workers face shortages of masks, swabs, and they lack respirators to treat this epidemic fully.
Many are calling for temporary Medicare for All, but amid such a crisis causing layoffs and affecting families nationwide, tying employment to the ability to get treatment illnesses without going bankrupt is finally starting to seem insane. The average cost of a hospitalization for COVID-19 could top $20,000 someone with insurance, with out-of-pocket costs of at least $1,300. We must permanently expand coverage to all Americans with a small tax hike and increase production capacities to address this crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people every year deserve treatment for other illnesses regardless of costs too. People don’t deserve to die rationing insulin.
A Yale study concluded that Medicare for All would save 68,000 lives a year, and $450 billion annually. Americans are paying more per capita and getting less through a middle-man insurance profiting off illness, that shouldn’t exist.
Eroded Safety Net
The pandemic has also exposed how eroded our safety net is with the government actively robbing the most unequal developed nation on earth of benefits. Amidst a pandemic, the USDA is fighting to purge food stamps recipients. With healthcare the number one cause of bankruptcy in the wealthiest country on earth (with 78% already insured), the oligarchy’s stranglehold on the working-class now stronger than ever, with stagnant wages that haven’t kept up with the 657% rise in inflation the past 50 years despite a doubling in productivity, and a $1.6 trillion student debt crisis that stagnates economic growth, only a progressive agenda can address these key issues.
Income inequality is at an all time high since the Census Bureau began tracking it, yet we perpetuate the “bootstraps” notion that every hard-working person and child has equality of opportunity — an equal chance to succeed in life. Despite being the wealthiest country on earth, and worker productivity doubling, 12.3% of families continue living in poverty, and 40 million go hungry.
The richest 10% of U.S. households represented 70% of all U.S. wealth in 2018, and the top 1% hold 42.5% of national wealth, a far greater share than in other OECD countries. In no other industrialized nation does the wealthiest 1% own more than 28% of their country’s wealth. Economic inequality in the U.S. ranks higher than in any other wealthy, democratic country, and it has the most poor individuals than any other similar developed nations. Inequality has drastically increased since the 1960s were the top 10 percent of families owned around one-third of the national income, and the top 1 percent received less than 10% of all income . The Gini Index shows that the level of inequality in the United States is almost twice as much as in Sweden and a third more than most other European countries.
Unions Are Vital to The Workers On the Frontline Who Have Always Had the Economic Power
While thousands are being laid off or put on unpaid leave indefinitely amid a pandemic, the importance of unions becomes even more pertinent as families struggle for their livelihood. The Whole Foods CEO told employees who are not sick should “donate” their vacation time to sick employees. Unions are vital to the working and middle-class who drive economic stimulus in this country. Union workers are more likely to have paid sick days and health insurance, and be paid fair wages.
Economic inequality has increased since the 1960s due to technology, decline of manufacturing, globalization, and government policies that have not grown the wealth of the middle-class. Because of this, people without access to the “college wage premium” have seen their earnings decline in this technology age with less manufacturing jobs.
Deindustrialization has decreased these well-paying jobs for many Americans and only low-wage jobs have been growing for those who are non-college educated. The stagnated minimum wage has exacerbated this income inequality as the rich continue to reap a higher share of profits produced by the workers.
It is those low-wage workers which are now being classified as emergency workers in Vermont and Minnesota who keep the economy running. Now people who derided working-class jobs as “low-skilled” ones undeserving of a living wage, know who are the essential workers. It is the care workers, the grocery clerks, the cleaners, the delivery drivers. They are the teachers, the nurses, the doctors, the transport workers. Not the 1%, not the traders, not the hedge fund managers.
All workers deserve a living wage and paid sick leave. If the minimum wage kept pace with the 657% rise in inflation & 176% rise in productivity over the past 50 years, it would be $21.72.It peaked in 1968 at $11.18 when a manufacturing job bought you a house for $26,600.00. These workers need a $15.00 min wage now — they needed it years ago.
Corporate Greed Amidst Crisis
The Trump administration turned down WHO’s test kits to help his son-in-law Kushner’s company make a profit.
Wall Street is pressuring healthcare firms to increase prices over the coronavirus crisis. Audio was obtained of bankers asking drug companies and firms supplying N95 masks & ventilators, to figure out how to profit from the COVID-19 emergency.
A US drugmaker doubled price of potential coronavirus treatment, chloroquine, in January, as the outbreak spread in China.
While the outbreak spread, Senate Intel chair Richard Burr, sold off up to $1.6 million in stock one week before the market fell. His committee was receiving daily briefings.
Instead of helping American workers, the system wants to bail out airlines and other industries. Airlines like American blew cash on stock buybacks instead of reserving for a future crisis like working-class Americans are told to do.
A Second New Deal
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t just lift the United States out of the Depression — he altered the broken economic and political system to prevent it from happening again and championed the working-class. We have dismantled the very protections he set in place so corporations could reap higher profits and the New Deal’s safety net has withered away as a result. America’s individualist culture has failed us in pursuit of higher corporate profit.
We must demand that Congress pass a bill with paid sick leave, provide emergency unemployment assistance of $2,000 a month per person as Senator Sanders proposed, freeze evictions for all (not just public housing), and classify grocery workers as emergency workers.
We must enact Medicare for All in the long term so that healthcare — the right to life — is no longer tied to employment and the middle-man profiteering insurance industry which leaves 27 million unable to afford coverage and 500,000 bankrupt. This is a moral awakening and call we must answer.
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