Day 39

Happy May Day, comrades!  If you're reading this, it means you've survived April 2020 and made it to May the 1st.  Congratulations, you're doing better than a quarter million people around the world!

We're not all in the same boat and I'm aware, acutely aware, of how fortunate I am to not be worrying about a paycheck not coming in (I'm retired).  I'm also aware that my comfort level may also be shaping my outlook on a continued quarantine versus the rush to reopen businesses, just as the need of others to start earning a paycheck again and soon is making the idea of an "acceptable" number of deaths seem like a tolerable trade-off for getting the economy back on track.  Our needs shape our outlook, and different needs result in different outlooks.

But I also see the extremely wealthy, the Wilbur Ross' and Steve Mnuchin's of the world, behind the push to get people to return to work.  They realize that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, billionaires and financiers can do to create wealth - they can only steal and redistribute it but they can't create it.  Not meaning to sound like a Marxist here, but value is created by the labor of the workers, and the very rich need the workers to get back to it so they can start stealing and redistributing the wealth once again.  And if a few hundred thousand die of the covid-19 in the process?  Well, collateral damage.  It's not like anyone in their families will be denied a ventilator if it comes to that.  Besides, no one lives forever, amiright?

But wait.  As always, there's more.  Thanks  to the recent events, we can pretty much kiss off the prospect of seeing an increase in the minimum wage anytime soon.  Just when it was starting to look like the concept of a living wage for American workers might actually come to pass, just as progressive politics was starting to embrace the concept and at least two presidential candidates (Warren and Sanders) included the idea in their platforms, a full 20% of American workers suddenly lose their jobs and just as suddenly, it's an employer's market for new hiring.  As businesses return to the marketplace, they can simply say they're only paying the minimum, or even less than that with a little creative lawyering, and if you don't like it, get a job somewhere else.  Beggars can't be choosers.  

On top of that, the bosses can legitimately claim financial hardship - "profits are down, cash is tight" - and say they can't afford to pay anything more than the minimum, which by the way, wasn't enough then for a family to survive on.  As the cash starts rolling back in, how long (if ever) do you think it will be before the captains of industry decide that it's time to share the bounty with the workers and give them a pay raise?  My guess is never.

Ross and Mnuchin are aware of this.  I won't give them the credit of saying this was all a scheme devised by them to break labor's back and insure an increased wealth gap between the rich and the poor, but I won't deny that they've realized it and are doing everything possible to capitalize on it.

After decades of stagnant wages and a declining standard of living, the working class, despite the low unemployment rate, was already on the verge of collapse.  The new, post-pandemic economy will crush them - the cost of virtually everything will increase due to supply-chain disruption, and their wages will become locked at or below the current minimum.  They will effectively become serfs and the rich will become like feudal lords, and this dystopian future will be as much the tragedy of the pandemic as the sickness and the death itself.

This won't end well for anyone involved.