A Chance to Cure America’s Preexisting Condition: Extreme Inequality

We are watching in real time trauma, federal incompetence, loss, and economic disruption that promises to get worse before it gets better. But we also are being given a remarkable glimpse into our potential for community resilience and societal change—even deep transformation.

The neoliberal forces of capitalism have mobilized to use this “shock doctrine” moment to deploy their own brand of pandemic capitalism, pushing unconditioned corporate bailouts, rollback of environmental protections, and suspension of corporate taxes. But there has been mighty pushback and public outrage at the naked power grabs, insider trading, hoarding, and antisocial behaviors of the rich and powerful.

Earlier versions of the March 2020 stimulus bill showed that some lawmakers have the right instincts, as it was oriented toward measures that would help middle- and working-class Americans, entice businesses to clean up their act in exchange for aid, and reduce corruption in Washington. In many ways, it was a smaller version of a larger progressive agenda like the Green New Deal, that would have been enacted before the November election. This program included free and universal health care, suspension of student debt, monthly universal basic income checks, and homes for the unsheltered. 

Unfortunately, the bill that finally passed was a disappointment and fell short of those ideals. That one window has closed, but there will be plenty of other opportunities to advance this agenda. At the local level, communities are debating free public transit, free access to water, and moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures. 

But what will make a big difference in the long run is a “people’s bailout” program. This underscores that certain economic changes would be good for people all the time, not just during a disaster. A justice-oriented stimulus plan should build on these clear insights:

Inequality in the U.S. is out of control—and the solution is a robust social safety net.

Our economy depends on front-line workers, toiling with low compensation and grossly insufficient public support systems and protections.

In a time of crisis, an unequal level of sacrifice between the haves and have-nots exposes the limits of unregulated greed and unbridled wealth.

Our creativity and human imagination are some of our greatest resources in this moment.

Extreme inequality is the U.S.’s “preexisting condition.” Our shared survival requires closing the gap, not just in an emergency moment, but forever.

Inequality in the U.S. is out of control—and the solution is a robust social safety net.

Disasters have historically exposed the seamy underbelly of extreme inequality, supercharged by racial injustice. Hurricane Katrina revealed, in the words of Danny Glover, how “grueling poverty rose to the surface like a bruise to our skin.” Black, Brown and poor people are at greater vulnerability to infection because, as Princeton University’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor wrote in The New Yorker about the coronavirus, “poverty is a fount of underlying conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, pulmonary disease, and heart disease, that make it more likely that the virus will be deadly.”

Yet over the last four decades, our political class has dismantled the social safety net that would have slowed the spread of the pandemic and saved lives. This includes cuts in food stamps, subsidized housing, health and nutrition programs, and other lifeline social programs. Restoring and expanding this safety net will meet urgent basic needs, but will also serve as an expression of our deep interconnection, shared responsibility and purpose.

The pandemic exposes the vital importance of front-line low-wage workers and the necessity of ensuring they are supported and protected. Where would we be without home care workers, bus drivers, supermarket and food service employees—some of the lowest paid occupations, which also are disproportionately filled by women and people of color?  

These workers—along with postal and delivery service and gig economy drivers—have been the new first responders in this pandemic. Their lives could be so much better—with benefits to the whole society—if they had paid sick leave, universal health insurance, quality free child care, and supplemental income. 

It turns out that what’s good for people in a COVID-19 stimulus package would have been good for people all along.

There have been unseemly examples of “pandemic profiteering” and wealth hoarding. The privileged classes are under greater scrutiny for their “unequal sacrifices,” cutting in line for tests, retreating to private enclaves with servants, engaging in speculative investing, and warehousing their wealth in private foundations and donor-advised funds at a time of urgent need. 

The wealthy, aided by favorable tax policies, are hiding their wealth at a dizzying pace. A people’s stimulus response must end tax dodging and restore a fair tax to pay for a real safety net and health system. We have the money: There are many billions in untaxed riches—and in the military budget—that could be better deployed for the common good.

In his new book, From What Is to What If, about preparing for the economic and ecological transition, Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the global Transition movement, writes about the power of imagination and two powerful words: “what if?”

What if we applied the lessons and new habits from this pandemic to our need to reduce energy consumption and transition to a post-fossil fuel economy?

What if we had all voting done by mail to enable millions of disenfranchised people to participate in our democracy? 

What if Zoom and universal broadband services were treated as public utilities, connecting rural communities and allowing more adult students to take flexible-hour courses online while working, parenting, and engaging in community service work? 

What if we built up and shifted our consumption to the place-based economy, strengthening local and regional food systems and enterprises?  

Our shared survival requires closing the gap, not just in an emergency moment, but forever.

What if we realized that the things we are doing to care for one another in a pandemic are the things we should be doing every day, and we organized the economy to put the care and flourishing of people at the center? What if we valued all humans equally and left no one behind, including the elderly and those with underlying health challenges and disabilities?

What if we strengthened local and authentic face-to-face culture, lifting up local artists and performers? 

And what if our sense of global connection—the shared global experience of human solidarity—informed our actions and policies going forward as we rebuild our local communities? 

Let’s celebrate how quickly a culture can shift, and how our warped sense of “freedom”—I can do whatever I want whenever I want—can be dislodged by a greater sense of community responsibility and connection.

They say if you want to permanently change your behavior patterns and develop new habits, it takes a couple of weeks of forcing yourself into a new routine. We may have longer than that. Let’s use it well to dream big and act bigger.

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Chuck Collins is the director of the program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. His new book is, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, is about the wealth hiding industry (Polity). Here's the link to his book: https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509543489

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