The Coronavirus is Finishing the Collapse of America
This is the subtitle of an article published on Medium by Umair Haque. Ironically, the day before Jimmy Dore called our attention to this article in a conversation with Dylan Ratigan, our own Steven D posted a comment in reply to a tweet on Twitter. I saw his comment and added my own. Our two comments may be more prescient than either of us realized at the time we posted them.
It is in collapse. https://t.co/mjFMXkb7yY
— Steven Searls (@StevenDBT) May 15, 2020
And often the collapse happens very quickly. It appears that may be happening to the US now.
— Nancy D A Pomeranian For A General Strike! (@gulfgal98) May 15, 2020
Haque's essay is not for the faint of heart. It paints a very real "Hunger Games" future for the United States. Even Jimmy Dore who considers himself pessimistic was taken aback by the degree of bleakness portrayed in the Haque article and as a result had Dylan Ratigan on his show to discuss it with him. I am linking that video below.
At the time of the publication of this article (May 7), 33 million Americans were unemployed. That number continues to rise and may reach as high as 47 million according to
economists at the St. Louis Fed. Under worst case scenario, that would put unemployment at 32.1% which is far worse than the Great Depression when unemployment peaked at 24.75% in 1933. Haque writes
These are numbers so catastrophic they make economists like me shudder. They have no modern parallel whatsoever.
The response to the coronavirus has been to throw a ton of money at the largest and most wealthy corporations while barely acknowledging the true human tragedy that is unfolding before all of us. Out of at least $8Trillion in stimulus funds allocated by Congress, only about $300 billion went to actual living, breathing human beings who have now been forced to go through state unemployment systems which are woefully in adequate to handle the sheer volume of applications and which are designed more to postpone or deny paying benefits.
Coronavirus — or more accurately — the lack of response to it will probably finish off what’s left of the American economy. America will end up a country with permanently lower levels of all the following: employment, income, savings, trust, happiness, assets, and so forth. America was already in the process of becoming something very much like a poor country, with the failed politics of one, too — but Coronavirus will accelerate and finalize America’s grim transformation into poverty, paralysis, and collapse.
Congress' lack of adequate funding of the Paycheck Protection Program which was supposed to help protect small businesses and maintain the employee/employer connection had its initial funding gobbled up by a loophole that allowed national restaurant chains to qualify.
According to FEMA, 40 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster and another 25 percent, that do reopen, fail within a year.
Over the last decade we have watched the American middle class becoming more and more hollowed out due to policies set in motion decades ago, particularly under the Bill Clinton Administration. With the corona virus, that hollowing out has become accelerated and this country is very close to the point of no return in which there will never be a viable and vital middle class.
America was already becoming too poor a society to have functioning public goods, like healthcare or retirement for all. Coronavirus is going to seal that fate. America will be poor now — far too poor to ever really make the transition to having decent public goods. Think of that full half of the American population who’s now not employed. How exactly are they going to afford the higher taxes it takes to have a European or Canadian style social contract? They struggled to before — and after Coronavirus, it’s going to be flatly impossible.
That’s another of depression’s vicious cycles: it makes nations poor, and they end up being unable to afford decent being modern societies at all, places in which people support one another with expansive social contracts, in the end — because when people can barely even afford self-preservation, how can they support anyone else’s quest for a better life, too?
According to Haque, the final result of this will be a permanent vast underclass with a very wealthy few controlling all the wealth. In my mind, we may end up as a neo-feudal state.
Coronavirus will accelerate that change, too. America’s already dying middle and working class will finally crumble and coalesce into one vast permanent underclass.
There is so much more in this article, but here is just one final take away about how this system that we are rapidly plunging into has a broader societal effect. And this is a real tragedy of the loss of human creativity and potential.
When an economy dies, everything we cherish and treasure is dying. Jobs, yes — but so much more than that. What is really withering is human potential itself. What can a nation of people who’ve become servants, being exploited to the bone, accomplish, really? Discover, create, build, share, nurture?
Haque's article is a very sobering and frightening look into the future that we in this country will probably face all too soon. And it did not have to be this way except the enormous greed of the oligarchy has dictated that it end this way. I highly recommend everyone read Haque's article.
Here is Jimmy Dore's conversation with the always interesting and enlightening Dylan Ratigan. This video is what prompted me to read the Haque article.
Comments
From a young foreign voice on the Internet
...musing about the unrecognizable US and the American people:
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Thank you for your comment, Pluto
There was actually more to my essay, but for some reason a technical glitch has cut it short. JtC is working on it, but if it is not able to be rectified, I will publish a second essay that dives deeper into what your quote states. The future is very frightening.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Thanks to JtC, the entire essay is now up! (n/m)
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I don't agree with Ratigan's ideas in the JD video
Frankly, I don't believe JD does either.
Ratigan claims half of the 7.5 million Hong Kong residents were in the streets protesting. The independent firm Statista puts the number at 265,000. He also uses the claim that 3,000,000 protestors coming out is the reason the CIA was/is not involved in these protests. Too many people.
Ratigan believes the way to protest that will create the greatest disruption is to do leaderless "pulse protests" like the Yellow Vests in France and the protestors in Hong Kong. I disagree. I don't think these protests are "leaderless". In both of these situations American police will come down much harder than French or HK police. In any event, the National Guard would have been called out long before it got to this stage.
Just imagine how American police would respond to the following "officer down" situation created by violent protestors in HK. Very few cops in HK have pistols. In the US all the cops have REAL handguns not the little toys the HK police use.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmLu0VxiAec]
IMHO,
I did not particularly agree with Ratigan's prescription either simply because it did not work with Occupy.
Our only chance is a nationwide General Strike. And it has to be NOW and it is imperative that essential workers be a part of that strike. Sadly, it may be too late even for that.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
FWIW:
(i'd filed this for future reference):
Thanks CB for taking down DR's
ill-informed praise for the HK protests. You saved me from having to do it.
This is dead wrong...
M4A SAVES (let me repeat that) SAVES half a Trillion bucks a year.
So it is simply not true to say we can't afford to have M4A.
The reality is we can no longer afford NOT to.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
This sentence speaks to the propaganda
that our elected leaders continue to put out despite the majority of all Americans want Medicare for All. It is Congress that says we cannot afford it and it is Congress that emphasizes that people's taxes will go up. What Congress does not emphasize is that people's healthcare costs will go down. They are paid to misinform people.
It is very obvious that there is no way in hell that Congress will ever pass Medicare for All when they refuse to pass anything to help out of work people with their healthcare costs during a pandemic. If there was ever a time to do it, they would have done it, but they chose to bail out corporations instead. Our leaders represent a very cruel ideology.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
con gress does not represent the people of this nation
only themselves and the corporations that hired them
we seem only to be useful for perpetuating
more destruction of the mericun dream
and our votes don't count
Exactly, gulfgal.
Never a mention about the affordability of the military budget or the trillions given to Wall Street.
Pay Go applies to social programs.
Or, more succinctly, cutting those programs to pay for some tax cut for that sector that doesn't pay taxes to begin with.
I am hard pressed to point to the miracle new post-empire miracle country. Am I forgetting some success story?
My fear is the only people with money and power on the other end of this disaster are the ones with money and power on this end.
I am, no matter the hardship, glad I will be alive and around to see the USA end its' infliction of misery on its' poor, and its' domination of the world.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
This is true:
I have data that confirms this. There has always been data that confirms this.
But Imagine the good that comes from having a medically secure society.
Then imagine life in a society that is economically secure.
Then imagine life in a society that is educated and informed.
These things come from money invested at the bottom, not the top.
When money is poured in at the top, it forms a separate economy immersed in evil, that enslaves and crushes the bottom.
It has always been this way.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
agreed but
it doesn't always have to be this way
The people elected representatives
...who then voted near unanimously in Congress to pour the money in at the top.
Political change is no longer possible. But that is only true for the United States.
Only in the United States was all the money poured in at the top. Americans did without normal human rights and values because the US rulers believed they needed all the money to create an EMPIRE to rule over the entire world and all of the earth's commodities and resources.
But all possibility of EMPIRE died on 9/11. And all hope died as well when the United States attacked Afghanistan.
All the wars that followed were the death throes of a would-be EMPIRE that never was. All of it was self-inflicted wounds. All of them were fatal.
Every decision made was the wrong one. Every action taken made things worse for everyone. Every part of the government filled with corruption. Every vote was a dead end.
It stops when the US stops attacking the world, closes its doors, and takes care of its own people. Covid-19 came from an American bio lab. It is also part of the death throes of EMPIRE. The Russia Hoax is falling to pieces. The China Hoax can be exposed just as easily. The American people paid for all of it themselves. They went in debt to pay for it. All of the profits were stolen.
This too shall pass, and when it does, Americans will work again and pay the debt that they owe. Hopefully, the evil-intentioned quest for EMPIRE will be dead and buried forever.
[edit = typos]
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Did we elect them, or were we merely used as
rubber stamps to a fait accompli. And that’s only the people who haven’t given up voting because they know heads the crooks win, tails we lose.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
The American people failed 20 years
...after the Constitution was written, when they refused to update and revise it and bring it into the future with them. Every twenty thereafter, they failed again. It takes work and thinking and action and oversight to start a nation. Worshiping the Constitution as if it was written by God is not enough to smooth over its simple ignorance of the world of the future. It was born as a Constitution for Slave Owners, and it still is. Human rights are revokable in the US. Conferring human rights is optional. Just like on the plantation.
That failure extends to all Americans. And they seem to know that. They certainly don't fret over their lack of the most basic human rights. Now would be a good time to leave the USA, before the depopulation begins in earnest and the doors are shut tight.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Not to whistle past the graveyard, but....
There is a looming freedom in our future, but I can’t even imagine it. I’ve spent my entire life trying to fit into a capitalist economic system. My first venture was door to door Christmas Card sales, which earned me a nice three speed bike, the first of many vehicles. And yet in in many ways I always feel it was somehow a poor fit for me. I just wanted enough, something our oligarchs will never have. When my wife and I ran a small woodworking business for 26 years, which had some very good years, I felt that the right thing to do was to share the profits with our hourly workforce.
I was a lousy capitalist. On the rare occasions when I bought stocks I was more concerned with what the company was doing than how much money it was making. Friends would mention how well they were doing with XYZ Corp and I would ask them what they did. Inevitably the query would bring a shrug and a comment along the lines of “They make money.” I felt it was my responsibility to know, and approve of the doings of any company I was involved in. They were, after all, putting my investment into actions. Cluster bombs just wouldn’t do.
What is most terrifying about our current situation is the great unknown. I am very uncomfortable with chaos like most everyone else. I am also very uncomfortable with the rapacious version of capitalism that we are suffering from.
What does the future hold for us? Likely some true suffering, the likes of which I and many Americans alive today have never known. Famine, poverty, hardships and yes perhaps even death. But we may also have the possibility of replacing our current oligarch run world and all its injustice, war and runaway selfishness with a more caring, compassionate and cooperative system of governance.
That’s what I am to choosing to focus on. From the ashes human decency may yet have another chance to fly.
(No need to disparage these hopes and Ideas, I’m already wondering where it came from. It is not like me, but I’m going with it nonetheless.)
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes
I'm with you
money is not the solution
Wow!
I love this comment.
I told my nearly 98 year old (very capitalist) mother that I hoped that what we are going through now would lead to us becoming a more caring society. My sig line represents that hope. Out of the ashes a new and better society may be able to arise.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
cue the moody blues:
Listen to the tide slowly turning
Wash all our heartaches away
We are part of the fire that is burning
And from the ashes we can build another day
But I'm frightened for your children
And the life that we are living is in vain
And the sunshine we've been waiting for
Will turn to rain...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoDXzvXxUbc]
Back in the day
I was a huge Moody Blues fan. I always thought that Justin Hayward was one of the great poets of our era. Thanks for the reference.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
What's terrifying about our current situation --
is that that small portion of the public interested anymore in politics is divided into two types of idiot
1) The Biden bully -- the folks who are going to "pressure" Joe Biden while getting the Left to pledge to vote for him anyway, the folks who remember nothing about what the Democratic Party lost under Obama, and so on.
2) The MAGA redneck -- yeah a gun is going to protect you against the combined might of the Armed Forces, so go to the Michigan courthouse and try to end the stay-at-home period, maybe you'll catch some COVID-19.
Everyone else has given up. No wonder it's the way it is.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
No; there is another....
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Body/
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Did it ever occur
to you that the people you describe thusly:
are out to preserve your freedoms as well as their own? Think it is unreasonable to have reservations about the executive being able to place the whole population under house arrest and destroy livelihoods by decree? To regularize and expand on the already obscene level of tracking and surveillance people are subjected to? To mandate vaccines and who knows what other medications or medical procedures?
If you don't want a gun, don't get one. If you want to self-quarantine until Gates and Fauci have your vaccine and microchip implant ready, fine. Want to impose that on everyone else? Not fine.
What some Texans have to say on the subject:
(local Austin TV coverage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_-qVpGBg0
and
"Freedoms"
From what I can see, a certain segment of the American populace sees "freedom" in the way a two-year-old sees it:
"No! I don't want to, and you can't make me! Me, me, me!"
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Thems called "freedumbs"
I suppose so
Then again, even a chattel slave sees "freedom" as a state of non-slavery. Those more enslaved, mentally at least, than that see "freedom" as something their elite masters allow them the privilege to do. An outlook that seems well-represented in American society and not exactly scarce on this board.
BTW - I must have missed it. First two interviewees (yellow shirt buy and counter protester nurse) maybe excepted, I just couldn't spot the two-year-old attitude - maybe you can point out where it shows up here - for those of us slow on the up tale or less enlightened:
You know, there are more than two possibilities
You are framing it as "tyrannical rulers" on the one hand, and "tyranny resisters" on the other, period. Both of those extremes are working for their individual rights.
What about people who feel a sense of responsibility toward their community?
Tyrant: You must wear masks if you go out!
Tyranny resister: I will NOT wear a mask! And you can't make me! I have rights!
Regular person: I know the tyrant is using this situation to enhance his power and wealth. But I can still choose to wear a mask so as not to hurt other people in my community by spreading disease.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Work with me here.
Somebody wants to protect my freedom by engaging in behavior that increases the probability that he will acquire the covid virus. This would make him a carrier capable of infecting any number of people who choose not to accept the risk. That's a favor I do not need.
And how did the isolation protests become conflated with the 2nd amendment protests? They must really get off dressing up in their camos and strutting around. Walking within rifle range of such people would not make me feel more free.
Tyranny doesn't work
(not yet, anyway) - without minions to carry out directives and without people acquiescing to them.
Well, some folks are actually motivated to save and defend *themselves* - not simply in an individual sense but also in terms of family, community, planet...
Gee, if they weren't such ignorant, knuckle dragging, white supremacist, paranoid, gun-obsessed, infantile, lockdown-hating, science-denying losers... it might be worth enquiring why they don't just accept as inevitable the fact that Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Xi Xiaoping, Tony Fauci, WHO, CDC, Angela Merkel, Federal Reserve, ECB, Big Pharma, Big Ag, AIPAC, Atlantic Council, NSA, etc., etc. are in control of everyone's destiny and there is nothing you can or should do about it but await further instructions.
I guess you could just head down to your nearest anti-lockdown demo and *ask* what they're on about but why bother, they'd probably just reply with inarticulate MAGA grunts or something...
source
OK...
If it is true that the lockdowns are effective in curbing the spread of the virus then there may well be a risk of faster spread if people violate them, but there is no unanimity even among experts that they work as their advocates claim. There are also legitimate arguments as to whether negative effects such as domestic violence, depression, suicide, lowered immune response, death or damage from deferral of non-epidemic-related medical treatment outweigh the benefits of lockdowns.
No unanimity in the medical profession even on the efficacy and possible risks associated with masks
There is no blanket agreement as to the legality of lockdowns either, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown is finding out.
Baker County Judge Matt Shirtcliff overturns Governor's coronavirus executive orders; state petitions Oregon Supreme Court to overrule judge
From the standpoint of the anti-lockdown advocates the dangers of allowing government unlimited powers simply upon its declaring an emergency is profoundly dangerous, outweighing risk from the virus.
There are definitely situations in which following orders unquestioningly amounts to a positive contribution to great evil. Lots of "Good Germans" around, it seems...
I see armed and armored up cops strutting around all to frequently - is that yet another thing that it's OK for the government to do that the peasants are disallowed? Are there only certain combinations of rights that can be exercised simultaneously? 1st and 2nd Amendment rights have to social distance, perhaps?
Outside the left and right coast blue zones, most people don't bother with open carry of weapons, but most don't regard it as any big deal, either.
Just down the road from my home town:
We are still not discussing a real solution.
The point of a lockdown would be that it would be part of a combined strategy to isolate the virus. The strategy has to be combined with universal testing to identify asymptomatic carriers. The tests don't have to be perfect, but they have to be good enough so that their flaws can be overcome. The US is not doing that. The US is not testing enough to be able to do that.
A longer lockdown might be meaningful in terms of "flattening the curve" -- but mostly to make sure that the hospitals do not become overloaded and wind up with triage strategies. That's mostly a mitigation strategy -- people will get sick and die, but fewer.
Here in the US we're trying a limited stay-at-home strategy combined with a broadly insufficient monetary compensation for the stay-at-home period and a too-early opening-up because the capitalists, who lease our government, want to limit everyone's access to unemployment checks. The other part of this combined strategy appears to be a misrepresentation of the COVID-19 data, with Georgia being the incubator regime.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
And as for the "legality of the lockdown" --
We may in fact have the right to spread the COVID-19 and to infect others. I have yet to hear of a Supreme Court ruling on this matter. My guess is that they will rule that we do indeed have such a right. Here's my question, though: what's it to you?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
The US can't afford its ridiculous 'defense' budget
That needs to be cut very, very, very substantially.
And Trump's inane 'Space Force' needs to be shafted pronto (along with the silly flag).
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
First of all
read the primary article and it is spot on, as far as it goes. So yes. It doesn't address the other thing going on which makes this different than any other situation, which is environmental collapse.
Talked to my brother a couple days ago about how stupid it is to reopen, and how the jobs aren't going to be there if they do. "But back in the Depression there were actual problems with the economy, now everything was fine until this virus came along." As you might expect, he's a Republican.
If it hadn't been Covid it would have been something else, if not this year then within a year or two.
Regarding M4A -- from a political standpoint if Sanders had won in 2016 this would have been the ideal time to rally popular opinion to push M4A through a Congress full of neoliberal sellouts. And you know what? It still is. If Trump wasn't such a weasel he would a) admit he was wrong, b) apologize, c) change. "We didn't take this seriously enough and now we're behind the curve. We're going to fix that starting today. Our first step is M4A, and the man who is going to lead the effort is our new M4A Czar, Bernie Sanders. Step up to the mic, Bernie." Instead of being a small, petty man seeking revenge and adulation he step up and be the man who gave health care to 50 million Americans, finishing the Democratic party off forever. Biden would be lucky to win Delaware.
But of course, he won't do that. And Biden won't do that. And people who were insured even a few weeks ago have lost their insurance to Trump's Depression (we really need to start calling it that).
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
trump's impression (or depression)
how do you say
impressionist
a fuzzy reality that
only somewhat reflects our life
heralded by the bought media
ffs
I wouldn't say "never" about Trump
Once in a blue moon he actually does something crazy that benefits the "little people", usually by accident and for the wrong reasons. It's more like "hardly ever" (see Gilbert & Sullivan's ditty for the Captain of HMS Pinafore).
But I would say "never" about Biden.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
You have a really good point.
Joan Baez has an interesting insight about Trump.
[video:https://youtu.be/lS2EzL_5FQU]
I have never felt that Trump is intentionally malicious. He just wants to have everyone like him and to be the center of attention all the time. I wish there was some way to get next to him and suggest things that would be good for the whole country. Trump could actually sell something like Medicare-for-All to his base.
This is dark
It reminds me of the first time I read "The Man in the High Castle". It's hard to have any optimism when this has been going on in earnest since Nixon resigned.
The Koskids don't seem very concerned. The ones that express worry and point out (once again) that the democrats shut down the left and are negotiating by appeasement with the republicans get bullied to support Pelosi and the party. There is no opposition party.
I don't see any recovery, just a new and terrible normal. In America, if there is a vaccine, how many will be able to afford it?
But, at least, we'll still
have all our wars. And the drive to have all humanity kowtow to the US. So we've got that going for us.
The thing to do right now that would somewhat trip up the power-holders scheme for us is to force Big Media to acknowledge, and feature, what 3/4 of the people know: Both Parties are run by crooks and cranks who only have their own power and wealth at the top of their agenda.
We need a full-political spectrum incessant demand we discuss in open and in detail that these parties are killing us.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Well I posted a diary --
about some people who are trying to change that.
Were you there?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
No. I think the situation
requires action on several fronts. So I hope things progress with that effort. Myself, I don't see how 3rd Parties get any traction in a world where the 1% control the narrative. I could argue that in detail, but I think the obstacles to 3rd party success are generally known. Still, action on several fronts; one never can foretell what synergies will arise.
Ii see the first step to be us breaking the two party strangle-hold on Narrative and that requires a unified and concerted action. The two parties don't need to be delegitimized; it's that their already established (in the people's mind) illegitimacy needs to be the number one topic. Then, while the machine is in turmoil, they'll be weak enough that alternatives can get established.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Okay.
Our Revolution LA is ready for a split. Are you? If you are, then what keeps you waiting?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Don't care. Pointless effort
if narrative machine isn't broken into, and down, before anything else.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
get a twopartyexit
Going and then we've got something.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Haque's article seems too simplified
and superficial to me. As if he's reading too many dystopian novels and hasn't bothered to look at the examples of Disaster Capitalism (and doesn't even know that Yeltsin and not Putin effected it in Russia). (The comments to this article at Medium are pathetic.)
What is totally frustrating to me about the coronavirus is that almost no USians have an adequate knowledge base on this matter from which draw an intelligent position and opinions. From the crap Trump spouts daily to the poor reporting on the virus and China bashing, USians have this bizarre notion that lockdowns and testing was all China did to almost suppressed the virus. Yet, they can see that it's not working in the US. So, the country is now divided between "open up" and "keep closed" camps (likely roughly corresponds to political affiliation.) "It's just a flu" remains the prevailing opinion of the "open up" camp, but the lockdown advocates have their own areas of denial and wishful thinking (ie a vaccine will soon be available and save us).
Anyway, here's an excellent review of what went down in China: Xi Jinping Good Emperor .... That said, China's latest effort -- testing everyone in Wuhan in ten days -- perplexes me. Perhaps because western press isn't reporting the full details about the new case spike since 10 May (total 59 new cases). Some number of them were fully recovered (two negative tests) that are now asymptomatic positive. (S. Korea encountered the same thing a few weeks ago and there are now 454 such cases. The have so far determined, "Choi added that some recovered patients may even continue to show some respiratory symptoms and test positive for the disease, but that "does not mean reactivation" of the virus: "We think it is a reconfirmed case, not reinfection or reactivation."
He said in such cases, the virus lingering in a patient's body appears not to be at an "infectious level.")
On the very same page of the glowing report,
Xi Jinping Good Emperor that gives VERY high praise for Xi,
we find two other ads for articles which are more typical of that propaganda mouthpiece for the US national security state:
The entire population of Wuhan
was never tested. When they found some new infections, they decided to test everyone. The last thing China wants is a further outbreak in Wuhan. They intend to do this testing throughout China if necessary.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkuww_dxiv8]
Five vaccines should be available for use in July.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYNBViltQVk]
The problem with "testing everybody"
is that the test only detects those that are currently infected and not those that are newly infected (some hours or days before the testing) and those who have recovered (with or without symptoms) prior to any testing are indistinguishable from those that have never been infected. A few days ago South Korea expanded its testing of known contacts within a cluster; presumably those contacts will also be isolated for two weeks and then retested before being released. That would pick up any asymptomatic cases but so far SK hasn't reported anyone in that category.
I'm not going to try to second guess China's health officials and for now am assuming that they have a solid reason for testing everyone in Wuhan and some day we'll find out what that is.
Hmmmm.... I see where you are going
This testing of the entire population can possibly give a better picture of the source of the new infection that can be correlated with other data they have collected since the original outbreak. The Chinese are heavily invested in AI to fight this pandemic.
China is now containing a new outbreak in Jilin province near the border with Russia when 6 cases were discovered on May 11.
China is on a war footing against this virus. Xi Jinping is personally in charge and has made beating the pandemic the #1 priority. If any leaders of provinces or cities would allow the virus to get out of control, they would face consequences. Fortunately they have full support from the central government.
We see them erring on the side of caution. When an outbreak is discovered in any city and travel quarantines are put into effect, drugstores have to stop selling antipyretics to prevent people hiding facial temperature rise from detectors. In addition, only specially authorized hospitals are allowed to treat patients having a fever.
Trump fucked up. His latest presser puts
the lie to China hiding the coronavirus contagion for weeks which had prevented him from dealing with it in a more timely fashion.
Trump:
00:11 they started actually I guess you heard
00:13 in January early January and they've
00:16 been working on it I know so many and
00:19 private companies have been working on
00:20 it the government's been working on it
Everyone thinks he is lying NOW!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD8G4JxXWuk]
Umair perplexes me.
Every day I receive a digest email from Medium. They would like for me to send them $50/year for full access to their contributors. I'm there because of Caity Johnstone - who publishes there for no charge - but Umair is always the one Medium uses to tempt me to fork out the bucks. So far, I have not done so.
I had seen the preview of Umair's article, The American Economy is Imploding — and America is, Too, and had to willfully control myself from clicking the link and using one of my few free views per month. So, dang you gulfgal98, you made me click on the link.
I did read the article. I've not watched any videos nor have I read any Tweets related to it other than what was in the OP.
My reaction is that some of what Umair forecasts is probably correct. The guy isn't dumb. However, several things cause me to wonder. First, and this may seem silly, but for such an educated and seemingly well read economist he surely does make quite a few grammatical errors in his writing. Hell, even the title has errors. Also, he needs an editor and he needs one badly. Now, grammar errors are possibly something Einstein might have made; one can't give that too much weight. Still...
His views on Russia and/or Putin are what really set me on edge here, though. He's just flat wrong when he makes statements in the Medium article such as: "As the Soviet Union failed, what emerged wasn’t a wise and gentle democracy — but Putin’s Neo-authoritarian dystopia. But that was inevitable — because Russia never really evolved much the past the U-shape of inequality, unable to develop the bell curve of moderation that democracy requires."
Really, Umair? Today's Russia is "...Putin’s Neo-authoritarian dystopia?" This has shades of Russia-gate written all over it. Further, Russia most certainly has evolved very much past the "U-shape of inequality." How Umair can not know this bothers me. It does not take that much research to find that the statement is false. It bothers me even more to consider that Umair does indeed know that it's false and has said it anyway.
Umair seems to completely disregard social programs put into place after the Great Depression, programs specifically designed to soften blows such as the current virus shock. Yes, many have been gutted or hobbled, but there's still quite a bit there. Further, while financial aid from the feds has been - almost criminally - directed to those who least need it, at least congress has shown that it's really easy for them to write a check. Of course, the rub is who might be the payee. Those who
bribedonate are at the head of the line. Average citizens and small business, not so much.When Umair states, "America was already becoming too poor a society to have functioning public goods, like healthcare or retirement for all. Coronavirus is going to seal that fate. America will be poor now — far too poor to ever really make the transition to having decent public goods," I wonder whether he's writing the script for Trump, Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and the rest. "Oh, sorry, we're out of money now..." If the USA is too poor for functioning public goods, then I wonder what the rest of the world will be like. After all, we've never been too poor for it, it's just that there's always been a long line in wait to
bribedonate to our representatives. And, of course, we - as a nation - have not exactly been spending our funds wisely or even frugally. The thing we can't afford is corruption ...which we have in spades.As for a self-powering downward economic spiral, I suppose it's quite possible. That seems to be the gist of his missive. It's the obvious mischaracterization of Russia that's bothering me. Why do that? Nevertheless, if Umair is only one quarter correct, we're looking at a whole lot of unhappy folks.
excellent comment
you hit on some points that concern me as well, particularly the one about Russia and Putin. In one of my comments above, I tried to interpret what I believe is the gist of the comment about America being too poor to have basic human right to healthcare.
My hope in posting this essay was to elicit excellent comments such as this and the ones above. This is an issue that I believe is important for us to not only discuss, but to be prepared for. My last bit of hope was dashed when the House passed Pelosi's pork laden bill with every Democrat voting for it. Of course, it will not pass the Senate and as a result, there will be no more bills, not even ones to actually address the real human suffering caused by the government's lack of preparedness and action in this pandemic. I think the point of Pelosi's most recent bill was to shut down any further corona virus aid legislation.
People like Pelosi, Schumer, and Mc Connell could care less about the American people. They do not even try to disguise who their real constituents are - the donor class. The trillions of dollars allocated by Congress in this crisis were intended to accelerate the final fleecing of this country. These people have no regrets doing so because it has made them very wealthy. For them, the rest of us are all very expendable.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
#MeToo, gulfgal.
i'd quit reading about then. also his notions of what constitutes 'the economy' are simplistic, imo, as if there is only one. but then i've been trying to understand a lengthy piece by michael hudson lately describing the differences. ; )
but yes, it's a good discussion, add thank you.
Agree he needs an editor.
His crappy grammar looks childish, not scholarly. I dropped Medium because of the paywall.
I have picked a particularly horrible day and time of day for this, but here I go.
So, I travel to all these foreign countries with extremely high taxes and tons of social programs.
Americans have spent their entire history controlling and avoiding taxes. Tax lawyers. Loopholes. Hidden cash.
I could go on, but we Americans are conditioned to avoid taxes.
So, we live in some socialistic country in Europe. We get $0.40 on the dollar for our income! Horrors! But we get free education, free health care, free day care, paid sick leave, early retirement, sick leave, assisted living, with benefits we can never have here.
$0.40 can buy lots of cute shoes.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Am I confused? Are you confused? Glad you posted this, gulfgal.
I thought this essay, the original source essay, Jimmy Dore's video and the comments hit a lot of nails on the head, while not hurting too much our feelings and offering lots of thruths.
I quote from the original Umar Haque essay. The one sentence that made me - sad - is the one with the number 1.
this is sad, but I don't believe in it. Self-preservation is the everyday struggle for most of the world's populations, they don't despise each other too strongly and are not really indifferent to each other. Even if you have nothing left to lose, you take the risk of losing something faster than you thought. The despise turns against the oppressors and the indifference on the surface, is just a make-belive marker, which indicates the fear the population has to lose their life and livelihood. Trying to not care about it, will not do the trick to oppress your own courage to 'do something against those, who oppress you'.
...
a relationship can survive a long time even if trust and confidence is gone. As long as you can't prove and name what it is, that made you lose trust, most relationships linger on, may be not happily, but still limping along.
...
hmm the way my mimi-mini-coding brain starts to hate the algorithmically manipulative advices and suggestions and how they get on my nerves already, refutes that argument, imo. I believe that many will see through their own servitude and won't ask to whom they are the serfs. I foresee a lot of servants throwing their laptops in front of their representative's offices, trample on them and demand those representatives to take a hike and resign.
...
No, I don't believe that. The human potential is always some sort of hope and the worse ones own living condition gets, the more and the better and the stronger revenge potential and strategies to get rid of their oppressors will develop.
I think the Umar Haque essay - somewhat unintentional perhaps - wants convince the American people that they will not be and never were willing and never had been able to have a revolution that changes the root causes for the loop-hole-mistakes contained in its constitutional text.
Americans seem to me fearful to touch their constitutional text, though many see in it the roots of their societal misery. Why?
May be they fear their own guns?
https://www.euronews.com/
Well, of course there is a simple way
for people to afford the taxes it takes to maintain a decent social contract. It's called Keynesianism.
The government acts like a government and uses (among other things) its buying power to preserve the nation it supposedly represents and rules. Sort of the same way it just spent a trillion dollars on Wall St and the largest corporations in the country. It's not as easy as it used to be because of the de-industrialization of America and the globalization, more generally, of supply chains. But it can still be effective, if intelligent people who want to do it take on the project. You spend money both creating production here at home and buying the proceeds of the production (and service industries) we already have. And you keep a careful eye on how much of your spending is actually going to stay here at home. Perhaps, since we're in a pandemic, some of that spending could go toward creating a plethora of government-run clinics employing health care professionals at high wages/salaries. I'd also strongly suggest putting a lot of that government money into small businesses, and, in every way possible, taking the burden of land costs (primarily rent) off those businesses. There are actually a hundred good ideas for where one could spend money to heal the economic wounds and preserve the economic life of the nation.
Given our situation, I'd also suggest, in concert with classical Keynesianism, a UBI which can be temporary but must be persistent for at least a year, preferably two, and must be of a reasonable amount. In other words, it cannot put the recipient at or below the federal minimum wage.
Finally, perhaps Medicare for All might mesh nicely with those government-run clinics I mentioned. It certainly would bring health care costs down, which would be an unalloyed good for anybody not a narcissistic psychopath.
Once these things are in place--with some less directly economic measures such as continued research into effective ways to deal with the disease (testing, treatment, and eventually a vaccine), the economy will be stable, people will make enough money that they can pay enough taxes that a decent, perhaps even a good social contract will be possible to maintain.
Apart from finding a vaccine, none of these steps is remarkably difficult. Some of them present complexities that require people of intelligence, awareness, and responsibility to manage the policies. But none is as difficult as inventing survivable space travel, or instituting continuous, mostly accurate surveillance of 300 million people. If "Total Information Awareness" can be spoken of as a goal of government without everyone busting out laughing, spending money to prevent the collapse of American civilization should not be hand-waved away as obviously impossible.
In short, we are doomed because those in power don't care to save or defend us. They are perfectly capable of saving and protecting the things they value, no matter the cost in money or lives, and we know that because they're doing it right in front of us, just like they have been, in an absolutely open manner, since 2008. The richest will do fine, not only because they have private means to assure their safety, but because the government showers money on them at the least provocation, defends them with its economic, military, and legal might. The rest of us will not do fine, because they don't care whether we die, whether our civilization falls, whether there is an America or not.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Another excellent comment
Your last paragraph sums up exactly why we the people cannot have the same benefits that nearly every other industrialized country in the world provides for their citizens. Our elected officials simply do not care about the citizens of this country. We are all disposable to them. Instead they have used this pandemic to accelerate the pillaging of this nation by the corporations and the super wealthy.
I truly hope the people of this country will finally wake up and see beyond team red and team blue and demand better for team we the people.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
There was an essay here
a few days ago, called Split of the Take. Something that stuck with me from it was the point made that people mostly don't pay attention to politics, but when they feel their share of the split is not at all fair, they take action and get rid of the rulers. Essay used Russian czar as an example. But wasn't the same thing happening in France in 17 something?
Maybe people waking up to politics isn't what is important necessarily. Maybe when they look at the excesses of ruling class and their own extreme poverty, that is the tipping point for revolutions.
I think you said that when you were doing peace vigils and talking to people, what made an impression on them was hearing how much wars were costing. The money was important to them.
If, if those things are true, whether awake about pokitics or not, people in this country certainly know that they are broke, in debt, with no work or hope of a paycheck soon. Congress's refusal to help regular people while handing unimaginably large sums of money to a few, may be the straw that is too much. Right now, a lot of them are blaming governors for shutting down. But places opening up isn't going to change their financial/survival situation, and that will soon be obvious.
I don't know what is going to happen. I do think at least some people are going to start figuring out who the real culprits are.
That essay was excellent
It is something our elected officials and the oligarchy has forgotten. I posted a comment on another essay that said the most dangerous people in the world are those with nothing left to lose. The actions of Congress and the Trump administration are accelerating those numbers. According to the St. Louis Fed, the unemployment rate could hit as high as 32% which is far higher than 24% at the height of the Great Depression. Many jobs will never return and in all probability up to 40% of small businesses will not re-open. Individuals and small businesses are the two areas which have gotten the very short end of the bailouts.
There is going to be a massive number of people in this country with nothing left to lose.
One of the most valuable things I learned from doing the Peace vigils was learning to listen to people whose politics were vastly different from my own. We have far more in common than differences. The oligarchy has exploited those differences to keep us apart. But by creating a massive underclass, the oligarchy has created the opportunity for us to all come together.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Occupy did this for me:
One of the most valuable things I learned from doing the Peace vigils was learning to listen to people whose politics were vastly different from my own. We have far more in common than differences. The oligarchy has exploited those differences to keep us apart. But by creating a massive underclass, the oligarchy has created the opportunity for us to all come together.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Occupy for me too
I participated in Occupy Tallahassee for several months. I was not a full time Occupier but I did participate in the weekly GA's and most of their other events. It was at Occupy Tallahassee that I heard Dr. Cornel West speak and got to meet this beautiful human being in person. Occupy was what spurred me to join the weekly Peace vigil. without Occupy, I would not have been open to listening to people whose politics were different from mine. The Peace vigil honed that deeply within my being.
Thank you for the reminder of the incredible value of Occupy.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Damn skippy!
I truly hope the people of this country will finally wake up and see beyond team red and team blue and demand better for team we the people.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Is that
the Hong Kong protest leader (the one with the white helmets leader) that was getting advice and working with one of the NGOs that is/are known CIA front group or groups?
Wonder if he knew and was okay with them bringing in ukranian neo-nazis
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/04/ukrainian-nazis-hong-kong-protests/
Well paid would be vassal?
.
Dry ink
My immediate thought when I first saw that picture of those two was, "I'd like to see their paychecks." My second thought was that both checks were signed by the same person.