In the US, Capitalism On the Block,

As the number of coronavirus cases in the US explodes, incredibly, Trump is praising himself and the ratings of his “news conferences.”

Looking at the graph, we see that, every day, there are more new cases than there were the days before. In other words, on 3/28, 22,290 new cases appeared, This boils down to an average rate of 929 cases per hour. The previous day, it was 18,224 or 780 new cases per hour. If the trend continues, in two weeks we can estimate that new cases will appear at the rate of a million every four days.

Workers in service industries (hotels, restaurants, maintenance, 108 million), retail (5 million) cannot work from home and are losing their jobs. While the virus shuts down these “nonessential” businesses, for the millions laid off from their mostly low paid jobs, these industries remains quite essential.

Even with unemployment insurance and the recently expanded unemployment insurance benefits, laid off working people will still suffer large reductions in income. The millions of “off the books” workers in the shadow economy and the very poor who don’t need to file a return because they make less than $12,200 a year will get nothing and risk homelessness and hunger. The economy, when the word is used to include everybody, is in deep trouble.

The scions of capitalism in the government know there is a risk of social “instability”, namely, a revolt against the existing financial economic order and that expanded social benefits and other dangerous socialist notions are needed to hold off the masses. Thus Mitch McConell tells Senate Republicans to “choke and vote for the stimulus”. As consolation, they tack on massive bailouts for various industries and use the crisis as a pretext to gut what’s left of environmental laws and women’s abortion rights. When capitalists get in trouble, it’s socialism and public money to the rescue, just like in the 2008 financial meltdown.

If the epidemic in the US gets bad enough, the validity of the system itself could start to be questioned. This is what happened during the Great Depression.

The Trump “administration” is utterly lost. Their only tools are hype, imagery, and political attack. They find themselves in a reality they don’t understand and try to deny. They measure success or failure by stock market averages. They fight among themselves and make no efforts to work with state governors. Their response to the crisis has been paralysis, scapegoating, and wild policy swings. And they are in charge during one of the greatest disasters to ever befall the United States.

There will be political consequesces. Some quotes:

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman on CNBC. “Capitalism does not work in an 18 month shutdown,” he says. Guardian 3/18/2020.

In many ways, this pandemic has cracked open the veneer of our economic and social system to expose how unjust and unhealthy capitalism is. Our job is to make it clear that this is a system-problem, and to showcase more equitable, compassionate and creative solutions. Indybay post at here by Rae Abileah and Nadine Bloch.

Republicans Want Medicare for All, but Just for This One Disease
Everyone’s a socialist in a pandemic. By Farhad Manjoo, NYTimes, 3/11/2020.

Realizing that it is, as always, poor and working people that will suffer most, the cruelty of the Republicans becomes evident by their zeal to “reopen” the economy and get the stock market up.

Some quotes from an article by Robert Reich in the 3/29/30 Guardian.

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem,” the president said last week, announcing that America would be “open for business” by Easter.

Tom Galisano, the founder of Paychex, whose net worth is $2.8bn, believes “the damages of keeping the economy closed could be worse than losing a few more people. You’re picking the better of two evils.”

In a way, the virus enforces a socialist reality. Masses of poor and working infected people will infect the rich. We won’t be healthy until everybody is healthy.