The argument over lockdown seems to have crystallized into a simple – and simplistic – binary: health versus the economy. If you position yourself on the left, you value health over money, and so support the lockdown. That’s a mistake.
The “health versus the economy” frame ignores how disastrous the lockdown has been to America’s poor. Despite rhetoric about “shared sacrifice”, the ability to self-isolate is overwhelmingly correlated to income. While middle-class professionals congratulate themselves for staying inside, their isolation is dependent on a class of workers who often labor without essential equipment or while ill. Making matters worse, these exposed workers also tend to have more of the health conditions – including hypertension and diabetes – that make Covid-19 so deadly. In America, getting sick is a class condition.
This pandemic is an X-ray, exposing the racial and class inequalities of our society. Look at the data on the communities that are hardest hit by the virus. New York City is often described as the “center of the pandemic”, but a map of the most affected areas clearly shows that poorer neighborhoods are bearing the brunt. In Chicago, 70 of the first 100 Covid-19 victims were black; Milwaukee tells a similar story.
To make matters worse, the government’s measures to mitigate the economic effects of Covid-19 lockdowns exacerbate previously existing inequalities. Trump’s much-vaunted bailout has created a multitrillion-dollar money supply for the largest corporations in the country, with almost no critical oversight requirements. At the same time, people whose livelihoods are being destroyed are being asked to make do with a one-off $1,200 payment, the conditions for which exclude many of those who need it most.
This amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Just like in 2008, capital has taken hold of the crisis, and turned it to its own advantage.
Yet at this stage simply lifting the lockdown to get the economy going would do more harm than good. The lockdown has generated its own crisis. Immediately lifting the lockdown would risk exacerbating the damage already suffered by America’s poorest.
In April, at least 20 million people filed for unemployment. The sectors most affected by these job losses – those predicated on face-to-face interaction – are overwhelmingly peopled by precariously employed, low-paid laborers who have little in the way of savings or capacity to weather this catastrophe. The lockdown thus doubly damns the poor: most likely to be made ill at work, they are also most likely to lose their jobs.
That doesn’t mean it makes sense to rush people back to work in unsafe conditions that might lead to a new spike of infections. Many workers are rightly scared of returning to workplaces that do not properly ensure their safety. Given the intense competition that is likely to emerge over the few jobs that remain in America, many big employers may create a “race to be bottom” that forces workers to compete to accept dangerous working conditions.
Taking the class and racial consequences of this crisis seriously means thinking more carefully about how we “reopen” the economy.
One way to do this would have been a program of contact tracing, aimed at identifying, isolating and taking care of those who actually have the disease (or are most vulnerable to it), while allowing others to keep the economy going. Such a program was successfully undertaken in South Korea. Unfortunately, it may already be too late for this approach. In any event, Trump’s Republican base would never tolerate what they view as a violation of privacy.
The strategy adopted by some northern European countries – such as Sweden – was another possibility. Keeping the economy going, while offering quality healthcare and other benefits to those who get sick, is less irrational than it might seem. That approach involves less economic disruption. Whether it leads to more deaths in the long run is still an open question. The problem is that the Swedish model pre-supposes a well-functioning healthcare system, whereas American healthcare has suffered decades of contraction under the brunt of neoliberal policies; South Korea has three times as many hospital beds per 1,000 people as the US does.
Neither the Swedish nor South Korean models are possible in America today, and neither resolve the true crisis that the US faces, which is dealing with the disaster caused by the lockdown. Rather than insisting on staying at home, the left should argue for implementing an end to the lockdown that actually answers the demands of the workers striking at Amazon, Checkers, Instacart, and elsewhere for safe working conditions and worker’s rights.
A recent bill proposed by senators Sanders, Harris and Markey – which includes expanded unemployment insurance and the waiving of all student loan payments during the crisis – is a good start. But more must be done to address the structural inequalities that have made the coronavirus so deadly in the first place.
Universal healthcare and a complete overhaul of working conditions and unemployment benefits must be part of any comprehensive strategy for economic recovery. So is a massive public investment program that doesn’t just focus on propping up the stock market, but actually creates long-lasting and well-paid jobs.
The objections that were routinely raised against such proposals before the Covid-19 emergency centered on the difficulty of financing such programs. But if the way we have responded to the crisis has taught us anything, it’s that the money can be found when there’s a political will for it. It’s just a question of who we want it to benefit.
Covid-19 hurts the most vulnerable – but so does lockdown. We need more nuanced debate
The class and racial consequences of this crisis mean we must think more carefully about how we ‘reopen’ the economy
Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters
The argument over lockdown seems to have crystallized into a simple – and simplistic – binary: health versus the economy. If you position yourself on the left, you value health over money, and so support the lockdown. That’s a mistake.
The “health versus the economy” frame ignores how disastrous the lockdown has been to America’s poor. Despite rhetoric about “shared sacrifice”, the ability to self-isolate is overwhelmingly correlated to income. While middle-class professionals congratulate themselves for staying inside, their isolation is dependent on a class of workers who often labor without essential equipment or while ill. Making matters worse, these exposed workers also tend to have more of the health conditions – including hypertension and diabetes – that make Covid-19 so deadly. In America, getting sick is a class condition.
This pandemic is an X-ray, exposing the racial and class inequalities of our society. Look at the data on the communities that are hardest hit by the virus. New York City is often described as the “center of the pandemic”, but a map of the most affected areas clearly shows that poorer neighborhoods are bearing the brunt. In Chicago, 70 of the first 100 Covid-19 victims were black; Milwaukee tells a similar story.
To make matters worse, the government’s measures to mitigate the economic effects of Covid-19 lockdowns exacerbate previously existing inequalities. Trump’s much-vaunted bailout has created a multitrillion-dollar money supply for the largest corporations in the country, with almost no critical oversight requirements. At the same time, people whose livelihoods are being destroyed are being asked to make do with a one-off $1,200 payment, the conditions for which exclude many of those who need it most.
This amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Just like in 2008, capital has taken hold of the crisis, and turned it to its own advantage.
Yet at this stage simply lifting the lockdown to get the economy going would do more harm than good. The lockdown has generated its own crisis. Immediately lifting the lockdown would risk exacerbating the damage already suffered by America’s poorest.
In April, at least 20 million people filed for unemployment. The sectors most affected by these job losses – those predicated on face-to-face interaction – are overwhelmingly peopled by precariously employed, low-paid laborers who have little in the way of savings or capacity to weather this catastrophe. The lockdown thus doubly damns the poor: most likely to be made ill at work, they are also most likely to lose their jobs.
That doesn’t mean it makes sense to rush people back to work in unsafe conditions that might lead to a new spike of infections. Many workers are rightly scared of returning to workplaces that do not properly ensure their safety. Given the intense competition that is likely to emerge over the few jobs that remain in America, many big employers may create a “race to be bottom” that forces workers to compete to accept dangerous working conditions.
Taking the class and racial consequences of this crisis seriously means thinking more carefully about how we “reopen” the economy.
One way to do this would have been a program of contact tracing, aimed at identifying, isolating and taking care of those who actually have the disease (or are most vulnerable to it), while allowing others to keep the economy going. Such a program was successfully undertaken in South Korea. Unfortunately, it may already be too late for this approach. In any event, Trump’s Republican base would never tolerate what they view as a violation of privacy.
The strategy adopted by some northern European countries – such as Sweden – was another possibility. Keeping the economy going, while offering quality healthcare and other benefits to those who get sick, is less irrational than it might seem. That approach involves less economic disruption. Whether it leads to more deaths in the long run is still an open question. The problem is that the Swedish model pre-supposes a well-functioning healthcare system, whereas American healthcare has suffered decades of contraction under the brunt of neoliberal policies; South Korea has three times as many hospital beds per 1,000 people as the US does.
Neither the Swedish nor South Korean models are possible in America today, and neither resolve the true crisis that the US faces, which is dealing with the disaster caused by the lockdown. Rather than insisting on staying at home, the left should argue for implementing an end to the lockdown that actually answers the demands of the workers striking at Amazon, Checkers, Instacart, and elsewhere for safe working conditions and worker’s rights.
A recent bill proposed by senators Sanders, Harris and Markey – which includes expanded unemployment insurance and the waiving of all student loan payments during the crisis – is a good start. But more must be done to address the structural inequalities that have made the coronavirus so deadly in the first place.
Universal healthcare and a complete overhaul of working conditions and unemployment benefits must be part of any comprehensive strategy for economic recovery. So is a massive public investment program that doesn’t just focus on propping up the stock market, but actually creates long-lasting and well-paid jobs.
The objections that were routinely raised against such proposals before the Covid-19 emergency centered on the difficulty of financing such programs. But if the way we have responded to the crisis has taught us anything, it’s that the money can be found when there’s a political will for it. It’s just a question of who we want it to benefit.