gracchusdixit

It was scarcely more than a week ago that Joe Biden rode to victory in the “Super Tuesday” primary elections that have all but sealed his nomination as the next Democratic candidate for president.  Although his progressive opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, has vowed to fight on, the odds are now tilted heavily against him, and it would take little less than a miracle for him to prevail.  After months of stumbling and fumbling, Biden’s comeback was propelled by sheer panic on the part of the Democratic Party establishment and rank-and-file voters that a “socialist from Vermont” could never defeat the moronic but canny thug who occupies the White House.  

The irony in this is richer than clotted cream and thicker than treacle, because here we are, just days later, facing an existential health and economic crisis.  And to combat that crisis, much of the country is embracing “socialism” without even knowing it.  

The House of Representatives has passed an emergency bill that provides paid sick leave, extends unemployment benefits, and guarantees free coronavirus testing for those who need it, which will soon be just about everyone in the country.  These are ”socialist” measures, one and all.

The airline industry has asked for $50 billion dollars in federal assistance to stave off collapse and possible bankruptcy.  This mirrors the de facto nationalization of the automobile industry that occurred after the 2008 crash—another “socialist” measure, if ever there was one.  

And this is just the beginning.  

Our country’s response to the global pandemic has been the slowest and least competent in the industrialized world, with the result that we have no accurate assessment of how many Americans are already infected.  The number is certainly larger, much larger, than the latest accounting, and, as testing begins in earnest, will grow explosively.  This will send further shockwaves through the already battered financial markets and the broader economy.  It is all but certain that a recession is now underway, one that will spread and grow deeper as even more of the economy shuts down to stave off the worst consequences of the pandemic.  It is likely that massive government intervention will be required to save, not only our economy, but the global economy, before it tumbles from recession into depression.

In sum, the economic system we have idolized since the days of Ronald Reagan is crumbling before eyes, and it has become all too apparent that the “invisible hand” of the market is utterly powerless in the face of an equally invisible but far more powerful biological catastrophe.  

Three days ago, the nation’s leading expert on epidemics, Dr. Anthony Fauci, testified before Congress.  When he was asked why the response of the United States to the global pandemic has been so woefully deficient, he said:

The system is not really geared to what we need right now.  That is a failing.  It is a failing.  Let’s admit it.  The idea of anybody getting it (i.e., coronavirus testing) easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that.  Do I think we should be?  Yes.  But we are not.

Fauci was talking about for-profit, privately insured health care, a system that costs the United States vastly more than any other advanced country and provides some of the worst care in the industrialized world.  Let’s be clear, however.  That system is the direct result of free-market capitalism, in which health care, like every other social good, is nothing more than a commodity to be sold and exploited for self-interest and private profit.  Capitalism justifies itself by claiming that the hard work, virtuous behavior, and entrepreneurial energy of self-interested individuals will inevitably produce rewards, not only for those individuals but for society as a whole.  To quote Gordon Gekko, the infamous character in the movie Wall Street:  “Greed is good.”

The problem, of course, is that greed isn’t good.  Not only that, it is grotesquely inefficient and unjust.  Natural and biological calamities have no regard for hard work, purportedly virtuous behavior, or entrepreneurial energy.  They could care less.  They strike the rich and the poor, the privileged and the powerless.  They humble great nations and sweep away empires.  They topple princes and kings no less than carpenters and plumbers.  To think that free-market capitalism is capable of dealing with a calamity like the coronavirus is delusional.

The “other countries” Dr. Fauci referred to in his testimony before Congress disabused themselves of that delusion long ago.  That is why their health care systems are more effective and far less costly than ours.  That is why they are far ahead of us in combatting this pandemic.  And that is why Americans are in for a rude awakening.  If Italy, with a health care system that is by all metrics superior to ours, is already drowning, just imagine what is going to happen here when the full scope of this pandemic becomes clear. 

No one knows when or how all this will end.  What we do know, however, is that the smug and self-confident myths of market capitalism, which have dominated our public life since the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, are coming apart.   Who are the “socialists” now?  When all this is over, the answer may be:  everyone.