Coronavirus Exposes Inequality In The World's Leading Capitalist Country

One of the great gurus of finance, Robert Kiyosaki, publishes on April 13 a tweet where he expresses his despair about the situation in the US:

"Millions are broke. Civil unrest at the door. Military and police take position to protect us from our friends and neighbors. Very sad. May God have mercy on us." @theRealKiyosaki

The fear is not exaggerated. Unemployment exceeds what it was during the 2008 recession and all forecasts indicate it is going to be the worst in history.

More than 16 million people are already out of work and are asking the government for help, and unemployment continues to grow.

In just two weeks, 10 million workers lost their jobs, to which in a few days another 6 million were added, unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression of 1929 according to the New York Times and far exceeds the last economic crisis of 2007.

Those laid off receive no severance pay from the companies. Tens of millions moved from poverty to extreme poverty by not being able to pay rent or buy food, poor children survive on school lunches in some states.

Large food producers such as dairy companies or potato chip processors cannot sell because fast food restaurants -their main customers- have closed down, so they throw food in the garbage, which is less expensive than donating to soup kitchens, thus avoiding the costs of refrigeration, transportation and storage. Hunger and waste, two faces of the same capitalist irrationality.

The threat to workers' lives comes as a pincer, on the one hand the food emergency and, on the other, the precarious health care.

The health care system in the U.S. is the most expensive in the first world and the one that has the least reach in its population.

In addition, Trump had the policy of making it more precarious by including cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the institution in charge of alleviating epidemics. These cuts were in line with Trump's policy of giving subsidies and tax benefits to the 1% of the ruling class.

The coronavirus pandemic lays bare the inequality of the system in the leading nation of capitalism.

Some 27 million Americans have no health coverage and those who have insurance must still bear costs (basic deductible fees) that have increased in recent times by more than 160%.

Nearly half of Americans would become insolvent in the event of an unplanned expense of more than US$400 for any illness.

In several regions of the U.S., mortality rates do not reflect the demographics of their population.

For example, in Alabama, 44% of deaths are black while the state's black population is only 26%. While Louisiana has a 33% black population, 70% of coronavirus deaths are black.

Similar figures are present in Chicago with 67% of the African American population dead even though this racial group only constitutes 32% of the total. Deaths in Detroit are 40% black even though they make up only 14% of the population.

Hispanics and African Americans constitute the poorest, most vulnerable, most exploited and most discriminated against sectors in this country.

Trump's economic stimulus package, with bipartisan support, was $2.2 trillion. Of this it allocates a tiny portion to care for the millions of people who had registered as unemployed, to whom the government gives a check of $1,200 to each citizen while giving $500 billion in financial aid to corporations such as airlines and other businesses that applied for pandemic relief.

Informal employment has proliferated with the flexibilization and casualization of labor over the last decade.

In the wake of the 2008 crisis, many jobs went from full-time to part-time. These jobs are overwhelmingly held by blacks and Latinos, who receive low wages, no health insurance, no vacations, and no sick days.

Most of these workers do not have their own vehicles, so they must travel on public transportation, the main source of covid-19 transmission.

In addition, illegal immigrants tend not to go to the doctor for fear of deportation, which would imply that the number of infections and deaths would be much higher than official records indicate.

For the Democratic Party, the oldest capitalist party in the world, the vote of African-Americans is fundamental in its proselytizing campaign for the presidential elections where Donald Trump was positioned as favorite.

Joe Biden, the liberal presidential candidate who was once vice-president in the Obama era, is one of the standard bearers of "reopening the economy" or, to understand it in its class translation, sending workers to die for capital.

Many companies have not stopped operating, but they did not take the minimum safety measures for workers.

Amazon did not cease operations despite the fact that several workers in more than 70 warehouses around the world tested positive. While workers are forced to work in poor conditions, Amazon's stock has risen 23% since April 2019.

Jeff Bezos owner of Amazon, in the first three months of 2020 increased his fortune by $24 billion dollars and the value of this company reaches $1.1 trillion dollars, similar to the gross domestic product of Mexico in 2019.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in a factory of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country, 634 workers tested positive for the coronavirus.

The workers denounced that sanitary measures were not implemented by management, who refused to close the factory in the midst of the massive infection. Tyson Food, a leader in the meat industry, did not provide masks to its workers in a plant in Iowa until two of its workers died of the virus.

The U.S. has sufficient resources to provide comprehensive, quality health care to the entire population. It is also in a position to subsidize all workers for several months so that they do not leave their homes and avoid contagion. That the government does not do so is not a question of lack of resources but of capitalist management of them.

The example of Ireland is paradigmatic, nationalizing all private hospitals during the pandemic so that the entire population has access to health services.

The food producing companies should be under State management and workers control so that no one goes hungry in the country.

The life of the workers over the profits of the capitalists. No return to work until the pandemic stops. Minimum wage for all unemployed.

Unions should defend the quarantine and not demand to go back to work and die in the factories.

The government and the employers do not defend the population. The capitalist fear is that workers will take the protection of life into their own hands, which is why one of the most conservative newspapers in the U.S., Bloomberg.com, warns with great concern:

"The most misleading cliché about the coronavirus is that it treats us all equally. It doesn't, medically, economically, socially or psychologically. In particular, Covid-19 exacerbates pre-existing conditions of inequality wherever it arrives. In a short time, this will cause social upheaval, up to and including uprisings and revolutions."