Aloha from Maui. It’s pretty quiet around here these days. In February 2020, 30,000 visitors a day from all around the world landed at the airport, the unemployment rate was 3%. Median home prices recently hit an all time high of $840,000. As of March 28, 2020, 15 visitors a day were showing up despite pleas from the governor not to and the unemployment rate was about 30%. This is the story of every town and city around the world so I’m not here for sympathy, I’m just wondering when we’re all going to wake up from America’s neo liberal dream of business as usual.
Congress recently passed the cynically named “CARES” act which provides a number of economic relief programs but leaves out the usual suspects: the poor, the disabled, the homeless, undocumented immigrants, renters, mortgages not backed by the federal government... All benefits are means tested, all pick winners and losers, the entire thing was written with the idea that our economic and social systems haven’t fundamentally changed between pre-covid times and covid times despite warnings from economists and human rights activists about the hellbroth of social, political, and economic damage this pandemic will wreak. Actual scientists who do actual research say the vaccine necessary to enter a post-covid time is 12-18 months away but the president creates a task force who’s mission is to restart the economy as soon as possible anyway. Which economy is that? Who is going to decide when we are at “as soon as possible”? If the present is anything like the past it won’t be the expendable public faces of the private corporations at that table, or anywhere near it.
As the pandemic rages and the economy contracts, the Trump administration is still trying to kill the ACA. Since most health insurance is tied to jobs millions will lose it and the only avenue they have is COBRA which nobody can afford, the direct market, or The ACA. Those who currently have no health insurance can’t get it because there’s no “open enrollment” being made at healthcare.gov during this apocalyptic melt down.
Trump and his cabal are going to force the working class back to their stations whether it kills them or not. The marginalized populations will just disappear, zipped into body bags and stowed in refrigerated trailers. The elderly population in care homes will die.
The C.A.R.E.S. legislation reflects the neo liberal economic philosophy of the past 40 years which has pulled off the greatest wealth transfer from the bottom 98% to the top 2% in history. We’ve had plenty of opportunities to make fundamental changes, from the dotcom bust to 9-11, climate change, ozone holes, cancer, the Great Recession, Katrina, each a lesson shining a light on the dark underbelly of the American neo liberal dream, each a lesson ignored. It’s my hope that the Sanders campaign has actually made a difference in the current political conversation but Biden and Trump are neo-liberals and have been living in that swamp all their lives. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.