The United States is an unsustainable society
It is time to stop looking
at the US economy from Wall Street
Standard economic growth measures ignore the economic
precarity that the majority of American live in.
Crises have
a way of turning existing cracks in political and economic systems into fault
lines. They bring to light what has been hiding beneath the surface. This is
why the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, the most serious global
health crisis in a century, has exposed the many pre-existing
weaknesses of the US economy and laid bare the nation's failure to judge the
economy by what actually matters: How it works for working and middle-class
Americans.
In a matter
of weeks, the pandemic left 26 million Americans unemployed and food banks
overwhelmed. As one in four workers in the country are not entitled to a single
day of paid sick leave, COVID-19 also forced many Americans to choose between
staying healthy and putting food on their tables. It brought to the
surface the growing economic precarity of tens of millions of Americans which
Wall Street, and many in Washington, have long been ignoring.
While some
economists and politicians, such as Treasury Secretary and former Goldman
Sachs Executive Steven Mnuchin, claim that the American economy was doing just
fine before the start of the pandemic, the truth is many Americans have been
living on the verge of economic collapse long before COVID-19 reached the
country. After the 2008 economic crash, Wall Street and big corporations
rebounded quickly, but millions of Americans did not.
The likes
of Mnuchin get away with claiming the US economy was doing brilliantly before
the outbreak because they judge economic success merely by the success and
profitability of big corporations and not the economic stability and wellbeing
of ordinary Americans, such as small business owners, warehouse workers and
delivery drivers.
If Mnuchin
judged the health of the US economy by how well everyday people are coping, he
would have seen that things were not so rosy on "Main Street" even
before COVID-19.
Long
before the US recorded its first coronavirus-related death on February 29:
Nearly 60
percent of Americans had $1000 or less in savings, meaning they had
no safety net for an emergency.
Just 35
percent of student loan debt holders were able to make regular payments and one
in four Americans had already defaulted on their student loans.
Half of
Americans over the age of 55 had no retirement savings.
Had our
economy been judged by these measures rather than stock gains on Wall Street,
our political leaders would have understood that our economic ecosystem was
already on the verge of collapse long before the beginning of this
pandemic.
The
economic devastation the US is experiencing today is not solely caused by
COVID-19. The long-ignored weaknesses of the economy have turned a public
health crisis into an economic catastrophe.
Earlier
this year, I ran for US Senate in Texas. I ran as an unabashed progressive and
spoke about the economic realities that most politicians from both political
parties ignore in this state. Everywhere I travelled, people of different
backgrounds asked me over and over again why no one cares about their struggle.
They told me that they feel like they are fighting for their economic survival
alone, without any support from the people who are in positions of power.
Americans
are not struggling with individual health or finance problems. They are in a
collective struggle for economic survival in a country where the government
refuses to take care of its own people. Today in the US, not only most of the
wealth but also most of the political power is consolidated in the hands of a
privileged few. Powerful players like the Koch Brothers and De Vos family are
working to reset the rules and regulations that govern this economy to the
detriment of everyday Americans.
For too
long the suffering of the masses has been ignored by their elected
representatives. But there is opportunity in crisis. COVID-19 can eventually
pave the way for a system that puts the wellbeing of ordinary Americans above
corporate profits.
The
coronavirus pandemic forced the nation to confront the vulnerabilities of the
economy. It made it impossible for anyone to ignore the depressing fact that
nearly one-third of all American workers are part of the gig economy, and have
no job security or benefits.
It made it impossible to ignore that the majority of
Americans are only one pay cheque away from going broke. It made it impossible
to deny that the policies that progressives have long been fighting
for - universal healthcare, paid family and medical leave, guaranteed
employment, cancelling student debt, guaranteed housing, and bailing out
working families in economic recessions - would have made this crisis more
manageable.
That is why we, progressive Americans, must seize this
moment. We should not only support short-term fixes, like those outlined in the
recent stimulus package, but also fight for more fundamental economic changes
that would bring economic security and stability to the lives of working and
middle-class families.
Our real task in the face of this unprecedented public
health emergency is to build an economy and government that works for all of
us. To start this transformation, we should first change the way we measure the
strength of our economy. We need to understand that the strength of
our economy, and our nation, is dependent not on the profitability of large
corporations, but the financial stability of the rest of us - the American people.
by Cristina Tzintzun Ramírez
2 May 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment