Fan­ta­size for a moment that we could set aside pol­i­tics and oper­ate based upon com­mon sense. What would the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment do to best mit­i­gate the dev­as­ta­tion that this pan­dem­ic will vis­it upon human beings? It would, first of all, pro­vide free health­care to every­one. It would dis­trib­ute med­ical resources nation­al­ly based on the great­est need. Then, to pro­tect peo­ple from the nec­es­sary eco­nom­ic deep freeze we are all in due to social dis­tanc­ing, the gov­ern­ment would pur­sue mea­sures that would get every­one through this time in one piece: It would sub­si­dize the nation’s pay­rolls, so that work­ers could stay in their jobs and busi­ness­es could restart eas­i­ly; it would sus­pend rent, for peo­ple and busi­ness­es alike; it would send every­one a month­ly basic income to pay for neces­si­ties until this is over; and it would avoid allow­ing small busi­ness­es to go bank­rupt, because those rep­re­sent mil­lions of jobs that peo­ple need to return to.

Those are all obvi­ous steps to take if your goal was to pro­tect humans. But imag­ine, instead, if you had an entire­ly dif­fer­ent goal: pro­tect­ing cap­i­tal. What would you do then? Well, you would pri­or­i­tize the health of cor­po­rate bal­ance sheets, rather than human bod­ies. You would keep the health­care indus­try, now boom­ing, in pri­vate hands; you would stim­u­late con­sumer demand via unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, rather than by keep­ing work­ers on exist­ing pay­rolls, in order to cre­ate an enor­mous pool of cheap and des­per­ate labor; you would pur­sue tax cuts for the investor class; you would wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to allow debt to pile up on indi­vid­u­als; and you wouldn’t be too sad about small busi­ness­es going bank­rupt — they are, after all, just ced­ing mar­ket share to big­ger, rich­er busi­ness­es. You would use this cri­sis to cre­ate a greater, not less­er, con­cen­tra­tion of wealth. You would emerge on the oth­er side with more, not less, inequal­i­ty. The truth is, it would be easy.

Now, guess what the U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is doing? It is allow­ing the unem­ploy­ment rate to sky­rock­et, as tens of mil­lions of work­ers are fired; it is allow­ing count­less small busi­ness­es to go bank­rupt, from incom­pe­tence and neglect; it has not even con­sid­ered a nation­al sus­pen­sion of rent, nor a strong nation­al pol­i­cy of paid sick leave, much less a nation­al sys­tem of free pub­lic health­care; as mil­lions of needy peo­ple strug­gle with decrepit and bro­ken state unem­ploy­ment sys­tems and wait weeks or months for their emer­gency checks to come, and essen­tial work­ers are forced to agi­tate or walk out to gain haz­ard pay, the admin­is­tra­tion plots a new bill fea­tur­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax cut and ​“a waiv­er that would clear busi­ness­es of lia­bil­i­ty from employ­ees who con­tract the coro­n­avirus on the job.”

We are told we’re a nation at war. In real wars, we have high­er tax­es on the rich. This time, we are giv­ing investors a tax cut.

Whether Amer­i­cans know it or not, their gov­ern­ment is not work­ing for them. Their gov­ern­ment is work­ing on behalf of cap­i­tal. Humans are now a mere sec­ond-order, instru­men­tal fac­tor to be con­sid­ered based on how it affects cap­i­tal. In this per­ilous time, cap­i­tal must be pro­tect­ed and nur­tured, and we must draw resources from our entire soci­ety in order to help cap­i­tal sur­vive, in the same way that the body will draw blood from oth­er organs to save the brain. Peo­ple can be sac­ri­ficed — cap­i­tal is irre­place­able. We are nav­i­gat­ing our way through this so that cap­i­tal comes out okay on the oth­er side. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that tens or hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans will die because we are choos­ing this approach, rather than an approach that pri­or­i­tizes human life. They will die because we did not ded­i­cate resources before this pan­dem­ic to build­ing an ade­quate sys­tem of pub­lic health care, and they will die because we made the deci­sion dur­ing this pan­dem­ic to put the needs of cap­i­tal first. We did not keep work­ing peo­ple on pay­rolls, because that would be less advan­ta­geous for the own­ers of cap­i­tal. We did not nation­al­ize fac­to­ries, nor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, because that would be less advan­ta­geous to the own­ers of cap­i­tal. And of course we did not release the pris­on­ers in the jails being rav­aged by this dis­ease. What would that do for the stock market?

When this is all over, politi­cians will stand up and say that the heroes of this cri­sis were the doc­tors and the nurs­es and the gro­cery work­ers who kept going, because we need­ed them to. But that will not be true. Doc­tors are get­ting pay cuts because they are no longer mak­ing rev­enue for their employ­ers with nonessen­tial pro­ce­dures; nurs­es are becom­ing sick and dying because we didn’t stock­pile enough cheap plas­tic masks; gro­cery work­ers are forced to beg and plead and strike for a cou­ple of dol­lars extra per hour, at the risk of their own lives. The true heroes of this cri­sis, from the per­spec­tive of those in charge, will be the pri­vate equi­ty firms that rush in to buy up dis­tressed busi­ness­es, and the hedge funds that pour mon­ey into cheap debt, and the investors that scoop up the homes that peo­ple will be evict­ed from. They are the ones that renew the blood of cap­i­tal, you see. They are the ones that will res­cue us. They are the ones who will shep­herd our pre­cious cap­i­tal through this dan­ger­ous time, and into the promised land.

They will have earned their cap­i­tal gains tax cut and legal pro­tec­tions and gov­ern­ment bailout and their hefty prof­its. Where else do the ten mil­lion of you peo­ple who are now unem­ployed expect to get jobs after this? Hm? Be grate­ful. Your will­ing­ness to work for very lit­tle after this means that you may be valu­able enough to make it prof­itable to not let you die. Congratulations.