Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the Toronto Star
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed major practical and ideological shortcomings of capitalism. What is normally buried in a distracting blizzard of entertainment programming, related eating and socializing and mindless social media chatter is now clearly apparent. Capitalism has generated a society that is an inch deep and a mile wide – a society of haves and have-nots, of billionaires and bums. Everything in society has been seriously underfunded for years as billion-dollar corporations ramped up their profits and the uber -rich raked in the money. Healthcare is a perfect example. It has been running on skeletal budgets for so long it is totally un prepared for this crisis with shortages of key equipment like masks and respirators.
Capitalism is about individualized profit and greed not people. In pursuing this single goal entrepreneurs to CEOs have worked on a simple principle – lower costs and raise prices to maximize profits with no limits at either end. This has always been the driving force of capitalism but since Ronald Regan introduced us to globalization and massive corporate tax cuts it has become an obsession. This has led to an economy where the vast majority of the inhabitants live from pay-cheque to pay-cheque while a very few billionaires run the world. Regular people live in fear as all of the part-time contract jobs are shuttered with no compensation other than what might be provided by other taxpayers in government funded bailouts.
Regan began a regression that has taken society back to the 1880s. Globalization made job competition global. Jobs left North America and went to countries with Third World economies and no labour standards like Mexico, China, Bangladesh and India. Jobs became globalized and marginalized as stunningly rich corporations turned full-time, stable, quality high-paying jobs into short-term, contracted out, part-time jobs without pensions, healthcare, benefits or EI sick leave provisions – all to bump up their bottom line. Corporations also convinced governments that they were paying too much tax and so governments of all stripes have been slashing corporate taxes since 1970 in a fruitless effort to stimulate the economy. It has been a complete failure. Corporations’ profits went sky high while workers salaries tanked or were held stagnant.
Holding the line on wages and spending had a drastic but almost imperceptible effect upon society over time. There was a significant long-term decline in real spending on society (through continuous false austerity) that has been ongoing for almost thirty years as corporations cut back to increase their bottom line and get bigger. Corporate profits have gone through the roof while global society has gone down the toilet. With corporate taxes plummeting, governments were forced to severely tighten their belts. Then the pandemic hit.
Years of underfunding to boost corporate profits were suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Healthcare has seen its capacity and quality reduced or frozen; fewer doctors and nurses and the introduction of more PSWs, closing beds and administrators working with budgets cut to the bone has now been revealed to be grossly inadequate by this pandemic.There is a serious shortage of critical care workers’ equipment and bed capacity in the system across the country despite the government’s brave reassurance. Rather than building in extra capacity over the years for just such an event, nothing has been done since the SARS, MERS and Ebola crises. These were little practices for the big pandemic but rather than increasing funding for organizations that would help in this crisis their funding has ben constantly reduced or eliminated while countries spend unlimited amounts of money making frivolous profits for shareholders, funding proxy-wars, building new sophisticated missile systems and military weapons or planning their next space venture while billions live in poverty and millions of migrants are displaced every year. Quality healthcare is also denied to hundreds of thousands of people during this pandemic through underfunding while the rich get high quality care and the world goes to hell in a handcart. All countries are guilty of these crimes but in particular the developed G8 countries. The U.S., Russia and China should be singled out as being are particularly responsible for allowing this situation to exist.
Capitalism is responsible for this pandemic. If we learn anything from this it should be that investing in people not profits is the answer.