Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the Toronto Star

The recent COVID-19 pandemic is ripping through world economies and revealing its weaknesses. It is laying waste to the concept of globalization that was touted by large corporations as the next wave of the new Darwinian capitalism. Cheap global supply chains and markets ramped up profits by cutting costs sharply while adding usurious profits to the price of goods. China became the darling of this economy with a massive population like India’s, an authoritarian social structure and workers who were paid pennies on the dollar. The workforce was globalized as well ripping communities and families apart as workers were required to go where the jobs were – anywhere in the world. Corporations emptied out of the U.S.A. and went offshore. Globalization destabilized the world’s economy in twenty years. Corporate profits went through the roof while worker’s wages and standard of living languished.

After thirty years the CoCOVID-19 pandemic has revealed an economy that is so thin that any shock to its operation is a crisis. The current problems with elder care are a case in point.

Elder care has been stripped down to its barest elements. The capitalist economy has been shaving down the supports and services to our elder population for thirty years ever since Ronal Regan and Margaret Thatcher. Corporate tax cuts over the last fifty years begun by Regan have decimated government coffers around the world leading to the ongoing austerity spending that has cut the services and supports for seniors. We have sacrificed our seniors, teachers, healthcare, social services and our law courts all in the name of profit. Any services government provides are viewed as frills and drain on profits. Our elders are viewed under this system as a burden on society and an opportunity to make massive amounts of money. In the drive to make profits, operators and governments have cut to the bone. They have cut staff, reduced the quality of staff, cut protective equipment and services, food quality and increased the density of residents. Governments complied by cutting inspections. All in the pursuit of profit. Elder care services are a perfect place to do this because older, frail adults are hardly likely to complain. In contrast, these seniors should be the heroes of our society. They have lived a full and productive life, paid their taxes, supported the economy, made companies rich and been responsible citizens all their lives yet when it comes to their care in their final years we have turned out backs on them. They have a right to be cared for until they pass not warehoused in public care or private for profit care or.

Governments of all stripes have also failed in their fiduciary duty to regulate the care of seniors. They have quietly overseen the deregulation of nursing homes, long-term care homes and chronic care homes to make the operators happy instead of increasing their oversight of greedy, dispassionate owners. Helpless adults are put in homes like these by their own children who are too busy to care for them in this two-parents working, high tech, let’s enjoy life economy and then are shocked when the truth comes out. If they didn’t know they should have.

Let us also remember that in a patriarchal society this is a women’s issue. Few of the women health ministers have mentioned this. Women make thirty percent less than men on average despite pay equity legislation. The health, elder and childcare responsibilities are almost entirely born by hard-working, quietly efficient women. The problems in the elder care system are symptomatic of problems in any other care system where women predominate – low wages, poor working conditions and little respect. If the pendemic has shown us anything it has revealed how important and significant the care of seniors, the sick and children actually is. Without the tireless work of women society would grind to a halt but even when it has like during this pandemic, women continue to work on. Hats off to women.

This has been happening again and again and again across our entire capitalist economy. Changing elder care is not enough. We must change capitalism and the profit motive. Elder care has become a profit factory and the canary in the coal mine.