So here we are, in the Great Covid Depression. The problem is, we were already in the middle of a second great depression before Covid-19 hit. It was just really hard to see for anyone living in the top 20% or so of income earners. For four decades until Covid, they(/we) had been doing well, very well, or ridiculously well, depending on how close they were to the top 1%. For the bottom 80%, over those same four decades, wealth, wages, and basic living standards had stagnated, eroded, or fallen off a cliff. Over those years, the top 20%, even the very well-meaning among them, found subtle ways to make the depression invisible. In 1994, Bill Clinton removed “discouraged workers” from unemployment statistics. If he had left them in, the official unemployment rate would have counted about 1/5th of American workers as unemployed through most of the ’00s and ’10s. At the peak of the Great Depression, unemployment was about one quarter. Counting discouraged workers, with the Covid shutdown unemployment may now be as high as 38% at the time of this writing–and rising. We’re stacking depression on top of depression. The only silver lining is that Covid, while far from working as a “great equalizer,” is waking up the top 20% to the reality that most other Americans have been living. Since the top 20% are the ones who really call the shots in American democracy, maybe once Covid is no longer keeping us home, we can start working to rebuild our economy, this time for everyone. What are the chances this will happen? And how do we do it?
Who will rebuild America?
Who will rebuild America?
Who will rebuild America?
So here we are, in the Great Covid Depression. The problem is, we were already in the middle of a second great depression before Covid-19 hit. It was just really hard to see for anyone living in the top 20% or so of income earners. For four decades until Covid, they(/we) had been doing well, very well, or ridiculously well, depending on how close they were to the top 1%. For the bottom 80%, over those same four decades, wealth, wages, and basic living standards had stagnated, eroded, or fallen off a cliff. Over those years, the top 20%, even the very well-meaning among them, found subtle ways to make the depression invisible. In 1994, Bill Clinton removed “discouraged workers” from unemployment statistics. If he had left them in, the official unemployment rate would have counted about 1/5th of American workers as unemployed through most of the ’00s and ’10s. At the peak of the Great Depression, unemployment was about one quarter. Counting discouraged workers, with the Covid shutdown unemployment may now be as high as 38% at the time of this writing–and rising. We’re stacking depression on top of depression. The only silver lining is that Covid, while far from working as a “great equalizer,” is waking up the top 20% to the reality that most other Americans have been living. Since the top 20% are the ones who really call the shots in American democracy, maybe once Covid is no longer keeping us home, we can start working to rebuild our economy, this time for everyone. What are the chances this will happen? And how do we do it?