WHEN GOVERNMENTS PRIORITIZE BIG BUSINESS OVER PUBLIC HEALTH
By Majed G Taifour
Have you all seen the 2005 Tom Cruise science fiction movie The War of the Worlds?
The film is about a dock worker who is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade the Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines.
The film earned three Academy Awards nominations.
But that’s not what’s relevant about it.
What’s important is the film’s plot.
It’s about the Earth being observed by extraterrestrials with immense intelligence and no mercy or compassion. As man dominated the world without a doubt, much like microorganisms swarming in a drop of water, these beings plotted to take it all from us.
Fast-forward to 2020…
During the year of the pandemic, the richest 10 percent in America managed to own more than 88 percent of the outstanding shares of companies and mutual funds in the United States of America.
And that’s not all…
The top 1 percent also controlled more than 88 times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent of the American people.
In February 2021, it was announced that the combined net worth of the top 1 percent of Americans was $34.2 trillion, which constitutes about one-third of all US household wealth. On the other hand, the total for the bottom half was $2.1 trillion or 1.9 percent of that wealth.
This could only mean one thing…
American billionaires have scored monumentally during the year of the pandemic, with twenty-first-century tycoons like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos coming on top.
And it’s not just the Americans…
The planet’s 2,300 or so billionaires also got wealthier by $1.9 trillion in 2020 alone, which pushed their net worth up to nearly $11.4 trillion in mid-December 2020, from $9.5 trillion a year earlier despite the pandemic.
Here’s how it all happened…
The government stimulus packages, which were meant for the poor, the middle class, and the unemployed, provided the wealthiest people on earth with the perfect opportunity to expand their fortunes.
Now, what has this got to do with The War of the Worlds?
In the movie, humanity is rendered helpless in the face of a force greater than itself. The film’s depiction of the grim relationship between the invading aliens and the humans they were suppressing depicted a 2020 version of such beings.
With the spoils of the system increasing beyond the reach of so many, those at the top ferociously accumulated wealth, while the rest of the population barely got by. So, they became insanely wealthy, while letting the middle class and the poor drown in their misery.
Today, the top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire middle class. And it has all been directly or indirectly related to the Federal Reserve’s actions.
Because of the Fed’s ultra-loose policies, they made it cheaper to borrow money, but not as attractive to invest it in low-interest-rate, less risky securities like Treasury bonds.
As a result, the Fed incentivized those with extra money to grow it through quicker, often riskier investments in the stock market or real estate. And by 2020, The War of the Worlds declared by the ultra-rich on those seeking a haven from the atrocities of the coronavirus-stricken cities reached a limit beyond the power and means of the impoverished majority.
So, when the US and other world governments announced Covid-related stimulus packages that extended unemployment benefits and protection programs for smaller businesses, the tax breaks and stock investments provided the well-off with an opportunity to score yet another all-time high.
That added nearly 8 million Americans to the ranks of the poor, even as America’s nearly 660 billionaires held twice the amount of wealth of the 165 million poorest Americans.
So, while billionaires grew richer amid a pandemic, and the poor got poorer, the resemblance between the new barons and the plebs became more evident when mirrored with Tom Cruises’ War of the Worlds movie invaders.
And with billionaires putting their wealth above public health amid a pandemic, no wonder the likes of Jeff Bezos, Stephen Schwarzman, Lloyd Blankfein, and other billionaires continued to thrive.
And unlike those living in financial uncertainty and worsening medical conditions trying to stay afloat, this small group of wealthy elites self-isolated at posh vacation properties in the Hamptons, the Catskills, and Sun Valle, or on lavish private yachts like billionaire David Geffen.
What J.C. Pan, a staff writer at The New Republic, said is probably true: “The malfeasance of the ruling class has reached such a level of absurdity that it almost feels as if they’re trying to summon a mob.”
No wonder Donald Trump went on air on Fox News on March 24, 2020, and declared that he would like to see the economy “opened up and just raring to go” by April 12th.
According to Gin Armstrong, a senior research analyst at the Public Accountability Initiative, this arbitrary deadline was set by Trump at the behest of his billionaire friends and was much earlier than what health experts predicted would be necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus.
This is a perfect example of when governments prioritize big business over public health.
Trump, who wanted to change the architecture of the world to make America great again, was willing to sacrifice the lives of the American people for the sake of the rich and famous to safe keep their fortunes.
Not only individuals but also large corporations saw their pandemic profits rise by billions as the poor paid a heavy price.
Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies saw their profits soar by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare an economic model that delivered profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to an Oxfam report published on the 9th of September 2020.
Back then, the confederation of 20 independent charitable organizations reported that half a billion people globally are expected to be pushed into poverty by the economic fallout from the pandemic.
At the time, more than 400 million jobs had already been lost, while the International Labour Organisation estimated that more than 430 million small enterprises and their employees were at risk. In one US company alone, an estimated 27,000 meatpacking workers tested positive and more than 90 died from COVID-19.
Needless to say, even during a pandemic, plutocrats prioritize profits over people. And the maxim “we’re all in this together” is indeed the biggest lie of all!
