April 28, 2020
The Long Haul
Day 40
We are all socialists now!
The word “now” is relative; the phrase is not new. It crops up every time a major crisis disrupts our lives.
After President Obama was first elected, a Newsweek cover declared: “We are all socialists now.” The American right attacked the Obama presidency as socialist, meaning foreign and un-American. The Obama stimulus package was socialist. Obamacare was socialist. This was the right-wing, bird-song for eight years.
Bernie Sanders brought some legitimacy to the term in the 2016 election. Before Bernie, socialism was a synonym for communism and the deadly, the iron-fisted rule of its most infamous adherents: Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot. This is especially true for the “boomer” generation that is only just now beginning to cede power in this country.
Bernie’s vision never had a chance. It did not matter that he embraced the politics of Sweden and not the Soviet Union.
A socialist is a socialist is a socialist. And socialism is bad!
Until it is not. Until we need it!
When life is good, capitalism is comfort-food for the first-world, middle-class and those striving to get there. It keeps alive the America dream of finding meaningful work that pays well, owning a home, raising a family and retiring comfortably and debt-free at 65.
For many in the rest of the world, the poor, disenfranchised and essentially those outside the ruling class, socialism is a lifeline.
The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that when the going gets tough, our inner socialist emerges, no matter what our politics are.
The $1.5 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package passed Congress almost without opposition in late March. This week Congress passed a $484 billion stimulus bill. The vote in the House was 388-5. Congress is considering another stimulus package that will bring federal spending to more than $3 trillion.
Democrats voted for the stimulus packages. Republicans voted for it too. Socialists stimulate the economy with government money, capitalists do not. So it is undeniable, we are all socialists now. For a while anyway.
The socialist acts of a divided Congress will help get people back to work and re-fire our nations economic engine. Re-fire is a better term than restart. Our economy slowed but did not cease. Some sectors boomed to the point of bursting during the pandemic; tragically think health care, a huge economic driver.
Socialism has another big role to play before this crisis is over. It is key to helping us find a pandemic-ending vaccine and lifesaving treatments for the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration has reported there are 72 registered trials underway in the US and abroad aimed at finding a treatment or vaccine to defeat Covid-19.
Today the New York Times wrote about a 6,000 person trial on a promising vaccine that is scheduled to begin late next month at the Jenner Institute at Oxford. If the trial is successful, researchers say, the vaccine could be ready as early as the fall.
This is a dazzlingly-hopeful prognosis. The optimists in the science and medical community say a treatment and cure are 12-to-18 months off. In the best of times, it has taken at least four years to develop a vaccine. Often it takes a dozen years to find a cure.
Sadly investors have not always been motivated to find a cure. The Times reported that major drug companies typically see little reason to invest in cures in developing countries, where outbreaks are most common. The disease often burns itself out before a profitable vaccine can be developed.
Covid-19 has changed the equation. It is an equal-opportunity disease. It has attacked the first, second and third world dispassionately and without prejudice.
The attack on the developed world however has spawned the race for a time-bending solution, a cure, a treatment. For that to happen, profit has to become a secondary motivation. The 72 for-profit and not-for-profit teams studying and testing vaccines and treatments must work together if a speedy solution is to be found.
This research will cost billions of dollars. Government will foot the bill. We will all pay for it. This is socialism in its most pure form.
Ironically our success at slowing the virus may delay the search for a solution. Researchers cannot intentionally infect humans during a trial. Trial participants are inoculated with either a placebo or the drug being tested and then returned to the community where the virus has been spreading. If community spread has been stifled by social distancing, stay-at-home orders etc, it will be difficult to get meaningful test results.
No-one can accurately predict when a real medical breakthrough will emerge. It is clear when it does, someone will make a lot of money. Perhaps many will make a lot of money.
As is often the case in our modern day republic, the path to that profit taking will be built by scientists, doctors, politicians and businesses working together for our common good, in this case for the very survival of our planet!
Will we all be socialists when the pandemic is resolved and a “new normal” emerges?
It is not likely. The underlying issues that divide us will be still be there. Conservatives and libertarians will immediately begin to rewrite history. Attacks on Medicare and Social Security will resume. People will forget, because they want to. Memories are short; bad memories even shorter. People hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe.
There will be modest changes but it will mostly be business as it once was. Capitalism will be good, socialism bad.
Until the next crisis.
Be safe!
(In this blog post, I have used a larger font. I hope my readers like it. I was going blind trying to edit using the smaller text.)
The Long Haul
Day 40
We are all socialists now!
The word “now” is relative; the phrase is not new. It crops up every time a major crisis disrupts our lives.
After President Obama was first elected, a Newsweek cover declared: “We are all socialists now.” The American right attacked the Obama presidency as socialist, meaning foreign and un-American. The Obama stimulus package was socialist. Obamacare was socialist. This was the right-wing, bird-song for eight years.
Bernie Sanders brought some legitimacy to the term in the 2016 election. Before Bernie, socialism was a synonym for communism and the deadly, the iron-fisted rule of its most infamous adherents: Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot. This is especially true for the “boomer” generation that is only just now beginning to cede power in this country.
Bernie’s vision never had a chance. It did not matter that he embraced the politics of Sweden and not the Soviet Union.
A socialist is a socialist is a socialist. And socialism is bad!
Until it is not. Until we need it!
When life is good, capitalism is comfort-food for the first-world, middle-class and those striving to get there. It keeps alive the America dream of finding meaningful work that pays well, owning a home, raising a family and retiring comfortably and debt-free at 65.
For many in the rest of the world, the poor, disenfranchised and essentially those outside the ruling class, socialism is a lifeline.
The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that when the going gets tough, our inner socialist emerges, no matter what our politics are.
The $1.5 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package passed Congress almost without opposition in late March. This week Congress passed a $484 billion stimulus bill. The vote in the House was 388-5. Congress is considering another stimulus package that will bring federal spending to more than $3 trillion.
Democrats voted for the stimulus packages. Republicans voted for it too. Socialists stimulate the economy with government money, capitalists do not. So it is undeniable, we are all socialists now. For a while anyway.
The socialist acts of a divided Congress will help get people back to work and re-fire our nations economic engine. Re-fire is a better term than restart. Our economy slowed but did not cease. Some sectors boomed to the point of bursting during the pandemic; tragically think health care, a huge economic driver.
Socialism has another big role to play before this crisis is over. It is key to helping us find a pandemic-ending vaccine and lifesaving treatments for the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration has reported there are 72 registered trials underway in the US and abroad aimed at finding a treatment or vaccine to defeat Covid-19.
Today the New York Times wrote about a 6,000 person trial on a promising vaccine that is scheduled to begin late next month at the Jenner Institute at Oxford. If the trial is successful, researchers say, the vaccine could be ready as early as the fall.
This is a dazzlingly-hopeful prognosis. The optimists in the science and medical community say a treatment and cure are 12-to-18 months off. In the best of times, it has taken at least four years to develop a vaccine. Often it takes a dozen years to find a cure.
Sadly investors have not always been motivated to find a cure. The Times reported that major drug companies typically see little reason to invest in cures in developing countries, where outbreaks are most common. The disease often burns itself out before a profitable vaccine can be developed.
Covid-19 has changed the equation. It is an equal-opportunity disease. It has attacked the first, second and third world dispassionately and without prejudice.
The attack on the developed world however has spawned the race for a time-bending solution, a cure, a treatment. For that to happen, profit has to become a secondary motivation. The 72 for-profit and not-for-profit teams studying and testing vaccines and treatments must work together if a speedy solution is to be found.
This research will cost billions of dollars. Government will foot the bill. We will all pay for it. This is socialism in its most pure form.
Ironically our success at slowing the virus may delay the search for a solution. Researchers cannot intentionally infect humans during a trial. Trial participants are inoculated with either a placebo or the drug being tested and then returned to the community where the virus has been spreading. If community spread has been stifled by social distancing, stay-at-home orders etc, it will be difficult to get meaningful test results.
No-one can accurately predict when a real medical breakthrough will emerge. It is clear when it does, someone will make a lot of money. Perhaps many will make a lot of money.
As is often the case in our modern day republic, the path to that profit taking will be built by scientists, doctors, politicians and businesses working together for our common good, in this case for the very survival of our planet!
Will we all be socialists when the pandemic is resolved and a “new normal” emerges?
It is not likely. The underlying issues that divide us will be still be there. Conservatives and libertarians will immediately begin to rewrite history. Attacks on Medicare and Social Security will resume. People will forget, because they want to. Memories are short; bad memories even shorter. People hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe.
There will be modest changes but it will mostly be business as it once was. Capitalism will be good, socialism bad.
Until the next crisis.
Be safe!
(In this blog post, I have used a larger font. I hope my readers like it. I was going blind trying to edit using the smaller text.)
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