There is an enduring perception that the United States is an individualistic nation whose people oppose collective guarantees to the basic necessities of life. This perception is false.
Look at, for example, the overwhelming popularity of our Social Security program and the guarantees of free public education contained in every state constitution; the United States already has some well-established economic rights that are deeply woven into the fabric of our society. Public opinion polls in recent years show strong majorities in support of recognizing and enforcing housing and health care as human rights and calling for the government to do more to address food insecurity. Most Americans have long supported a government jobs guarantee.
So what is stopping us? Corporations and wealthy individuals who deploy their de facto unlimited ability to fund campaigns and lobby lawmakers to crush economic support programs.
Part of their motivation is to preserve and expand the benefits of some of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world. But the wealthy’s main goal in opposing economic support programs is something else altogether: maintaining a steady supply of people desperate enough to accept work at sub-poverty wages.
The most recent, striking example was the undermining of the enormously successful economic programs created in response to the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Devastation” is not too strong a word. During 2020, more jobs were lost than at any time in the eighty-plus years of recorded US history — and more than the next two highest job-loss years combined. The US system connects health care to employment, so those job losses were accompanied by cancellation of health care and a rise in hunger. Waves of evictions and foreclosures were looming.
Yet by 2021, not only was disaster averted, but the percentage of US people and children living in poverty actually dropped to the lowest in recorded history. Evictions plummeted. Millions fewer…
Auteur: Fran Quigley
