Capitalism has pretty much gone as far as it can go.
It is getting harder to find new efficiencies in business, except at the expense of wages and employment. More jobs are lost to automation and more workers are underemployed.
These efficiencies, during the coronavirus crisis, will highlight how being overly efficient is a negative when things go wrong. Just-in-time manufacturing and just-in-time stocking backfires when we have panic-buying and hoarding. It creates social unrest and gross unfairness for those who are poor, disabled, elderly or all three.
Businesses becoming highly leveraged in low interest rate times doesn’t work out well if revenue suddenly declines.
Household spending is flat, despite record low interest rates. Wage growth is very low. The only thing growing is corporate profits, and obviously this imbalance cannot continue.
These are problems for capitalism, during a crisis, across many countries. They are significantly worse for a country like the USA, which has the least social form of capitalism, and by proxy an in-built culture of not caring for the poor and disadvantaged.
- Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency.
- There is no federally mandated annual leave
- Typical annual leave is a pitiful 2 weeks for a country that claims to be the most prosperous
- Healthcare is often something people cannot afford, even if it can save their life. There is a culture of not getting medical help if you are poor.
- There is no federally mandated sick leave.
- Many sick workers may need to work while sick. They may not know of, trust or believe any assistance offered in a pandemic
- 60% of Americans do not trust what Donald Trump tells them about the pandemic
This creates a potential disaster that America is not prepared for, because their form of capitalism is lacking in compassion. And we know this from physical disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria in 2017.
It will be hard for Donald Trump to be re-elected in a recession, where his command was considered responsible for excessive deaths from COVID-19. It will be hard to fight the Democrats calling for universal healthcare directly after the worst health crisis in a century.
I only hope that the Green New Deal can happen with Biden at the helm. It can happen with Warren as his running mate. Or AOC.