It May Take Longer To Recover From Covid-19 Economy Than the Virus Itself
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You look at the food bank lines and you know it’s true. Attribution AP.
It hasn’t been hard to see some of the ways the coronavirus pandemic has made inequality worse in the United States, from healthcare inequities and racial disparities in who has gotten sick and who has lived and died, to the way many retail companies saw profits rise—then poured that money into stock buybacks while stiffing workers on hazard pay—to women, and especially women of color, being forced out of the paid workforce. But don’t expect it to end there.
Oxfam surveyed 295 economists from 79 countries on the pandemic’s impact on inequality that they are seeing and expect to see going forward. Nearly nine out of 10 of them—87%—said there will be an increase in income inequality, while 78% predicted a rise in wealth inequality, 66% predicted a rise in racial inequality, and 56% predicted a rise in gender inequality. Two out of three of them said their government doesn’t have a plan to fight an increase in inequality from coronavirus.
These predictions came from around the world—economists in 77 of the 79 countries included said they expected an increase in income inequality. According to the Oxfam report on inequality that survey was a part of, “This shock is set to reverse the decline in global poverty we have witnessed over the past two decades. It is estimated that the total number of people living in poverty could have increased by between 200 million35 and 500 million36 in 2020. The number of people living in poverty might not return even to its pre-crisis level for over a decade.”
Meanwhile, the world’s 10 wealthiest people have sucked up an additional $540 billion. Collectively, billionaires added $3.9 trillion in wealth between March 18 and Dec. 31, 2020.
There needs to be a plan for fighting inequality. Instead, in the U.S., Democrats are fighting just to get modest one-time payments to people.
Reprinted with permission of Daily Kos.
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Hopefully, we will recover it to some degree.
tRump really screwed the pooch on this. The fact that goopers went along with it disgusts me. I am getting the shot next week. Ty already got his because he is a first responder.
I suspect there are going to be a lot of awful things waiting for the American people, long after the lid to the Covid-19 Pandora’s Box has long closed.