SCOTT GALLOWAY: The pandemic allowed America's wealthy elite to pull off the greatest economic grift in history (via profgalloway)
of the first round of checks said they planned to spend the money). Read that last sentence: more than four in five recipients of money borrowed from future generations did not urgently need it. Another $1 trillion or so went to pandemic response , and while this was necessary, the money ended up largely in the pockets of health care company shareholders.
What did we accomplish? $1 trillion in unemployment, food assistance, and other aid to those directly hit by the pandemic is an unalloyed good. We helped many of our most vulnerable American brothers and sisters. But it wasn't enough. Huge swaths of America continue to suffer. In , 18% of US households with children could not meet their food budget, and 26% of renters with children were behind on their rent.
A secondary effect is the underwhelming fight against the virus itself. Had COVID-19 preyed on wealthy white people and cut the Nasdaq in half, our response would have made the South Korean and Taiwanese responses appear amateur. Instead, the wealth of billionaires is correlated to infections and deaths, and we continue to see a death toll greater than 9/11 every 18 hours.In the longer term, we have suppressed the creative destruction of capitalism.