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Here is Boris reported as saying (19 March) that, unlike in the last crisis in 2008, this time the government is putting people first :
“Unlike during the financial crisis, Britain will put its people first in the fight against the coronavirus and more measures will be announced by the government on Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said..”This time it is going to be different,” Johnson said at a news conference. “(Remember) what happened in 2008, everybody said we bailed out the banks and we didn’t look after the people who really suffered – this time we are going to make sure that we look after the people who really suffer from the economic consequences.”
Of course he is a politician and so we don’t need to take anything he says at face value. Even so the government does seem to be putting people first, even if compelled to by the particular circumstances of this crisis as a public health one.
So I wonder if we shouldn’t change what we are saying from “they are putting the health of the economy before the health of the people” to “circumstances are compelling them to put the health of people first but this is being made difficult by capitalism as this is against its nature and can only be temporary.”
They do seem to be trying to put people’s health first in the sense of spending “what it takes” to enable the health services to cope and so minimise the number of deaths. And the measures they have taken have adversely affected the profits of most businesses, not to mention that the bill will have to be paid later out of future profits. You could argue that what they are doing is in the longer term interests of business but I don’t think we could sustain the argument that this is their main motivation.
It is not unprecedented for capitalism to give priority to something other than profit-making. They don’t in major wars when their priority is to win and they spend “what it takes” to achieve this. But the war over, whether won or lost, it’s a return to prioritising profit as usual. Which is what will happen after this public health crisis is over.
Also sanctions in place against countries like Iran, Venezuela and Syria have not only weakened the general health of the people there but also the health service and access to medicines, drugs and medical equipment. It is therefore not surprising that Iran is being particularly hit by the virus.
It looks as if the Governor of California has some bad advisers too. According to this, they have calculated that 56% of the state’s population of some 40 million could get the virus. That’s 22.5 million. Chose your own death rate and “do the math” as he says: at 1% it’s 225,000, which is indeed “a particularly large number.”
When the UK Government’s advisers put out a similar calculation this backfired and they dropped it on the pretext of new medical advice. Now they are talking about keeping deaths down to 20,000 or so.
Of course it could be that the Governor is deliberately exaggerating to try to impress on people the need to stay at home (which is good advice). And the report does say that the figure of 22.5 million probably does not take into account any effect from mitigation measures. But at least he isn’t talking about aiming at herd immunity.
Putting this out doesn’t seem politically astute as he too might have to backtrack. On the other hand, he is a politician and could be calculating that when the figure of deaths doesn’t reach anyway near that figure he can claim the credit for this as a result of the bold mitigation measures he took.
Here from today’s Times, for what they’re worth, are the guesses, more or less informed, of economists employed investment banks and advisers (and so not entirely independent and objective):
“The coronavirus outbreak could knock Britain’s GDP by 15 per cent in the second quarter of the year and plunge the global economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, economists have warned.
Shutting down parts of the economy to fight the pandemic will make businesses go bust and bring widespread job losses, analysts at Jefferies, the investment bank, said. At its worst, GDP in Britain and the eurozone could contract by 15 per cent before a recovery begins in the second half of the year. David Owen and Marchel Alexandrovic, European economists at Jefferies, said: “Such quarterly declines in GDP are unprecedented, certainly in living. memory, and will lead to further corporate failures and economic hardship.”
The impact of Covid-19 on the world economy was more pronounced “than anything the world has seen since the 1930s”, Erik Britton, economist at Fathom Consulting, said. Global GDP fell by about 15 per cent between 1929 and 1932 during the Great Depression.
Mr Britton added: “The recession should be short-lived, with a strong recovery in prospect towards the end of 2020 and into 2021. But that recovery is far from certain and a more protracted depression cannot be ruled out.””If there is another prolonged depression, it will not have been caused by the internal workings of the capitalist economy but by a factor outside the capitalist economy itself, i.e. the coronavirus epidemic and the measures governments took to deal with it. A reminder that crises can also be caused by such outside factors.
Imposs1904 has drawn attention to this amusing headline in an Australian newspaper:
“Conventional capitalism is dying: Macquarie warns
Macquarie analysts say the world could be tilting back toward an economic system that’s more like communism”
Mind you, as Marcos has pointed out, this does seem to be the end of so-called “neo-liberalism”.
Anti-climate-change activists should be careful about pointing to the fall in greenhouse gas emissions because of the decline in economic activity brought about by measures to defeat the coronavirus as confirmation of their case.
It’s, rather, a reason why, as long as people support capitalism, the drastic measures that they call for to stave off too rapid global warming will not be taken.
The ILO is warning that up to 25 million workers worldwide could lose their jobs as a result of these measures. No government nor the population of any country is going to accept this or that these measures should be made permanent. But under capitalism that would be the only way to stop economic growth fuelling global warming. It’s not going to happen politically as long as people see no other way of organising production and distribution than capitalism and its production for profit.
This reinforces our view that the only framework within which the problem can be rationally tackled is the common ownership and democratic control of means of living and the production directly for us it will make possible.
If Biden, Bernie and Trump were here in England they wouldn’t be allowed out for 12 weeks. Mind you Bernie is taking a big risk as if he catches it, with his heart condition we may as well prepare his obituary. We probably should anyway. Already got an idea for the theme: the reformist who never got a chance to try to reform capitalism but if he had he would have failed anyway.
Continuing on this morbid theme, I think there was a US president in the 19th century who caught pneumonia the day of his inauguration and died. Can’t remember his name and when.
Yes, we mentioned this in the Socialist Standard a couple of years ago, perhaps you saw it:
Actually it is so-called “helicopter money” defined by Oliver Kamm in his column in the Times last week entitled “To rescue the economy, summon the helicopter and do a money drop” (13 March) as:
”The Bank of England could in effect create money and then distribute it direct to consumers. It’s known as helicopter money, on the model of a helicopter drop of banknotes to anyone underneath who’s lucky enough to pick them up.”
The idea is to increase aggregate demand and get the faltering economy expanding again. It’s been tried in Japan and Taiwan with the same trivial amount per person. But didn’t work because the capitalist economy isn’t driven by consumer (or for that matter government) demand. It’s driven by profitable capital investment. Without that, you can put as much water in front the capitalist horse as you like, but it won’t drink.
It’s not really got anything to do with helping people survive the loss of income many are suffering through the Coronavirus virus and the effect on the economy of the measures the US government has taken to combat it. But it’s useful to give this impression especially in a presidential election year.
Looks as if Trump is acting quicker and going further than the British government, by giving every US citizen a check for $1,000.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/salvadorhernandez/coronavirus-trump-mnuchin-1000-check-economy
What is that? About two weeks wages? That won’t go very far but it’s not every day that the government gives everybody something for nothing.
Some revealing ideas coming out. Today’s Times reports Julian Jessop, of the free-marketeer thinktank The Institute of Economic Affairs, as suggesting:
“that the government introduce ‘some sort of temporary universal basic income’ in the form of a £,1000 handout per person ‘to make sure people can afford essentials during this crisis.”
More here. Free handout to the workers to allow them to buy essentials.
Where will it end, die-hard supporters of capitalism must be asking.
Also, this scientific advice as a pretext for the government abandoning its previous mad “herd immunity” plan:
“More than a quarter of a million people would have died under previous plans to control the spread of coronavirus, according to the government’s own advisers.”
Advisers other “mad professor” Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Officer, that is. Fortunately, the Chief Medical Officer seems ok.
Not that it needed a team of experts to work that out. Anybody could have on the back of an envelope (and did).
Alan wrote: “This story sort of reminded me of the Lucas Plan from the 1970s. Defence work could be re-tooled for socially necessary production.”
I am sure it would be technologically possible to retool production lines to make respirators and I am sure the workers involved would be enthusiastic to respond. But this sounds like another of Johnson’s stunts. In this case to give the impression that, after previous talk about sacrificing them for the benefit of the herd, it’s now all about saving the most vulnerable victims of the virus. I doubt if it will happen.
If it did, it would give some credence to the Pieter Lawrence scenario of the state, in a dire emergency, resorting to production for use, presumably paid for with newly created payment vouchers. In fact they may have to do this to compensate the pubs, restaurants and places of entertainment whose business will be ruined by the government’s policy.
Of course the outcome won’t be socialism or a moneyless economy but, combined with Robbo’s point about the revival of community spirit, might make putting of the case for socialism easier — even the counter-example of the American response might help people realise where the capitalist ideology of individualism leads.
It seems that the government is now disavowing their chief scientific officer and his mad “herd immunity” scheme. From today’s Times:
“Mr Hancock has insisted that the government is not pursuing a policy of allowing the virus to spread in order to achieve ‘herd immunity,’ apparently contradicting a statement last week by Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific officer.”
That’s a relief.
Just heard on the news that the aviation sector are calling on the government to stop “bean counting”:
“In a stark message, industry body Airlines UK said the government’s “prevarication” and “bean counting” had to stop.”
That’s a bit rich. Just because they are not getting enough beans they are begging the government to hand them out a few. As if their whole business wasn’t based on bean counting, including making staff redundant and opposing strikes to keep as many beans for themselves as they can.
Still, ignoring bean counting and mobilising resources directly was how the changeover to a moneyless society started in Pieter Lawrence’s The Last Conflict ….
It looks as if other scientists are beginning to criticise the “mad professor” who is advising the government and his experiment in “herd immunity” with us as the herd of guinea pigs:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-scientists-share-fears-uk-21695523
