Coronavirus, Wealth, & Social Power...
In a market economy, wealth is social power. In fact, in a market economy, wealth is the only form of social power. If you do not have wealth, your preferences and needs are of no account relative to those of somebody who does have wealth. Moreover, the requirement that people earn the cash with which they buy their daily bread means that no command, no control, and little exertion of force are needed in order to produce the application of social power to make the poor ignore their preferences and needs to satisfy those of the rich. Amartya Sen wrote about how we see this process at work at its sharpest edge: the so-called “entitlement families“, like that of Bengal during World War II. In the age of coronavirus, the edge is not quite as sharp. But it is plenty sharp even so:
Ellora Derenoncourt: ‘This piece captures everything you need to know about the US coronavirus labor market https://twitter.com/EDerenoncourt/status/1263604734348402689. We did not have a freely competitive labor market before the crisis. What we have now is starting to look like forced labor…. “Making employers compete with a generous unemployment insurance system... could reset bargaining power in the low-wage end of the labor market... At the least, it would be a first step toward exiting this pandemic a fairer society than the one that entered it”. By Suresh Naidu https://t.co/6y5WzGUg7k… #coronavirus #equitablegrowth #inequality #noted #2020-06-04
