Coronavirus — political opposites Paul Craig Roberts and Margaret Kimberley have reached similar conclusions — regarding the American system

© 2020 Peter Free

 

16 March 2020

 

 

Coronavirus pandemic — two polar political opposites now thinking alike

 

Paul Craig Roberts, once President Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, is "conservative" in its most commonly understood United States senses.

 

Yet, writing with regard to the coronavirus pandemic's effects on the American economy, Roberts published the following online, just yesterday:

 

 

For most Americans nationalization is a dirty word, but it has many benefits.

 

For example, a national health care system reduces costs tremendously by taking profits out of the system.  Additionally, nationalized pharmaceutical companies could be made more focused on research and cures than on profit avenues. 

 

Socialist is another American dirty word, one that is being used against Bernie Sanders.   I have not turned into a socialist overnight.  I am simply thinking out loud.

 

How can the economy recover when the population and corporations are smothered by debt?  Debt forgiveness is the only way out of this debt suffocation.

 

Can debts be forgiven without nationalization? Not without a huge giveaway to financial managers and Wall Street.

 

It is the members of the “one percent” who have received 95% of the increase in the US income and wealth since 2008. Do we want to reward them for smothering the economy with debt by bailing them out without nationalizing them?

 

The combination of an economy covered in debt and an unprotected population is clearly revolutionary.

 

Do we have leadership capable of breaking out of interest group politics and ruling ideologies in order to save our society and put it on a more sustainable basis?

 

© 2020 Paul Craig Roberts, Economic Effect of Coronavirus Could Be Revolutionary, American Herald Tribune (15 March 2020)

 

 

At the other pole, Margaret Kimberley represents the thoughtful American left wing.

 

She published the following blurb, the day before Roberts began "thinking out loud":

 

 

We are constantly told that socialism doesn’t work.

 

But it is socialist China, where the virus began, that has made the most headway in slowing its spread.

 

Conversely, the United States has none of the systems or infrastructure that would allow it to accomplish the same thing.

 

It is capitalism that doesn’t work well when human needs must be met.

 

[H]ealth care delivery here is nowhere near being best. The for-profit system certainly rakes in cash for insurance companies and big pharma. But health care outcomes are mediocre at best and other countries do a far better job for far less money.

 

While Americans can’t find hand sanitizer at any price, the Chinese government built new hospitals in just one week’s time.

 

The profit motive which is constantly touted as the cure all in every situation is instead the cause of every problem.

 

The so-called greatest country passes up no opportunity to allow the predators to extract from their victims.

 

The failed state doesn’t have enough of the tests needed to diagnose COVID-19 and those who manage to be tested and treated can be charged up to $3,000 for what ought to be a right and free of charge.

 

[Governor of New York] Andrew Cuomo announced that the state will produce hand sanitizer made by prison labor.

 

It is typical for the United States to turn to its most exploitative system to meet a basic need. 

 

© 2020 Margaret Kimberley, Coronavirus and the Failed American State, American Herald Tribune (14 March 2020)

 

 

Notice that

 

Kimberley is (apparently) as pessimistic as I am — regarding how the coronavirus pandemic will further encourage the United States' predatory class to suck profits out of un-rich people's virus-laden blood.

 

 

The moral? — People with observational sense see the US system as the Pillaging Platform that it is

 

A nation constructed on a foundation of Predatory Avarice is unlikely to survive against others that arguably value the lives of their citizens.

 

This is why China, for all its painfully unappetizing totalitarian flaws, holds a competitive edge against our exclusively public-looting system.

 

In the end, with regard to survival of the fittest:

 

 

Are you going to fight for a government that values you and human community — no matter how abrasively that quality is occasionally demonstrated?

 

Or will you demonstrate willing-to-die enthusiasm for the defending the political system that constantly and solely treats you like serf-like food for its plutocratic predators?

 

 

Do the thought experiment.

 

Then tell me that Paul Craig Robert's partial change in political position is wrongly inspired.