The government’s response to the pandemic and poverty has not been enough. The people need things like income, housing and health care now. Instead the government has given trillions to the wealthy and corporations, and a pittance to the people. The fact that the government could find trillions to give to business clearly implies we could meet everyone’s needs all the time, not just in a crisis.
Even before the pandemic, jobs were already vanishing because of automation, and this will continue. The current crisis makes clear that we have to have a government and society that will take care of the people. The billionaires who control the wealth and the government are standing in the way of this.
Although our true nature as human beings is to unite and care for one another, capitalism has taught us to compete, to fear each other, to believe there is not enough to go around. Yet as a country, we already have the wealth to have a society free of poverty and fear.
In a 1967 speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said when you question why there are so many poor people in America, “you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”
Today millions of people are asking questions about the whole society, and demanding that the government serve the people, not billionaires and corporations. We can make that happen if we keep pushing forward against the wealthy few who block our path.
