Crises
have a way of turning existing cracks in political and economic systems
into fault lines. They bring to light what has been hiding beneath the
surface. This is why the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, the most serious global health crisis in a century,
has exposed the many pre-existing weaknesses of the US economy and laid
bare the nation’s failure to judge the economy by what actually
matters: How it works for working and middle-class Americans.
In a matter of weeks, the pandemic left 26 million Americans unemployed and food
banks overwhelmed. As one in four workers in the country are not
entitled to a single day of paid sick leave, COVID-19 also forced many
Americans to choose between staying healthy and putting food on their
tables. It brought to the surface the growing economic precarity
of tens of millions of Americans which Wall Street, and many in
Washington, have long been ignoring.
While some economists and politicians, such as Treasury
Secretary and former Goldman Sachs Executive Steven Mnuchin, claim that
the American economy was doing just fine before the start of the
pandemic, the truth is many Americans have been
living on the verge of economic collapse long before COVID-19 reached
the country. After the 2008 economic crash, Wall Street and big
corporations rebounded quickly, but millions of Americans did not.
The likes of Mnuchin get away with
claiming the US economy was doing brilliantly before the outbreak
because they judge economic success merely by the success and
profitability of big corporations and not the economic stability and
wellbeing of ordinary Americans, such as small business owners,
warehouse workers and delivery drivers.
If Mnuchin judged the health of the US economy by how
well everyday people are coping, he would have seen that things were not
so rosy on “Main Street” even before COVID-19.
It is time to stop looking at the US economy from Wall Street | US & Canada | Al Jazeera
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