Thread by @doctorow

"Re-opening" isn't about saving ordinary workers and earners. You can't save someone by infecting them with a deadly disease. In a world without contact-tracing, therapeutics, tests, PPE, santizing products, etc, more contact means more risk of illness and death.

1/

"Re-opening" is about saving investors: the 1% who constitute the major shareholders in large firms whose calculus goes like this: "30% unemployment means that for every worker who dies on the job, ten more will apply to take their place."

2/

These people are willing to risk workers' lives and shoppers' lives because they believe they do not have a shared microbial destiny with the rest of us.

They think they won't get sick, and if they do, they think they'll get better.

3/

That's because they never had to go without medical care because they lacked insurance or because their insurer-imposed rationing denied them the care their doctors advised them to get, so they are less likely to have chronic illnesses and other comorbidities.

4/

They can afford premiums to gougers for PPE for shopping trips, and if they do get sick, they can afford private rooms, hoarded ventilators, and home care (with PPE for the workers who care for them).

For the investor class, "re-opening" is low risk and high reward.

5/

There's only one fly in the ointment. People don't want to throw themselves in a volcano to appease the economy gods. The vast majority of Americans think re-opening is a bad idea.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/07/jus…

6/

That's why the gloves are off, like in Ohio, where bosses can use a confidential snitchline to rat out workers who won't come back for fear of their lives: these workers will lose their unemployment benefits, their homes, their grocery money.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

7/

It's not just Ohio. Iowa also has a snitchline for bosses who want to punish mulish, uncooperative workers who think their job isn't worth their lives. These workers also face a choice: starve or sicken.

popular.info/p/return-to-wo…

8/

Iowa Workforce Development Director @BethTownsendIWD: "fear of catching the virus would be considered a voluntary resignation, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits."

9/

Of course, everything's bigger in Texas, including (especially) the terrorization of the workforce. After the shortest-in-the-nation lockdown, Texas re-opened with an injunction to bosses to "report any job refusal."

twc.texas.gov/news/frequentl…

10/

Ideologues - like the mayor of Las Vegas - tell us that we can reopen because the market will drive employers to find safe ways to operate. They are wrong.

pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/rio…

11/

In Dallas, workers at the @_Hillstone Restaurant Group - which reopened last weekend - were told that if they wore masks to work, they'd be fired, because " face masks don't complement the restaurant group's style or level of hospitality."

cbsnews.com/news/face-mask…

12/

While Amazon lied to Southern California warehouse workers, telling them that the state's paid sick-leave law didn't extend to warehouses and warned them that they'd be fired for missing shift. Sick workers are coming in and infecting others.

theguardian.com/technology/202…

13/

Right wing politics require alliances between elites - (rightism is essentially the belief in rule by elites) - and large groups of turkeys who'll vote for Christmas.

14/

Evangelicals: "we'll support domination by the finance sector if you'll give us performative cruelty to brown people, queers and women seeking abortions."

pluralistic.net/2020/04/12/mam…

15/

But these alliances are destined to fracture. The finance sector and the ultra-wealthy got billions in helicopter money. Workers got $1200 as a ten-week "liquidity bridge" are now being sent into death-traps on pain of starvation.

pluralistic.net/2020/04/19/sha…

16/

The antidote is a peoples' bailout, like the $2,000/month stimulus proposed by @sensanders, @KamalaHarris and @EdMarkey, retroactive to March, for every adult and every child.

thehill.com/homenews/senat…

17/

"If we can bail out large corporations, we can make sure that everyone in this country has enough income to pay for the basic necessities of life." -Bernie Sanders.

18/

Related: @RashidaTlaib's proposal to mint 2 $1T coins to fund a $2K one-time cash infusion and $1k/month every month until the crisis has been over for a year.

19/

The problem (for investors) with these proposals is that they take away the leverage employers want to use to get workers to risk their lives. A worker receiving this stimulus would only go back to work if it seemed safe - not because it seemed preferable to homelessness.

20/

The right loves to talk about "moral hazard" in the context of social safety nets ("if we let people see a doctor without paying, they won't take steps to keep themselves from getting sick or injured").

21/

But reality demonstrates, time and again, that the real moral hazard comes from letting investors socialize their costs and privatize their gains.

eof/