COVID Accelerates Multiple Pending Crises

ECONOMIC

The working poor experience a sustained economic crisis potentially worse than the Great Depression. Already the Pandemic has killed 22 million jobs for good—and that is according to official optimistic government data. The real number of lost jobs might easily be 2 or 3 times greater than reported.

A desperate labor force lacks bargaining power, as more workers are willing to work for less money. This trend will accelerate the collapse of the American middle-class household to potentially unrecoverable levels. The low wage workers who do have a job are likely to be unable to work from home. Neither are those workers likely to have access to employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits.

High rents, inadequate food and housing subsidies, and scarce good-paying jobs will easily consume over 60 percent of the American household budget, setting families back generations and preventing them from building multi-generational wealth.

POLITICAL

The lesson from the 19th and 20th centuries is that extreme economics begets extreme politics. That truism is present throughout the rise of dictatorial governments. Democratic collapse into a cruel autocratic dictatorship generally descends into chaos and violence. For modern references, Ukraine's color revolutions and Brazil's civil unrest serve as parallels.

In addition to any violence relating to the Black Lives Matter protests, someone sent ricin to the White House in a letter addressed to President Trump. These incidents are early examples and unlikely to be the final eruptions of left-wing and right-wing violence after political leaders continue to ignore cries for necessary civil reforms.

Fear and anger already abound, but the President's official reelection strategy reportedly aligns with Russia's: fan the flames of dissent and turn America as we knew it into an ash heap. The fruits of that campaign strategy were visible in Fairfax County on the first day of early voting. Pro-trump goons terrified record numbers of voters at polling locations in Virginia's largest Democratic localities. These are the actions the destabilize western governments and that is the inevitable end result.