zlacker

For better or worse, your schadenfreude will only last as long as the aid package. When the money runs out, the power dynamic reverses, and the economic aftermath may well leave poorer Americans in a worse bargaining position than they were before (as economic downturns often do).

>>throwa+(OP)
Let's see what the electorate looks like, and its appetite for change is, after 10 months of a raging global pandemic.

We're only a few weeks in, and we've already drastically expanded benefits to those in need (the stimulus bill I mentioned upthread) much more than we would've under normal circumstances. Quite a bit of change can occur in a year, no?

>>toomuc+c
There is that possibility, and while I can understand the desire for a change of administration after all of this, I can't understand why socialists are so positively gleeful. The federal government (not just the administration, but the CDC and the FDA as well) have failed in every conceivable regard in this pandemic response (somehow after 3 global outbreaks including 2 respiratory diseases in recent years, the CDC couldn't be bothered to secure a supply of masks and ventilators, never mind the testing debacle) while private industry and state/local governments are picking up the slack (scaling up testing capacity, innovating on treatments and interventions, lobbying for aid, scaling up supply chains, etc). Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.

>>throwa+22
> Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.

The Fed is predicting 47 million unemployed [1], at a 32% unemployment rate. That's a lot of folks without health insurance. 68k people in the US die every year because of lack of access to healthcare, and 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt, under "normal" circumstances. That is a "failure of capitalism" not replicated in other developed countries.

Sometimes, to fix a system, you must break it. This is the "break it" part. [2]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could...

[2] https://reason.com/2020/03/27/pandemic-related-unemployment-...

>>toomuc+o3
EDIT: The parent has significantly revised their comment since I replied such that my comment doesn't make sense in the new context.