One of the most renowned English poets, P.B. Shelly invoked an injunction from the Bible to explain the effect of capitalism in widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” said the poet, borrowing an aphorism from the Gospel of Mathews, which says: To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away. Covid-19 proved it.
Virus of Inequality
The worst impact of the Coronavirus is that it has widened the gap between the already existing huge class-inequality: the rich got richer and the poor became poorer. The Pandemic has already claimed over 2 million lives after having attacked 100 million so far. No known past catastrophes, the Great Wars and the Crusades included, caused such human loss.
In the US alone, 40 million lower echelon people lost their jobs in the past year as a result of the Coronavirus. On the other hand, the rich increased their fortune by more than $600 billion. Jeff Bezos of Amazon saw his worth increase by nearly $50 billion, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer earned $16 billion, Elon Musk and Sheldon Adelson of the Casino world together made $23 billion, while the Zoom owner netted $2.5 billion, just to name a few.
Globally, Oxfam calculates the gain of the wealthy at nearly $4 trillion in 10 months of the pandemic plague between March and December of 2020. But it will take decades for the poor to bail themselves out, if they at all do, of the plight they suffered from the scourge of the pandemic.
According to an Oxfam survey, 87% of the nearly 300 economists from 79 countries believe that the pandemic will create an increase in income inequality. They also think that racial inequality will rise as a result of the pandemic. 67% of them think their governments do not have an adequate plan that can tackle inequalities.
“COVID makes the rich even richer–and takes away from workers,” writes Chris Tomlinson in the Houston Chronicle on December 29, 2020.
The situation in South Asia is rather pathetic. “Millions had risen out of poverty. The coronavirus is pulling them back,” writes journalist Maria Abi-Habib, based in New Delhi, referring to the sufferings of the poor in the region.
Oxfam calls it “The virus of inequality.” The US would have seen 22,000 lesser victims among the poor, largely Blacks and Latinos, if they could afford or had improved treatment facilities as did the Whites. Could a black person come out of his covid-19 bed within two days as did Donald Trump? Or Johnson? Or Trudeau? Or Tom Hanks?
Covid-19 brought the most affected categories to their knees. If jobs were equally divided between genders, there would be 112 million fewer women to risk losing it, asserts Oxfam. It also says that the pandemic will go down in history because the “inequality will continue to increase in almost all countries of the world.”
The scenario will continue when governments disproportionately give more to help the rich and large corporations. Again, the irony is that when the stock market rebounds, the rich has the money to invest and profit, while the lower classes do not. Additionally, the rich-friendly tax system keeps the billionaires at the top.
To fix this economic anomaly, Oxfam urges the governments to invest more in public services and the richest individuals and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.
US President Andrew Jackson (1829-1832) wrote while giving a veto on an economic bill, “When the laws undertake to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of the society have a right to complain of the injustice to their government.”
*R. Chowdhury is a former soldier and a decorated freedom fighter in the war of liberation of Bangladesh. He enjoys retired life in reading, writing and gardening. He writes on contemporary issues of Bangladesh and has published a few books so far.
January 29, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
