Umair Haque: "2020 is Such a Terrible Year Because Our Civilization is Beginning to Collapse"
Umair Haque: Compendium Of Writing By The Only Columnist I Always Read
To really understand the magnitude of catastrophically how Covid has affected the American economy — or been allowed to — you have to begin with a single number from the pre-Covid days: the percentage of Americans that worked decent, stable jobs. Jobs which provided things like benefits, mobility, raises, a career path, enough money to live a middle class life or so and raise and educate and care for a family.
Go ahead, guess. Now prepare to be a little breathtaken.
40% of the American labour force had “low-income service jobs” before Covid. But that’s the percent of Americans active in work. And that percent has been declining for decades. It peaked from 1990–2000, when nearly 70% of working age Americans were part of the labour force, meaning they were working or seeking work. But that number steadily dwindled — and by 2020, just before Covid hit, it had plummeted to just 60% of working age Americans.
And yet even that overrepresents the picture, because the labour force includes the employed and unemployed. I know, that’s weird — and yet it’s true. Pre-Covid unemployment averaged around 5%. And if we subtract that, to get a more accurate number, we’re left with about 55% of working age Americans…actually working. Just over half the population.
Now. Let me ask again. How many Americans enjoyed good jobs before Covid? We’ve established that about half of the American labour force worked crap jobs — but the labour force was only about half of working age America. Just half of employable America was working at all. So pre-Covid, just a quarter of Americans had decent, good, stable jobs, that paid enough to live a middle class life, have a family, educate the kids, and so forth.
Just a quarter of working age Americans had good jobs pre-Covid. The rest? Another quarter had crap jobs, “low-income service jobs,” which in plainer English are go-nowhere McJobs, Uber drivers, and so forth. And the remaining roughly half of working age America wasn’t employed at all.
Let me translate that into even starker terms. Pre-Covid, 75% of working age America was either underemployed, unemployed, or had given up looking for work altogether.
Does that seem startling to you? I’d bet you’re having a tiny inner conflict right now. Part of you says: “Impossible!” but another part of you says, “Yeah, that sounds right. It explains a lot.” Which part is right?
What happens when 75% of a society’s working age population is either underemployed, unemployed, or can’t find work at all? Can you guess? Think of history. What episodes in history resemble that grim plight?
Weimar Germany does, for one. Germany fell into historic poverty, unable to repay Britain and France World War I debts it simply couldn’t afford. As a result, businesses shuttered, mass unemployment resulted, and impoverishment became widespread. What happened there?
People turned to the Nazis. For a feeling of safety and strength and purpose again. That wasn’t just emotional guff, by the way. Under the Nazis, the average German’s plight actually improved for a time, which is how they were able to consolidate power.
""We Forget That Hitler Brought Widespread Prosperity To The German People"
How did that “improvement” come to be? By theft, basically. Business and belongings and assets and savings were stolen from hated minorities, like Jews, and given to loyal party members. So one day a man was a drunkard reciting Hitler’s hate, the next he joined the SS, and a few months later, he was living in a fine mansion that belonged to a Jewish family, filled with art and gilt furniture and marble floors.
Now let me come back to America. America was Weimar Germany, all over again — and that was before Covid. Why did Trump get elected? Why was hate and bile normalized by pundits? Because America had fallen into mass poverty — and nobody much could see it, much less understand it.
You see, as the dynamics above unfolded — as 75% of working-age America came to be unemployed, life was becoming ruinous. 80% of households lived paycheck to paycheck, 70% couldn’t afford a tiny amount for an emergency, 75% struggled to pay basic bills, like housing, utilities, and healthcare. Those numbers all hover around the same mark for a simple reason: by the 2010's, America was a society whose economy had broken catastrophically: somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of Americans were unable to find good jobs with decent incomes, benefits, or stability.
Hence, mass poverty became the new normal — and the middle class became a statistical minority for the first time in history.
If you understood all that — that America’s economy was breaking, in fundamental and catastrophic ways, you should have been able to predict Trumpism a long, long way out. And many of us did. I feared the worst, and wrote about it, figures like Sarah Kendzior spoke about it. We were largely marginalized and ignored.
Why? Because elites, sitting in bubbles in Washington DC, Manhattan, San Francisco couldn’t believe it. I mean that literally. They never left those bubbles. And in those bubbles, life had never gotten worse. Northern Virginia is something like an American utopia — rich, moneyed, endowed with fresh public transport, gleaming designer shops. If that’s the only place you visited — as many DC elites did — why would they think anything at all was broken?
And so they didn’t.
They didn’t just ignore the problem — they actively denied it, attacking those of us who said: “Listen, a nation falling into poverty and despair like this is going to erupt in rage, just like Weimar Germany did — and turn to a demagogue. America is going to have its own fascist movement, and it’s going to be bad.”
And so they didn’t.
They didn’t just ignore the problem — they actively denied it, attacking those of us who said: “Listen, a nation falling into poverty and despair like this is going to erupt in rage, just like Weimar Germany did — and turn to a demagogue. America is going to have its own fascist movement, and it’s going to be bad.”
I can see how ridiculous that sounded to the kind of DC elite who lived in fine townhouses, and shopped at Chanel in the Galleria — but could they see our warnings, too? The answer, sadly, was no.
And so America did have its own fascist moment. Trump rose to power. And that brings us, roughly, to now.
What was a figure like Trump going to do when a deadly pandemic hit? Well, what would you expect a fascist, a narcissist, an idiot to do? Nothing. To the fascist, mass death is something to cheer on. To the narcissist, it’s less competition. To an idiot, there’s nothing to worry about. And so Covid arrived — and Trump golfed. The result? 175,000 dead — and rising at a breathtaking rate.
Now let’s come back to the economy. It’s a minor miracle that Trump’s government passed some level of support for people at all. But those benefits — $600 a week for the unemployed, which was far, far less than global standards — have expired anyways.
And now America faces catastrophe added to catastrophe. In five particular ways.
One, people can’t afford to pay rent, triggering a housing crisis.
Two, people can’t afford to service, much less pay down debts, whether mortgage or card or medical or student, triggering a debt crisis.
Three, people can’t afford to pay basic bills, which will trigger crises for basics at third world levels — insecurity for utilities and food and medicine, all of which were already unaffordable for many.
Four, people don’t have much to spend, and so businesses, already troubled, are closing down in a tidal wave.
And five, furloughs are becoming permanent job losses.
One, people can’t afford to pay rent, triggering a housing crisis.
Two, people can’t afford to service, much less pay down debts, whether mortgage or card or medical or student, triggering a debt crisis.
Three, people can’t afford to pay basic bills, which will trigger crises for basics at third world levels — insecurity for utilities and food and medicine, all of which were already unaffordable for many.
Four, people don’t have much to spend, and so businesses, already troubled, are closing down in a tidal wave.
And five, furloughs are becoming permanent job losses.
Coronavirus recession?
Forget it.
What’s happening now is that a Coronavirus depression is emerging.
A vicious cycle of lower spending leading to lower employment leading to lower incomes is igniting.
Unemployment is going permanent.
Huge scores of jobs are simply being vaporized as swathes of the economy wink out of existence now. They are not coming back — they’re going for good.
Forget it.
What’s happening now is that a Coronavirus depression is emerging.
A vicious cycle of lower spending leading to lower employment leading to lower incomes is igniting.
Unemployment is going permanent.
Huge scores of jobs are simply being vaporized as swathes of the economy wink out of existence now. They are not coming back — they’re going for good.
How bad it going to be?
Really, really bad.
Why do I say that?
Let’s connect all the dots above now.
Really, really bad.
Why do I say that?
Let’s connect all the dots above now.
Just 25% of Americans had decent jobs before Covid. 75% of Americans were either underemployed, unemployed, or had given up looking for work altogether. Those numbers sound dire, because they were. So dire that they were going to inevitably lead to a fascist-authoritarian meltdown, which is what happens when societies grow poorer, as people turn to demagogues, who blame hated minorities for their insecurity and problems. That came to pass in America by 2015 — the vicious cycle of sudden, widespread poverty and the despair it brings leading to authoritarian-fascism rising to power.
What effect do you expect Covid will have on an economy where only just 25% of people already had decent jobs to begin with, meaning that there weren’t enough good jobs to go around in the first place?
It’s going to be catastrophe piled atop catastrophe.
Let me put that as plainly as I can. Just 25% of Americans had decent jobs before the pandemic. Another 25% had crap ones, of insecurity and poor wages and no benefits, leading to downward mobility. And the remaining 50% didn’t work at all.
The emerging Covid depression is going to make those already shocking numbers even worse. It’s going to reduce the number of Americans who have decent jobs — because now chunks of those are simply vanishing. It’s going to increase the number of Americans working crap jobs — “low income service jobs” — as more of those replace the good ones. And it’s going to increase the number who don’t have jobs at all. Instead of the unbelievable figures of 25% working good jobs, 25% working crap jobs, and 50% not working at all, the economy is going to consist of something more like 10–20% good jobs, 25–40% crap jobs, and north of 50% not working at all.
That’s truly staggering.
What it tells me is simple. The American economy is broken. It’s broken so badly that I can scarcely overstate the case. It’s almost permanently broken.
Something needs to be done, or else. A massive wave of investment needs to occur in all the things America clearly needs, so that millions are employed again. The alternative is that poverty and despair grow even more — more than they were doing pre Covid. And the result of that will surely be even more authoritarian fascism. We know that because the pre-Covid economy’s despair and poverty — just 25% of a nation having good, decent jobs — was enough to take fascism all the way to the White House.
If that number continues to fall, America as we know it simply won’t survive. As a democracy, as a nation, as even the barely functioning society it is now. It will instead lapse into full-blown collapse. Think a third-world nation without functioning utilities, food systems, water systems, authoritarian leaders, uneducated people, and not enough jobs to ever really go around.
It’s a grim future I’m foretelling. But I want you to understand how dire the situation is. It’s much, much worse than you’re probably led to believe. And maybe you think I’m exaggerating, that America can never get that bad. My friends, there’s secret police disappearing people in the streets. Moms being beaten. Chemical agents being used on peaceful protesters. And meanwhile, the fascist-in-chief could still win — or steal in plain sight— a second term in November. It’s every bit as bad — and then some — as you probably fear. It’s that bad. That’s why now is America’s last chance to fix its broken economy, too. After this? The point of no return is reached — and America’s finished the job of becoming a shattered, poor, third-world country.
Umair
August 2020
August 2020
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