Bailout — Blog — Jamie Aroosi

Barricades and Garbage Cans: America’s Police State

In New York City, one of the comparisons being made is between the response to COVID-19 and the response to the BLM protests. In the case of COVID-19, the city (and the state) proved themselves largely inept, and despite months of advance warning, they acted much too late. However, when it came to the BLM protests, the entire city was shut down in anticipation of protests that were still largely prospective, imposing an 8 pm curfew and transforming the city into a police state. In other words, when it came to a public health threat that's been known for months, the city was only capable of acting ineffectively and after the fact, but when it came to stifling potential, future rallies for racial justice, the city was capable of acting swiftly and in anticipation of a forthcoming “threat.”

This comparison speaks to the way that the American state—at both the city, state, and national level—has increasingly abdicated any role in providing for the public good while instead seeing its role as primarily that of providing “law and order.”

Death and Taxes

I don't think that this is a particularly novel idea, but the more I think about it, the more the recent bailout seems magnitudes worse than anything we've seen before.

We're likely going to see unemployment at levels that will rival those of the great depression. This is a tragedy in itself, but what might be worse, is that as a result of decades of tax cuts for corporations and the rich, working class and middle class income tax plays a disproportionate role in funding government services relative to other forms of taxes. In other words, in other countries, taxes on the wealthy and on corporations constitute a much higher percentage of total tax revenue, but here, decades of tax cuts have meant that the tax burden falls overwhelmingly on average people. That is, average Americans shoulder the burden of funding the government. Consequently, the massive loss in jobs means a huge decrease in tax revenues, because the super-rich and corporations don’t really pay taxes..

Jamie AroosiApril 23, 2020COVID-19, coronavirus, Andrew Cuomo, Mitch McConnell, Stimulus, Bailout, Taxes, Stock MarketComment