America needs equity in bailouts

The Enlightenment authors of America’s Declaration of Independence made it clear that governments are created to enable people to be secure in their “unalienable rights,” including those to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In recent decades, it has seemed that many Americans think those rights belong more to businesses and business owners than to the rest of us, and that government’s job is to bail out business so they can be “job creators” and so that their profits might eventually trickle down to the rest of us.

With the current pandemic, it becomes even more critical than it has been in the past to recognize that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are rights belonging to each of us, and that the government’s purpose is to assist us in exercising those rights — government’s job is to help all people flourish.

Obviously the government has responsibilities to aid in the medical response to the pandemic, but it also has economic responsibilities.

In prior economic scares, the government stepped in to protect banks while letting homeowners default. That was crazy. We cannot allow the government to once again focus its efforts on businesses. Capitalism, supposedly, relies on people’s willingness to take risks in order to obtain rewards; it is, supposedly, funded by people who have determined (or should have determined) that they can put some of their wealth at risk in order to obtain greater rewards than they’d otherwise receive. In order for capitalism not to morph into “socialism, but just for the wealthy,” those who take risks need to be exposed to the consequences.

Should we “bail out” the airlines? It depends on what you mean by “bail out.” Sure, if airlines are vital to the nation, the government needs to take action to ensure that flights remain available. If that means it needs to put cash into some or all airlines, fine, but let’s make sure that the cash buys us ownership this time. It is infuriating that past government handouts have gone to stock buybacks — essentially treating money that was meant to help all of us as if it belonged only to existing shareholders who owned parts of the companies that were handed public money.

It’s the same for other industries. If the industries need money from the American taxpayers, then America ought to be buying ownership in those industries, not just handing money to the current shareholders.

And yes, the government ought to be sending emergency cash to every American. Is that creating money from nothing? It certainly is, but that’s something the government already does every day on behalf of the banks and the wealthiest. It’s not magic — the created money is not new wealth, and it will need to be paid back, one way or another, but it will keep people in their homes and keep people fed if they lose their jobs. In other words, it will “promote the general welfare” by making sure people who would otherwise lack money to spend on food and housing will have some minimum amount to spend.

We’ve turned “welfare” into a slur, but Merriam-Webster’s first definition is “the state of doing well.” Our founders wanted our government to assist people in their general welfare — they didn’t want a country divided into a class of aristocrats and one of peasants. We need to return to what they wanted, and what we as a country sometimes seemed to have forgotten or abandoned.

If Americans don’t want “socialism,” then the country can put its shares of these companies back onto the market once this crisis has passed. But just as we don’t need war profiteering, we don’t need to just hand the wealthiest few money to fight the economic impact of the coronavirus, and hope that they’ll be thankful. Supposedly, they’re wealthy because they’ve put their resources at risk. So be it.

We are, all of us, in this together. The new virus makes that obvious, because it does not infect only the poor, or only the wealthy, or only people of one race or religion. Maybe, along with the horrific problems the virus has created for us, it can be of some benefit if it reminds us all of our interdependence, and reminds us of our shared humanity. I hope it does.