Prediction: Yellow vests. In the US.

Get ready to be angry. Two very different economic experiences are emerging in our fair mode of production.

If you didn't believe in a struggle between ruling and working classes before...

On the one hand, there's going to be shocking jobless numbers. We're already on track for the largest jobless claims report in history.

Some say 1.5 million could be out of work next week, unemployment rising to 20%. Again, firms becoming deficit agents will foist that burden on the working class--who are getting sick, dying, and don't have long-term healthcare options.

The foisting of deficit on the working class happens in two ways. First on individuals who just can't afford things anymore, aren't sure of their prospects, and go deeper into debt. Second, the state structures nominally in place to help the working class will be starved the sales, income, and other tax dollars they need to work. State and municipal budgets will be hardest hit. (Here's the Department of Labor's report from yesterday, and Trump is having states hide their unemployment numbers.)

Remember also that the crisis here is a crisis in production: people can’t go to work, people can’t go out and buy stuff. The shutdowns, quarantines, and sheltering-in-place orders extend the production crisis. And as I’ll mention in a future post, the darker side of the flatten the curve meme is that extending our capacity to treat the virus extends the shutdown.

More shutdown = less virus, more production crisis. Working class is out of work for longer.

On the other hand, I'm seeing stories in the ruling class financial news today that things are *looking up*. Headline on Trading Economics website today: "Global Stocks Rise." Marketwatch has several chipper headlines, with JP Morgan analysts saying it's going to be a good time to buy stocks. And then news comes out that politicians on both sides of the Capitalist Party sold their stocks before the crash back in February. I bet they're feeling secure.

Not to mention the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer and others scuppered a cash for the people proposal that was made from both the right wing and left wings. Mnuchin, Cotton, Romney, Hawley along with people like Sanders and Omar were all calling for 1,000 - 2,000 direct payments to people. Ruling class said nope.

This points to something that I'd forgotten in the midst of the crisis, but is pretty obvious: our social structure was very unequal before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit and layered on top of an already unequal structure. So recovery is, of course, is marked by inequality.

It will probably exacerbate that inequality. (I'm doing some research about expropriation as a left demand. Seems to me the case is going to make itself.) Just look at the calls for blowing up bridges in the Hamptons.

My prediction: when the shutdowns end, there will be Yellow Vests in the US.