Will I be seeing you at next year's Marx party?
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plane, you know...
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One side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a surge in anti-capitalist sentiment. This isn’t an academic observation. A “RENT STRIKE” banner appeared on a building on our block earlier this week, and the Trump administration’s half-hearted effort to give citizens $1,200 has magnified calls on the Left for a Universal Basic Income. And it’s not just the Yang Gang, even Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has voiced the lukewarmest of support for a guaranteed income plan.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Indeed, the wealth of America’s billionaires is estimated to have increased 10% since the start of the coronavirus lockdown. Let me be a little more explicit about what that means: Billionaires in the United States have made an estimated $282 billion, even as the stock market crashed and millions upon millions of ordinary people were put out of work. Billionaires in the U.S. now control around $3.229 trillion of wealth.
So yes, there’s a reason why our out of work neighbors have decided that this is a good time to stop kicking their rent up to their landlords. Not even during the financial crisis was it as abundantly clear as it is now that the deck is stacked against the average worker in America. Improbably, however, those who would most benefit from collective action to balance the scales have become increasingly aligned against the interests of their own class. As Eric Levitz observes in New York magazine, in recent decades the dominant parties have both become intra-class parties, meaning that they have built coalitions made up of both wealthy and working class people drawn together by social issues, such as abortion or immigration. Any inclination that working people might have toward unionizing becomes subsumed into the broadly profit-seeking agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties. In previous generations, the wealthy tended to flock to the Republican party, while working class union members were squarely in the Democratic camp. Now, working class economic movements have been drawn and quartered by capital and divided against each other.
Yet this new economic and political order is facing a very real test during the COVID-19 lockdown. The longer people are out of work, the deeper the downturn once businesses reopen, and the more apparent the failure of government intervention becomes, the less likely working class voters are to support business as usual. Whether that takes extreme forms, such as the rent strike in Crown Heights, or more “normal” responses, such as voting for progressive candidates in November, remains to be seen. The GOP is incredibly poorly positioned to weather the economic headwinds that are building, but the Democrats would be mistaken to rest on their laurels. If they are not careful, they’ll be swept away by an electoral maelstrom over the next few cycles that will heavily favor redistributive economic policies and punitive tax structures.
There is a middle ground, of course, but it will require America’s politicians to remember who they actually serve, and they better remember it fast. The current tax code—which endlessly rewards major corporations and the super rich—needs to be thrown into a dumpster and set on fire. Taxes must be increased on the richest individuals and their wealth now, and the proceeds should be channeled into productive, pro-social services such as infrastructure spending, student and medical debt forgiveness, the arts, scientific research and education. If this does not happen soon, redistributive programs of direct payments to citizens—which will put money into people’s pockets but do little long-term to encourage entrepreneurialism or sustainable economic or social improvements—become increasingly likely.
Unfortunately, the more of a handle we get on the public health side of the coronavirus pandemic, the more the political and economic issues loom. And since the average IQ in Washington D.C. is roughly equal to that of a canned ham, and the President’s big idea is shotgunning Clorox, I’m having a hard time being optimistic about what comes next.
Today’s Film: Bad Education (2019)
Class is at the core of screenwriter Mike Makowsky’s new HBO film Bad Education. The movie follows the unraveling of Roslyn school district superintendent Frank Tassone and his deputy Pam Gluckin during a $11 million embezzlement scandal that rocked the sleepy Long Island bedroom community in 2006. Over the years, Tassone had built Roslyn into one of the top performing school districts in the nation, buoying the property values of area homes over the years as well, and when the theft was revealed by a journalist at the high school’s student newspaper, his downfall instantly became national news.
Makowsky is smart about how he approaches the story. Rather than telling a by-the-books crime story about Tassone (Hugh Jackman) and Gluckin (Allison Janney) taking advantage of the district and then being found out, he centers the drama around the question of how Tassone and Gluckin are valued by the taxpayers they ostensibly serve. Although they’re clearly villains, and Tassone comes across as something of a sociopath, the well-meaning townspeople leave a bad taste in the mouth. They directly benefitted from the work Tassone and Gluckin did, yet never saw fit to compensate them appropriately. The film delivers a story that on one level is about the comeuppance of a criminal mastermind, but on another is about a question of national importance: Are teachers valuable members of society, and how should we determine their worth to their communities?
Jackman and Janney both deliver award-worthy performances, and the supporting cast, particularly Ray Romano as the head of the school board, gives them a lot to work with. Makowsky was a student at Roslyn High when the scandal broke, and despite Bad Education only being his second feature film, he executes dialogue, narrative and thematic elements deftly. He clearly benefitted in particular from being able to access his own recollections of the school at the time, and while writing the script, he also made an effort to interview teachers who were at the school under Tassone and Gluckin.
Bad Education is a smart, well-acted and tightly directed take on small town story. It doesn’t allow itself to be hemmed-in by Long Island, rather, the film takes the local and the particular and connects them to our larger national dialogue. A conversation about buying a PlayStation on a school credit card softly introduces the question of why a school administrator in a wealthy district can’t afford one to begin with, and whether that state of affairs is right. The film—like all art—is at its best when it questions the status quo.
Bad Education is available to stream on HBO.
Reading List:
Director Ruben Östlund writes about the media and COVID-19 in New York magazine. As you might imagine, the man behind Force Majeure has some thoughts on the matter.
Gothamist has put together a soothing photo tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, which happen to be just a 10 minute walk from our home. There’s a video as well. Take a deep breath and enjoy the flowers.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.