A Neoliberal Christmas Carol

 How do billionaires and celebrities avoid looking like complete jerks as they jostle to be among the first in line to receive the Covid-19 vaccine?

Easy - they pretend that it's all for charity. 'Tis, after all, the season for noblesse-obligin' -  that special time of year when the wealthy suck up public acclaim for their do-goodery as they continue screwing everybody else.

So to avoid giving the awful impression that they're cutting in line to get the vaccine, economist Richard Thaler suggests in a New York Times op-ed that they simply bribe nudge their august selves into their accustomed and deserved places as Alpha-dogs at the head of the pack. 

First, the very purpose of the charity auction would be to redistribute money from the rich to the poor. Think of it as a voluntary wealth tax. This money could be used to help people who have suffered most in the pandemic: those who have lost their jobs and face evictions, whose health has been permanently impaired, who face grievous hardship of all kinds.

Depending on the prices and quantities, billions of dollars could be raised that could be spent to help those who need it most. Robin Hood in action!

Of course, with a single payer health care system, a federal guaranteed public housing policy and a basic universal income we wouldn't need the selective and voluntary self-serving charity and bribery schemes of the rich, would we?

Thaler, at the very height of the 2008 financial meltdown that resulted in 94 percent of all the "lost" household wealth geysering up to the same wealthy miscreants whose speculative crime spree had spawned the crisis, actually released a book called Nudge, cowritten with Obama adviser Cass Sunstein. It was widely praised by corporate types as a kind of neoliberal bible for centrist policy wonks and technocrats who want to be seen as caring and concerned as they craft such austerian solutions to misery and want as cutting Social Security and unemployment benefits.

Thaler was duly rewarded with the "Nobel" memorial economics prize the following year for his paternalistic libertarian work positing that credentialed experts, both inside and outside of government, know what is better for people than people do themselves.

 One of the book's more whimsical policy prescriptions was to make it harder, if not impossible, for people to sue doctors and hospitals. If patients were required to waive their legal rights at the time of treatment, the authors claimed, then doctors and hospitals will be less likely to commit malpractice. And the obscene costs of the for-profit mess known as the US healthcare system would magically go down. In other words, with tort reform, who needs Medicare For All?

 It should come as no surprise that Thaler was also among the first "public intellectuals" to peddle the magical thinking concept of "herd immunity" when the pandemic erupted last spring. It's a way to force people back to work and discontinue their benefits before a vaccine becomes available.

And now that we still will have to wait for many long months before everybody gets vaccinated, the New York Times has given Thaler a platform from which to sell the junk theory of "trickle-down" inoculation as a natural adjunct to the equally fraudulent school of supply-side economics. This body of neoliberal thought falsely claims that since obscene wealth in just a few greedy hands will "trickle down" to the rest of us, there is no need for the wealthy to pay higher taxes to fund programs benefiting regular people.

Of course, since Thaler is on the "liberal" Democratic side of the oligarchy, he does magnanimously allow in his Times op-ed that vulnerable people like medical personnel, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions should get the vaccine first. Only then should the rich and famous shove ahead of the rest of us and relabel their selfishness as charity. He writes:

  At that point, perhaps sometime early this winter, suppose a small proportion of doses are sold in what would amount to a charity auction. Who might be the winning bidders? Very wealthy individuals and high-tech companies are likely to account for some of the demand, along with businesses that employ high-profile talent like professional athletes and entertainers. Just imagine how much the National Basketball Association, whose season will start , around Christmas, would be willing to pay to ensure that none of its players or staff would be infected! The same goes for Hollywood studios and television production companies that are eager to go back to work.

Thaler rationalizes this grotesque shamelessness by marketing it, as I mentioned above, as a kind of trickle-down protection for the unvaccinated teeming masses. He never mentions just how this voluntary largesse would be distributed to the poor and less fortunate. Maybe it's because philanthrocapitalists rarely give their cash directly to those who need it. Rather, they park it in one another's tax exempt foundations and other financial shelters.

Still not buying the charity auction of vaccine idea, proles? Not to worry. Thaler next grabs the concept of Lesser Evilism out of his bag of neoliberal tricks. If we don't allow the Elite to get the vaccine before we do, a "gray or black market" trafficking in precious vaccine is bound to emerge. So nudge yourselves into accepting the class system as an immutable law of nature. Rich and powerful people always have gotten superior health care, so it is no use complaining. Especially now, at this dangerous time. 

Thaler writes that eventually, we should all be required to carry a health photo ID and passport with proof of vaccination at all times. We need to be "nudged" in the right direction using whatever tactics of fear and intimidation that it takes for the Elite to get the Plutonomy (an economy for the richest) moving again and people toiling again.

 If Ebenezer Scrooge had found redemption today instead of nearly two centuries ago, he would have given Bob Cratchit a supermarket discount coupon instead of a Christmas turkey and a deferred tax credit instead of a raise. He would have promised to give Tiny Tim access to affordable health care once he reached early adulthood, or middle age at the very latest. He would have urged them all to hold on for just a little bit longer as he himself voraciously sought and received glowing publicity for the awe-inspiring miracle of his own new-found wokeness and the glory of his good intentions.

Rather than use their platforms to try to shame and pressure the Congress, which they have bought and paid for, to do right by the people, our own modern plague-profiting Scrooges are outdoing themselves with various humanitarian pledges. Even in the middle of a pandemic when millions of people are sickening and dying and going hungry and losing their homes and their jobs, the Season of Noblesse Obligin' must never be canceled.  The obscenely wealthy are at it again, investing in atonement hedge funds, and betting heavily on no-risk moral default swaps.

Miracle of miracles, their Christmas future is not at all the horrific nightmare one that Charles Dickens prescribed for Scrooge. Their Christmas future is right now, in the form of positive coverage of their aspirational  beneficence.

 If 2050 rolls around, and the world's worst polluting capitalists have not, after all, attained their noble goal of trapping all that excess carbon in special underground vats, will anybody remember what they promised back in 2020? Will anybody still be alive in 2050 to bother holding them to their promise?

The whole objective is to make environmentalists shut up during this sacred season and to "nudge" the Biden administration into going easy on its own aspirational executive orders. And the corporate media are only too happy to help spread feel-good propaganda messages like this one:  

CHICAGO, Dec 10 (Reuters) - United Airlines said on Thursday it had committed to a multimillion-dollar investment in a project to remove carbon dioxide from the air through air direct-capture technology as part of a plan to be 100% “green” by 2050. The project, 1PointFive, is a partnership between Occidental Petroleum Corp subsidiary Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Rusheen Capital Management that plans to build the first U.S. industrial-sized direct air capture plant that would permanently sequester 1 million tons of CO2 each year.That’s the equivalent of what 40 million trees can do, but covering a land area about 3,000 times smaller, United said, adding that direct-capture technology is one of the few proven ways to correct for aircraft emissions.United declined to provide further details on the investment amount. (my bold)

(And the Reuters reporter certainly didn't insist upon any.)

Meanwhile, to deflect attention from the disproportionate Black morbidity and mortality rate from Covid-19 (as a direct result of  overcrowded housing and the higher rates of pollution in poor neighborhoods), a consortium of corporate CEOs have just announced, to great fanfare, that they will be hiring a million more Black employees.... by the end of the decade. They were shattered, they say, by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. They have therefore pledged to begin a start-up to conduct a study to identify potential job applicants.

If these people think that we're all snoozing while they proclaim how Woke they are, then they're the ones who are dreaming. They can plaster the charity label on their massive campaign of theft, oppression and pollution all they want, they can try and "nudge" us into accepting their nonsensical nostrums and agenda of harm all they want. But we're on to the Con. Or at least we should be.

Who can't but notice, for example, the stark derangement of Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, who is actually trying to recast big polluting subsidized oil companies as sympathetic plague victims?

 "I'm reaching out to them because I want to hear from them," he told NPR. "I'm listening to what their needs are so I can understand what the possibilities may be."

"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'” -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.