Americans Die of Covid While Africans Die Exploited
— Forget Trump’s Dow Jones, it’s the Median Age that’ll change!
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America’s Elderly Dying
Corporate America, with Trump at the helm, has thrown America’s elderly under the bus. Covid-19 is a virus that should have been met head-on by America’s NSC pandemic response team. Instead, shortly after assuming power, Trump disbanded the response team because Obama had created it.
Trump got caught with his pants down!
The recently-released Woodward-Trump interview tapes essentially tell the story about how Trump placed his own political image above the security needs of our people. Today, nearly 200,000 Americans, mostly elderly, have died from the effects of the virus. The death count keeps rising — Trump persists in denial.
Trump as Napoleon over CEOs
Trump’s daily masturbatory public relations charade of corporate CEOs has been a woeful, insufficient and detracting response to the Covid-19 crisis. There was a period where Trump daily went on television casting the image: With these terrific and wonderful CEOs of corporate America’s best, we will tackle the challenges of the Corona Virus and win the war!
This amounted to an abject failure in a Fantasy vs. Reality War. Trump’s boundless fantasy became so futile he eventually discontinued the daily press briefings that championed Mike Pence as head of the US Corona Virus Task Force. Their incompetence became akin to Napoleon’s woeful walk home from Russia.
Why? Because Trump became viewed as cloaking over his past lies with new lies, he demonstrated an obvious inability to forthrightly deal with the crisis and it became apparent he was playing politics (let the blue states suffer!) throughout the crisis.
Trump’s greatest accomplishment throughout the crisis has been he made Sarah Cooper famous.
In reality, there was no war. All that was needed was leadership to show common sense, an honest assessment of the problem and an ability to rely on doctors and scientists rather than profiteering CEOs. Many speculate it seemed as though Trump and his cohorts actually wanted to profit from the virus.
Africa’s Population Exploited
Global corporations under American diplomatic and military protection for decades have exploited Africa’s people for slave labor in order to extract diamonds, gold, silver, copper, cobalt, tin, timber and more. Leaders of undeveloped nations far and wide have gotten greased in laundered luxuries while their governments are often propped-up by violent drug gangs helping to keep their their respective populations and potential for rebellion in check.
Now you know why immigration against impossible odds become so attractive! This is all due to a US corporate ‘Squeeze Box.’
While corporations rape for exceedingly exorbitant profiteering, very small money (if any) actually gets to the people of undeveloped nations. The way it works is the International Monetary Fund lends money to those nations, much of which gets squandered. The country is rarely able to repay the debt. Thus, it becomes subservient to the global capitalist ring, often resulting in the location of a US or NATO-friendly military base, multinational corporate benefits or perhaps hanging the debt might help to elicit a favorable vote in the United Nations.
This writing now finds a tragic incident happening in Congo, Africa.
Trump’s Stock Market Indicators vs. Median Age & Quality of Life Indicators
Many wonder why Africa does not have ravaging Covid-19 death rates that plague other nations. This is because African nations have populations — due to centuries of neglect and colonialist policy — that are substantially younger (see chart above). Younger people seem better able to survive the virus. However, present research has no way of knowing the long-term effects from having the virus.
Trump and His Obnoxious Addiction to Dow Jones Numbers
As the Covid-19 crisis continues to heap tragedy upon Americans, especially our elderly, Trump obnoxiously deflects by bragging how he alone created such a great economy. He vociferously boosts how great America’s stock market has become. What he leaves out in his bragging is that his numbers only continue a trajectory course Obama originally created:
The fact is both Obama and Trump administrations have seen 85 to 95% of all wealth created go to fat cats at the top. Since the beginning of the Reagan Administration CEO pay increased 929% and worker pay only 11%, this coupled with an increase in worker productivity. The present ratio of CEO to worker pay is 325 to one. America’s minimum wage remains a pitiful $7.25 an hour.
Financial Times writer Robin Wigglesworth, on February 11, 2020, offered the following tidbits as to who it is that gains from Trump’s praiseworthy stock market:
- The richest one per cent of Americans account for more than half the value of equities owned by U.S. households, according to Goldman Sachs.
- As of September 2019, the bottom 90 per cent owned 12 per cent of the total, the analysts noted.
- The broad U.S. stock market has climbed more than tenfold since 1990 — gains that have mostly accrued to the richest part of the population.
Trump bragging about the stock market proves scant value for the vast majority of America’s middle class and poor folk. The middle income folks are dragged down in debt while America’s poor are relegated into surviving within a dangerous underground economy, living doubled and tripled up in drug infested communities where only a scratch ticket or a lottery ticket presents the only hope for a cure.
So Trump’s heralded stock market is a terrible indicator as to how people are doing in life. It only tells us how well rich people are doing. There are better indexes, better ways of judging the quality of our nation and the world.
Leading indicators should be:
- Peace & Democracy — what nations live without war or regime-change
- Median Age — half older/half younger
- Equality — racial and income disparity, who gets incarcerated
- Health — access to health care, mortality rates, obesity rates, etc.
- Education — what communities provide sound education
- Environmental — who breathes clean air and drinks clean water
- Small Business — which communities thrive
- Happiness — who is happy, why, where and how
- Creativity — who excels in the creative arts and why
