During the Covid 19 emergency the US government enacted anti-poverty policies that were amazingly effective at reducing poverty.

“The year poverty began to end” [Nate Bear, Do Not Panic]. “From 2020 to 2021 every marker of poverty, from child poverty, to overall poverty, to food insecurity, to homelessness, plummeted in the richest countries….. In 2021, US poverty fell to a record low, as did child poverty, which was almost halved, an achievement without precedent in modern US history. These achievements equated to lifting nearly 5 million children out of poverty…. It turns out that when you give people money and food and homes, they no longer suffer from a lack of money and food and homes. It turns out that poverty in rich countries is a choice…. As this transformation was underway in 2020 and 2021, the media was flooded with articles along the lines of: will we learn the lessons from the pandemic? I think we know the answer. Who talks now about the unprecedented reduction in rich world poverty? No one. Not even the left. So predictably, all these gains have been lost…. Homelessness and poverty is capitalism’s live stream, broadcast everywhere to ensure you can never fully escape the sense of precarity about what might be.”

We also found a single payer system workable despite decades of propaganda to the contrary.

For our capitalist elite, poverty is the whole point, the engine to power the surplus value of labor. After all, we can’t let the proles get too comfortable.

And while you might imagine that such a development would open up a political opportunity you would be mistaken. It’s only by pure coincidence that your nation’s population remains in a perpetual 50–50 deadlock which prevents anyone’s votes from changing the status quo, and the status quo just happens to be perpetually frozen along lines that hugely advantage the rich and powerful.

Update: Crazy developments in the Middle East that I hope to tackle soon but for now I want to throw out an idea. The US neocons have been keen to open up another front in the new Cold War against Russia/China/Iran but what if this is the Axis of Evil playing the same game?