By Scott Remer, In These Times

In 1770, the nov­el­ist Oliv­er Gold­smith observed, ​“Ill fares the land, to has­ten­ing ills a prey, where wealth accu­mu­lates, and men decay.” Mod­ern­ize the lan­guage, and he could have been writ­ing about the sit­u­a­tion in the Unit­ed States today.

The pan­dem­ic has exac­er­bat­ed a debt epi­dem­ic that’s been fes­ter­ing for decades. Some Covid-19 patients have racked up astro­nom­i­cal med­ical bills which often run into the thou­sands of dol­lars, as many are dis­mayed to dis­cov­er. Unin­sured patients and fam­i­ly mem­bers, mean­while, are often being wrong­ly charged, even though the CARES Act the­o­ret­i­cal­ly cov­ers unin­sured patients’ Covid bills. While $1,200 stim­u­lus checks tem­porar­i­ly improved many work­ers’ finan­cial sit­u­a­tions in the spring, now close to 8 mil­lion peo­ple have fall­en into poverty.

Lay­offs and cut­backs in work hours and pay­checks are dec­i­mat­ing work­ing peo­ples’ bud­gets, pro­vok­ing an unprece­dent­ed spike in hunger, espe­cial­ly among chil­dren. Around 26 mil­lion peo­ple now don’t have enough food. Wide­spread income reduc­tions are also forc­ing peo­ple to with­hold util­i­ty pay­ments and rent: 12 mil­lion renters will owe an aver­age of $5,850 in back rent and util­i­ties by the begin­ning of 2021. This back rent is a tick­ing time bomb: it threat­ens to cre­ate a wave of evic­tions and home­less­ness after the fed­er­al evic­tion mora­to­ri­um expires on Decem­ber 31.

Small busi­ness­es are strug­gling, and many are on the brink of clo­sure. All this even as America’s bil­lion­aires have swollen their for­tunes by $931 bil­lion since March. It’s a grim pic­ture. As we grope toward a post-Covid future, the dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion for mil­lions of work­ing-class peo­ple — and bil­lion­aires’ con­tin­ued enrich­ment at their expense — demands a rad­i­cal solu­tion: uni­ver­sal debt for­give­ness for rent, med­ical debt, and stu­dent loans. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment holds immense pow­er and could imme­di­ate­ly for­give pub­lic stu­dent loan debt and pay off all oth­er debts, giv­ing ordi­nary Amer­i­cans a chance to start fresh. This debt relief could eas­i­ly be fund­ed by wealth and income tax­es on the rich.

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