Black hole, not black swan
Finance people call this pandemic production crisis a black swan, but I don’t like that term. Of course it’s accurate from a ruling class point of view: it’s a statistical term meaning something that doesn’t happen very often.
But I think, like most finance and market news I’ve been reading, the trope takes capital’s point of view rather than labor’s. Calling this a ‘black swan’ reduces the view of the crisis to a numerical thing in a system, rather than an experience for the people this system is supposed to serve.
My favorite economic analyst Zoltan Poszar attributed the production crisis to a deficit agent problem: in the supply shock, most firms run deficits because when a mode of production shuts down costs remain. The firms change from supply agents to deficit agents.
But again, this characterization takes the view from capital: in this case the firms. But the experience of labor–the broad, diverse working class– in a deficit agent crisis is something more than just running deficits.
I’d propose to call the problem a ‘black hole’. When costs like rent, utilities, nutrition, medical costs, previous debts all remain for the working class, those costs are a black hole. They continue to pull resources even when there’s nothing left. The shutdown creates a black hole for labor, whereas the ruling class gets a black swan.
This passage about from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer stuck out to me in that sense.
“Anthony Jackson was laid off from his job in Montgomery County in February, before the influx of coronavirus-related claims. When the date for his scheduled payment in March came and went without unemployment benefits arriving in his bank account, Jackson tried to get in touch with the Department of Labor and Industry.“You can’t get into the [unemployment compensation] chat, you can’t get through to anyone on the phone,” said Jackson, who called 40 times in one day without getting an answer. “You are unable to get into the system at all to get any additional information.”Jackson said he relies on the roughly $460 weekly check to pay for groceries, rent, and his phone bill. Instead, he said, “because the payment wasn’t made, I have a couple bounced check fees, and I don’t have any financial [support] at all.”