COVID-19 and Inequality: a brief reflection, from theory to political action.

By, Tomás Vieira Silva

Since the beginning of our confinement, many have written on how this pandemic will affect our society. Some have claimed that we, as a society and as individual members of that society, should take this pandemic as an opportunity to rethink our way of living. Others have rightly argued that this is no longer ‘just’ a health crisis – it is a social, a cultural, an economic, and soon a financial one.

While it is true that this virus does not differentiate between who it infects, it is undeniable that it will hit the poorest members of society the hardest – in fact, it already has. It is not difficult to see why: those who lack the financial resources, will not be able to buy and store important goods, such as food, hygiene products, and even masks and disinfectant, which are key for their safety. Further, with compulsory quarantine imposed by governments, people will have to stay home, and will see an increase on their electric bills. Moreover, the access to healthcare in some countries (namely, the United States of America) is too expensive and its costs make it impossible for thousands of people to get the treatment they need. All this, adding to the fact that many people have lost their jobs or have seen a decrease on their income, will lead to an increasingly unequal society.

This raises an important moral question, to which political philosophers have tried to answer before: Does an unequal society entail an unfair society? One could argue that trying to answer this question should not be a priority, especially in times like these. However, I would point out that it is critical that we, as individual members of a society, and governments, as those in charge of governing a society, are able to answer it – and, more importantly, that we are able to act on it.

I would like to propose a thought-experiment. Imagine you do not know what tomorrow is going to be like for you, your family, your friends, and your neighbours, and the only thing you know is that there is a pandemic going on. You cannot be sure whether you will get the food you need, whether your grandmother will get the medicine she needs, or even whether your neighbour will be able to pay his rent (he might lose his job). Now, think about these questions: shouldn’t you go to sleep tonight knowing that you will be able to feed yourself tomorrow? Shouldn’t your grandmother go to sleep tonight knowing she will get her medicine tomorrow? Shouldn’t your neighbour go to sleep tonight knowing he is not going to be evicted tomorrow?

(Many will recognize this exercise. Indeed, it is based on Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance, from The Theory of Justice.)

I am confident that your answer was ‘yes’ to at least one of the questions set above. Now, I ask you: imagine that you can buy the food, and that your grandmother is able to buy her medicine, but your neighbour lost his job and cannot pay his rent. Is it fair for him to be evicted from his home, while you and you grandmother have your basic needs fulfilled? In other words, is it fair for an individual, or group of individuals, to have the fulfilment of his basic needs guaranteed, while others are not able to fulfil theirs?

The way we settle this question has political consequences. If one says yes – that is fair for such an unequal state of affairs to exist -, one denies that we ought to address inequality. However, if one says that this is not a fair situation, one will have to address this question: If an individual, or group of individuals, is not able to guarantee that he gets the food he needs, or the medicine he needs, or the housing he needs, who should assure that?

For the sake of this article’s length, I shall not answer this last question – I will leave that up to you. Nonetheless, I would like to point out that this article and the COVID-19 pandemic have one thing in common: Both are questioning the economic system that underlies state-societal relations, whose development lead to the weakening of the State’s social role, and which has, in turn, fomented inequality in society

Because of this, I want to finish with this thought: it is time that policy-makers finally pay close attention to two not-so-utopic ideas available to them: one is the Universal Basic Income, known as UBI – there is a terrific book by Roberto Merrill, Sara Bizarro, Gonçalo Marcelo and Jorge Pinto on UBI called Rendimento Básico Incondicional: Uma defesa da liberdade; the other one is Community Wealth Building, a concept which is clarified and worked out by Martin O’Neill and Joe Guinan in their book The Case for Community Wealth Building.

Maybe the response to this pandemic should not be only an economic one – maybe it should be a deeper one, which goes to the core of our civic and moral duties as members of society.