Labor organizers often describe the strike as the ultimate “structure test” of their organizational strength and leadership among the workers. It is a crisis point that puts the future of the organization at stake, and it can end in failure even if the leaders make all of the best possible decisions. The pandemic has been, in many ways, the ultimate test of each country’s social structure and ruling class. As the death toll and unemployment claims continue to soar from week to week, it’s all too clear that the United States has failed the test on almost every front.

As hospitals groaned under the weight of the pandemic and millions of laid-off workers struggled in vain to file unemployment claims, corporate lobbyists were busy writing eye-watering tax giveaways into the coronavirus relief bill. Instead of putting private industry to work on behalf of the federal government, the Trump administration has instead gone to work on behalf of private industry. Major corporations like FedEx, which appears to be vastly overcharging the federal government for chartered cargo flights, have not hesitated to take advantage of the administration’s chaotic and mismanaged supply chain group. The president has compelled slaughterhouse workers to keep working despite obvious health hazards, and has signaled his intention to protect their employers from legal liability. Business lobbyists and campaign donors are shaping decisions to reopen state-level economies, and the fitness-club industry leveraged White House connections to get gyms, of all things, into “phase one” of President Trump’s national reopening plan.

Such openly predatory behavior is certainly offensive, particularly in the midst of a supposedly equalizing pandemic. But it’s far from surprising, and is quite consistent with the “mechanisms of politically constituted rip-off” that have defined the political economy of neoliberal capitalism. While millions of us face economic ruin, sickness, and death, America’s ruling elites continue to distinguish themselves as first-class passengers on a sinking ship.