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The Senate passed the bill last night, but at least Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott, Tom Scott and Ben Sasse had a chance to make-believe they are dutiful limited-government conservatives forced into compromising their principles by circumstance beyond their control. Never mind that they voted yes. Never mind that they could have voted no without jeopardizing the bills passage. Never mind, because the plays the thing.

Still, if we understand their complaint as one of incentives, its worth dwelling on. Incentives are central to the economic ideology that has animated the Republicans since forever. That ideology holds that markets are efficient and know better than government how to allocate labor and resources for the benefit of the greater good. Government interference, even in its blandest form, is akin to Communism or sacrilege, depending on how much Heavenly import you imbues markets with.

Its always been debatable whether the Republicans really believe what they say they really believe about the markets. (Leftists call it neoliberalism and blame both parties equally for its global economic dominance.) Whats not debatable is that the Republicans find ways around their principles when a Republican sits in the White House while rediscovering the zeal of the freshly converted when its a Democrat.

Deficits were no big deal during Reagans time. Deficits were the end of the world during Bill Clintons time. Deficits were nothing to worry about when George W. Bush was president. Deficits were so dangerous the Republicans could not in good conscience help Barack Obama lead the country out of the Great Recession. Now, deficits are trivial again. Theyll be apocalyptic with the next Democratic president.

Whether in good faith or bad, however, markets were still more credible than an activist government. Most people most of the time still thought equal opportunity for businesses was the same as equal opportunity for their fellow Americans. Belief in market ideology was so strong it shaped how people engaged the debate over welfare.

Some said the rich were greedy and held workaday Americans in contempt. Thats why they hated social insurance programs like food stamps, Medicaid and jobless benefits. That couldnt be right, said the market faithful, who have made up a majority of Americans for half a century. The welfare debate wasnt about the bigotry of the aristocracy against the plebes. It was about efficiency. It was about incentives. To think otherwise was to think the unthinkable: class war in a classless society.

Like I said, Graham and his cohort were plainly incoherent last night. I still dont know what they were talking about. But there is one interpretation that makes sense to me as Americans enter into a period of mass death and astronomic unemployment. (Below is todays jobless claims report in graph form courtesy ofBloomberg News.)

That interpretation is this: The rich can be trusted with public money, but not so everyone else. Its OK to give Boeing tens of billions of dollars in relief aid. Its OK to give corporations access to unlimited and cheap money from the Federal Reserve. But its not OK to give normal people an extra $600 a week, people who are at the same time being coaxed by billionaires into going back to work even at the risk of death.

When most people most of the time had ample faith in markets, and when the ideology of markets was credible, it was difficult to see the rank bigotry the very rich often express toward the not very rich. (Not being very rich means you obviously dont deserving being very rich, which means you are richly deserving of your suffering.)

But I think that faith is waning. Unemployment rose to more than 3.3 millionin a week. Deaths from the coronavirus pandemic hit 1,000today. Markets are not going to save us. Indeed, the billionaires who control markets could make things so much worse. (They could literally kill people.) In a way, its fitting that Graham and others were incoherent. Their incoherence reflects a once-powerful ideology in deep decay.

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Republicans cant suppress their contempt for working Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic - AlterNet