CORONAVIRUS has come to teach us some stark lessons about capitalism and class. The virus is killing the poor in much greater numbers than the rich – at a rate of roughly two to one. While most of us shudder at what the future holds economically for ourselves and our children, the rich remain safe, propped up by government bailouts and undertaxed wealth, just as they were propped up after the 2008 crash.

It is the poorly paid and the struggling who are keeping us alive and the country running – cleaners, NHS staff, shelf stackers, delivery drivers. They’re the backbone of the fight against coronavirus. What CEO is worth a penny compared to a nurse or a Tesco till operator?

As the old song goes: “One thing’s sure, and nothing’s surer, the rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.” Even in times of global pandemic.

There has to be a reckoning for what’s happening once the outbreak is over. The new post-corona world cannot be allowed to be the same as the old pre-corona world. Change must come, and that change must be economic.

Each day there’s more proof that claims by our governments that ‘we’re all in this together’ – that coronavirus doesn’t discriminate – are at best an idle aspiration, at worst a downright lie. This virus discriminates because the society our politicians have built discriminates.

If anyone doubts that coronavirus is killing the poor more than the rich, the proof is sitting on our own doorstep. Inverclyde has suffered the worst coronavirus death rate in Scotland. It’s also where you’ll find the country’s most deprived areas. Inverclyde’s death rate is 11.9 per 10,000 people – the national figure is 4.2 per 10,0000. Only the wilfully self-deceiving could deny that when it comes to coronavirus, poverty kills.

Chris McEleny, leader of Inverclyde Council’s SNP group, has rightly called for a ‘deprivation fund’ to help bring the death rate down.

Scotland is a nation where extreme wealth and extreme poverty exist side by side. It’s grotesque. Streets full of millionaires are just a walk away from high-rise misery. In the rich homes, there’s gardens, stocked fridges, rooms for everyone, and comfort – in the poor homes, there’s families living on top of each other, food parcels, fear and despair.

'Coronavirus preys on the poor' – Kevin McKenna on the plight of forgotten Scotland

While the poor die, the rich think of their pockets. Wealthy Tory donors, who’ve poured millions into Conservative campaign funds, have been pushing Boris Johnson to ease the lockdown and 'fire up' the economy. They want workers back in the harness.

Trade unions are warning that the draft guidelines for getting employees back to work are a health risk. Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, has criticised guidelines allowing employers to decide what’s safe when it comes to distance between workers, cleaning practices and the use of PPE. UK Labour’s shadow employment rights minister, Andy McDonald, asked why unions had been given only 12 hours to respond to the proposals.

Perhaps, we need a new national flag. One that simply reads: “Profit before People”. There’s been plenty of stories about individual companies and bosses acting despicably during the outbreak – but don’t be fooled into thinking this is about a few bad apples. The problem, the dysfunction, is systemic. The structures we have set in place around the economy allow the rich to sponge off the state when they need to, while simultaneously vilifying the poor and weak if they find themselves dependent on state support. It’s a satanically sick joke; hypocrisy on an epic level.

FTSE 100 companies claiming vast sums of government support for furloughed workers paid their CEOs an average of £3.6million a year before the crisis. The companies include Primark owner Associated British Foods, easyJet, and British Airways owner IAG, as well as retailers Next and JD Sports.

The £42 billion profits made in the last five years by the companies could have covered the expected cost to the taxpayer of the scheme, analysis by the High Pay Centre suggests. During that same period, those companies paid shareholders £26 billion in dividends.

The government is paying 80% of salaries for workers who are furloughed, up to £2,500 per month. Only some employers have said they’ll pay the remaining 20% of wages.

I ask you – can a tycoon not dip their hand in their pocket to pay a little toward the survival of their own staff? How quickly can a billion pounds run out?

Only 37 per cent of FTSE 100 companies have cut executive pay – and only 13% have cut bonuses. Only 35 FTSE 100 companies have cut, suspended or cancelled their dividends.

At the other end of the scale, we have half of Scotland’s care workers paid less than the Real Living Wage – that’s a measly £9.30 an hour. Analysis by the STUC shows that 43% of the Scottish social care workforce, which is predominantly female with a high proportion of migrants, are being paid less than the Real Living Wage.

The sheer duplicity of what’s happening is astonishing. For years, we’ve ground down the NHS, minced job security and pay for low earners, and trashed welfare. Now, we allow the rich to get fat on state welfare, while telling nurses and low income workers in supermarkets that they are national heroes.

The UN’s poverty tsar, Philip Alston, just about nailed it when he said: “The policies of many states reflect a social Darwinism philosophy that prioritises the economic interests of the wealthiest while doing little for those who are hard at work providing essential services or unable to support themselves.”

Will it change? I, for one, pray it will. But history teaches another lesson. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe’s account of the bubonic plague devastating London in 1665, the disparity between the rich and the poor is forever on the page. ‘The misery of that time,’ Defoe writes, ‘lay upon the poor.’

In 1665, the rich ran and hid, the poor kept London going. The same is true now – not just on a national scale, but on a global scale.

Nothing much changed after the plague of 1665. The rich kept getting richer and the poor stayed pretty much the same. It is not revolutionary to say that after 2020 the rich must be brought to heel for the sake of the poor.

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