by Frank Palmeri and Ted Wendelin

In support of patriotic demonstrators who proclaim that they are “willing to die for jobs,” we make this clear statement of our creed. The aim of economic growth is to provide jobs, not to further life. If human life is preserved at the expense of jobs, the result is economic death; but he who preserves or creates jobs, even at the cost of some deaths, that man produces economic life.

We place profits over people because it is not people who make the economy possible, but the economy that makes people possible by enabling them to survive.

That is why we must get Americans back to work. If those who cannot work from home—service workers, manual workers, cleaners—run a risk to their health in going back to work, the cost is worth it because doing so keeps the economy alive.

There is nothing new in this. It is how capitalism functions. Workers are fuel for the machine. They may have to die to keep the engine of profits alive. America has always believed that employees are expendable.

What would happen, for instance, if we had single-payer medical care and regulated prescription drug prices? The insurance and pharmaceutical companies would lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and tens of thousands of jobs would be lost. All to preserve the lives of a few thousand patients, most of whom are not contributing to society. But where would the thousands of jobs be found to replace those lost by caring for every citizen?

Similarly, one family-owned drug company which paid doctors to write bushels of prescriptions for opioids made billions of dollars, while only about five hundred thousand people lost their lives. Out of a population of more than 300 million, that’s only about one in a thousand. The Sacklers were benefactors, not criminals. The Sacklers alleviated the pain and suffering of millions.

As the great Ayn Rand understood, society is divided into makers and takers. The makers are those who make money and create jobs. The more money they can siphon or shovel into their pockets, the more successful and celebrated they are. The more people they employ—no matter if the jobs are low-paying, unhealthy, without benefits, or polluting—the more they are benefactors of their community.

The takers, the losers, are everyone else: the poor, of course, who are poor because they’re lazy or criminal or both. The middle class, too, who, as they lose jobs, will lose their health insurance and have to pay full retail for medical care (think of the jobs that will create). And naïve romantics also, who aren’t smart enough to see that the rule of this world is “eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten.”

Despite some commentators’ puzzlement, it makes sense that the President has refrained from ordering the government to centralize the procurement and distribution of tests and emergency equipment in current circumstances. He understands the basics of our faith. He is allowing states to meet in the open market with the federal government, other states, and other countries. The result is that prices are five or ten times higher than before, and higher prices create more jobs. What could be more efficient?

Thus, his invisible hand can supply life-saving and protective equipment to governors who bow before him, while he uses economic pressure against those “nasty” governors who don’t “appreciate” him. And if this costs the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, where is the long-term economic harm? Observe the beautiful elegance of the capitalist system when it works without burdensome restraints!

Some socialistic journalist wrote that the President is now the head of a “death cult.” But we are not afraid of being called worshippers of death. We proclaim the need for culling the useless takers in order to revive the economic engine that keeps all of us alive.

Those who die—the old, the poor, immigrants—were going to die anyway. Good citizens now recognize that governors’ mandates to protect the lives of the weak through social distancing are communistic. Responsible legislators realize that some people must die so that God-fearing Americans may live, and shop, and play, and thrive.

 This is our religion: economic life trumps individual deaths. He who dies shall rise again and live in the glory of eternal economic growth. The last in wealth shall be the first in our thoughts and prayers, while the top .01% shall remain the top .01% for ever and ever, growth without end.

Therefore, do not be ashamed of your creed! May the blessed Ayn watch over us! Remember: be fruitful and multiply your profits and your sale items! Now get out there and make a killing!

Frank Palmeri teaches literature at the University of Miami. He is the author of several articles on satire and two books, including Satire in Narrative: Petronius, Swift, Gibbon, Melville, Pynchon.

Ted Wendelin taught Spanish for Translation and Business at the University of Colorado at Denver. He wrote, with Frank Palmeri, “The Long and Despicable History of Voter Suppression,” (April 22, 2018), which was republished on newsweek.com and several other sites and is forthcoming from University of Georgia Press in History in the Headlines: Voter Suppression.