The viral DoorDash driver who delivered two bags of McDonald’s to President Mr. Donald Trump in the White House on 13 April 2026 is a Republican woman campaigning against a “tax on tips” in the US. Sharon Simmons from Fayetteville, Arkansas, a fifty-eight-year-old grandmother of ten grandchildren, has been working as a DoorDash driver since 2022 and has made over 14,000 deliveries over the last four years. The American grandmother was supposed to look forward to her retirement and spend time with her grandchildren. However, she is making around ten tedious deliveries per day on average to pay for the treatment of her husband, who is suffering from cancer. This story is not merely the story of Sharon Simmons, but the story of millions of working people in the US, where the capitalist system has pushed people like her to the margins of life. The sad story reveals many important points about failures of capitalist system.
Firstly, it reveals the commitment of working people like Sharon Simmons in the US and across the world. Working people are not only committed to their work but also to their families and relationships. Everyday morality defines working people even in worst capitalist conditions in US. People like Sharon Simmons did not choose to be a DoorDash driver in a gig economy where hire-and-fire is the norm in the name of flexibility and individual choice.
Flexibility here is not a choice but a compulsion. The choice is between work and hunger, poverty, unemployment, and illness. Sharon Simmons is working to support the expensive cancer treatment of her husband. The privatisation and commercialisation of health systems, and the business of illness, have created conditions that deprive people like Sharon Simmons’s husband of life-saving cancer treatment. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, and private medical providers are the beneficiaries of all kinds of illness, whereas working people like Sharon Simmons and her husband are denied the right to access public healthcare and treatment.
If the US can spend $16.5 billion by day 12th of an unwanted war on Iran, it can spend the same amount on public health in the US. The Budget of the US Government by the Office of Management and Budget (2027) reveals that the US military budget is projected to reach $1.5 trillion in the 2027 fiscal year which is an absolute waste of public money. This budget could be diverted to healthcare for the American people.
Health is a human right. The US preaches about human rights but does not follow them at home or abroad. American people regularly die without access to healthcare, while American bombs kill people across the world. The production of crisis is a business strategy of American capitalism, where life is disposable as long as it produces profit. The political priority in the US is to uphold capitalism at the cost of people and the planet.
Secondly, the “tax on tips” reveals the ruthless rent-seeking character of American capitalism. It has failed to deliver health, freedom, and choice to American citizens. Taxing tips reveals the regressive nature of the tax system, where ordinary people bear the burden while corporations enjoy significant tax benefits and exemptions. Delivery drivers like Sharon Simmons, who may be making around $50 in tips per day, are paying taxes, while American corporations are rewarded with tax exemptions. Mr. Trump represents American corporate interests, even if he opposes a “tax on tips.” People pay taxes, yet US foreign policy spends that tax revenue not on public health, but on unwanted wars that further benefit American oil and defence corporations. In terms of the tax regime, the modern US resembles medieval Kanika in Odisha, where the Kanika king had imposed sixty-four different types of taxes on everyday lives of people.
Finally, Sharon Simmons’s story reveals the anti-human character of capitalism, which is fundamentally against human health, happiness, freedom, and individual choice in life. Under capitalism, profit is the primary objective. Every human tragedy and every crisis becomes an opportunity to dominate people and restrict their freedom, ensuring the continued dominance of capitalism in everyday life. A healthy person does not need health insurance, and therefore does not generate profit for pharmaceutical companies and medical corporations. Likewise, a healthy and happy person does not sustain the demand for mental and physical health industries. In this sense, capitalism is not only embedded in crisis but also manufactures crisis to extract profit from people’s everyday lives at the cost of their health and happiness. It is not merely about tax regimes in contemporary capitalism. It is about taxing life for profit.
Sharon Simmons’s story is not merely a reflection of the contradictions and failures of American capitalism. It reveals how prosperity, power, profit, and policy, shaped by capitalism, exploit the everyday lives of people in the US. In even a minimally idealistic society, people like Sharon Simmons should be able to look forward to a life of leisure with friends and family, instead of doing door-to-door deliveries to keep her husband alive. Her husband worked all his life; in an ideal society, his health and happiness should be collectively secured through old-age safety nets. However, such ideals are not built into a capitalist system. Instead, it is designed in a way that produces conditions where people like Sharon Simmons and her husband must work until they collapse, within a culture of hire and fire driven by profit at the cost of life.
The individualisation of life under capitalism produces alienation, which lies at the centre of the epidemic of mental health issues across the globe and is particularly rampant in the US. Mental illness can lead to physical illness, and vice versa. Capitalism and good health do not easily go together. Truly happy people, whether in their individual or collective terms, become difficult to sustain under such a system. Health and happiness under capitalism is a myth. Capitalism primarily promotes commodity consumption—from food to medicine—for profit. There is nothing humane in a system that continually erodes human health and happiness. Sharon Simmons’s story is not just an American story, but a reminder of the broader capitalist epidemic affecting human civilisation.
Mass struggle against capitalism in America and across the globe can only ensure freedom for people like Sharon Simmons—allowing her leisure to play with her ten grandchildren, guaranteeing free healthcare for her husband, and providing a social safety net for her old age. Reclaiming human health, happiness, freedom, and individual choice is a struggle against all forms of capitalism. It is difficult to pursue human happiness, freedom, and choice in life within a capitalist society. Capitalism is not even designed for animals and trees. Capitalism looks at nature in terms of profit by monetising it. Sharon Simmons’s story in America is a reflection of working people across the world. The only alternative is to end capitalism in all its forms in order to reclaim human life, health, happiness and freedom.
Note: Views expressed in this opinion are author’s own and may not be found in accord with those of Kashmir Outlook
