The pandemic further exposed a core logic of the capitalist state: what it giveth, it can taketh away. The changing rate of JobSeeker was an extreme case: shortly after doubling it—and thereby raising above the poverty line for the first time in decades—the Coalition cut it once more, with an insulting bonus of $50 a fortnight. But this logic predates the pandemic and extends beyond income support: it’s central to the operation of capitalist government, and intensified by our neoliberal model.