"Are you telling me we can save the world just by sitting on the couch and watching TV? Let's not screw this up!"
It turns out to be too hard for nearly everyone.
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| Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick |
People are restless. The politicians realize the American mood has changed.
A month ago the Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said that older Americans should volunteer to die for the economy.
"My message: let's get back to work, let's get back to living, let's be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we'll take care of ourselves."
A month ago, he was an outlier. Now he is becoming mainstream.
There are signs of change. People sheltering at home noticed projects to do, so Home Depot and Lowes were jam packed. Younger people discovered they had no tolerance for house arrest.
The economy is an organic whole, and in a crisis it is a house of cards. That is a feature, not a bug. Everything is connected. Market incentives push toward efficiency. This means just-in-time sourcing of raw materials. It means narrow margins. It means "waste" is cut, and waste reveals itself as un-used reserves for a rainy day.
The business world came to a realization in early March that this would not just be a problem for hotel maids, flight attendants, and restaurant workers. They are the capillaries of the whole blood supply that affects people at the headquarters, plus their investors. Problems trickle up.
The stock market noticed and collapsed. Trump's case for re-election was evaporating. But now the stock market has rebounded. Investors think America is going back to work, and soon. Trump said yesterday he has "total authority" to end the shutdown. Trump and the states are jostling over who will get the political credit for re-starting the economy.
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| Just isolate the infected, not everyone. |
Tucker Carlson on Fox is an early indicator for Trump. He pushed Trump into taking the virus seriously, and now he is making Trump's case for going back to work. Carlson says things which cannot be said aloud in the polite company of the mainstream media, but it channels Trump.
1. The cure is onerous, and is badly hurting business.
2. Really, the death rate is small.
3. The people who get it are old and sick and on death's door anyway, and their "co-morbidity" is what killed them.
4. The people who get it are jam packed city dwellers, people who aren't like most Americans.
5. There is a smarter way to solve the problem, individual freedom. Every person can look out for himself. Old people should do the sheltering for themselves.
6. New medicines will solve this. Americans don't hide; they invent something.
7. Poverty will kill more people than does the virus. Think of the suicides and the opium epidemic in among communities of despair.
8. The people who will die of the virus are poor black and Latinos. Other people. Like always.
Number seven and eight are the ones drifting out within the political atmosphere, and it provides the political justification for going back to work. People will die either way. It is mostly the poor black people of New Orleans who are dying, the kind of people who routinely get the worst of everything, from education, housing, healthcare, pollution, everything. Therefore, death from the virus--mostly--isn't our problem or a new one. It is the same screwed people as always, and there is a tradeoff, opium and suicide vs. virus.
This changes the risk/reward calculation. It makes it straightforward and predictable for Trump and Fox News viewers. It fits the narrative of regular, normal Americans sacrificing for the underclass at too high a price, just like always. It is partly a red state vs. blue state issue, rural vs. urban. It is also a choice between an underclass of color vs. an underclass of poor whites. It fits the political polarities. It isn't that people aren't concerned about the victims, but there are victims either way.
Trump is ready to say go back to work, even in the face of expert caution. Red states with red state governors will follow his lead and businesses will re-open. Blue state governors will resist a week or two, but travel and commerce and supply chains will make shelter policies pointless. Blue state governors will throw up their hands.
Trump is ready to say go back to work, even in the face of expert caution. Red states with red state governors will follow his lead and businesses will re-open. Blue state governors will resist a week or two, but travel and commerce and supply chains will make shelter policies pointless. Blue state governors will throw up their hands.
Will this in fact happen? The stock market thinks so. The political signs point to it. The big question mark is the virus itself. If, four or five weeks into a re-started economy, the death rate skyrockets, then this will be shown to be a massive mistake.
But it is a move America is about to make.
3 comments:
So what happens if the underclass of poor, black and Latinx are too ill to work or dead or deported? In the age of automation and AI, some of those jobs can and will be done anyway with according to ex-Presidential-candidate Yang. But not all can be rapidly or readily automated. The underclass, the minimum wage workers, the gig economy will dwindle. The underpinning of the massive US economy are the people considered essential services. Where will we get the workers to plant and pick the crops, caregivers in medical facilities and rest homes, the food workers in the food supply line that slaughter and pack your meat (for that matter the entire food delivery system)? What happens when that comes crashing down? Will we be like ancient Rome after the plague in around 600 CE? A ruling class with nothing to rule followed by a spiral into ruin? Oh I forgot! We're only concerned about 3rd quarter returns this year and an election. Better to rule in Hell then serve in Heaven.
The rulers and the professional/managerial class don't care one whit how many low wage American workers die -- they can easily be replaced by new immigrants.
Even American doctors and nurses can die off and be easily replaced with immigrants trained in the Third World, draining poor countries of their best and brightest who were educated with the scarce resources of poor countries.
It's the American Way.
I think you've sadly nailed the likely scenario, Peter. The blue state governors will eventually have to cave, because the MARKET rules. The MARKET was always there from the beginning of time. It was, in fact, the catalyst for our nation's beginnings. It is the supposed "invisible hand" that magically regulates commerce and the lives of people in the process. In this country it has enjoyed little oversight in the last 40 years; only in crisis has the bull been corralled and, then, not for long. The gate will swing open soon enough and the unlucky ones, the expendable ones, will feel its sharp horns and hooves. That is what happens when capitalism trumps democracy and when individualism trumps society and the common good.
Andy Seles
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