Look, I have a lot of schadenfreude watching the Dow Jones drop like a stone over the last month, but we're at the point - probably way past it - where a lot of middle-class 401k and mutual fund portfolios are getting nuked. Isn't there a way to close down the markets for two weeks, let things cool off, like the banking holiday FDR ordered back when he took office at the height of the Great Depression? Those trading floors will be one less place for people to pick up the COVID19.
My library closed to the public back on March 17, we spent the remainder of the week getting our holds into Books-by-Mail for those we could contact, the rest are stuck here until late April when we *hope* to re-open. We're still coming to work until further notice, depending on what the state does, and in the meantime we're using the closed time to re-arrange office space and catch up on paperwork. We DO have ebooks available through Overdrive...
Most libraries - public and college - have closed, almost all the schools have closed here in Florida... and yet our governor DeSantis, obsessing over the economic hit that would happen, isn't doing anything to get the state to block off the beaches and reduce public gatherings there. He's resisting calls for stronger "Shelter In Place" emergency orders to get more residents to stay at home and not spread contact by infectees. Even as we're getting a shitton of New Yorkers fleeing a locked-down New York City and bringing more infectees with them.
For all my science fiction/fantasy and horror readings, for growing up on Stephen King's The Stand, for all the zombie apocalypse movies I've seen, I still can't believe that when a global pandemic finally hit the first thing to go was all the toilet paper. (I kid. Hand sanitizer and eggs disappeared just as quick)
We're looking at a possibility of the number of people filing for unemployment - due to layoffs at a lot of tourism, travel, retail, education, restaurant/bar, luxury service jobs because we HAVE to avoid these places of business now - jumping into the 30 percent range during this month. We need to remember a few things: 1) unemployment figures relied a lot on people claiming that, which was lower than actual numbers that can no longer live off-the-books as it were 2) we're looking at a collapse of several industries that will take YEARS to recover meaning those numbers are going to stay up well into 2021 (and 2022 for that matter).
We are looking at both funding unemployment and other social aid services way more than we already are (which wasn't all that great to begin with), AND we are looking at the reality of a Universal Basic Income - a monthly payout by the federal government to help cover the basics like rent/mortgage and food - getting implemented for a long period of time (if not set up permanently). THIS means one thing: The Federal government has to pay for this, and our nation is going to HAVE to raise taxes on upper incomes to balance this out.
None of this would be happening if trump took his job seriously, recognized the warning signs from JANUARY, and prompted both Congress and the Executive branch into funding and manufacturing the medical supplies - not just masks and gloves but also ventilators and respirators - so that when we got to here in March we'd have the bare minimum of those supplies to keep our hospitals functioning. Instead for reasons of his own - either sheer laziness, ignorance of the severity, some twisted idea this crisis would work to his advantage this year of election - trump fiddled while Rome got burned.
Gods help us, this is where we're at tonight.
1 comment:
We need disaster relief, pronto.
We will need economic stimulus when the second wave of job losses breaks across the country, but as the disaster relief will function as first line stimulus, that can wait until it's been drafted properly.
I have an idea: when the goddamn Republicans, who downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic until it blew up in their faces, want a half-trillion dollar slush fund with no oversight for Fergus to enrich his stupid businesses with RIGHT THIS MINUTE, we get our act together and as a party tell them to go fuck themselves.
They pulled this after 9-11 and in 2009, we shouldn't let them get away with it this time.
And I'm already hearing right wing brain wizards decrying "pork" in the stimulus, and really, can they please just go golfing or something?
Spending is the whole point of stimulus.
It works like this: one person's spending is another person's income, and avoiding mass unemployment is the goal, so the more cash we can get into the most poor hands the soonest is the best.
That's literally the only way to save their precious economy right now, and they still seem too ideologically blind to see it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Post a Comment