We’re going through odds and ends this week. Here we are, with interpretations to favor
the pro-Trump and anti-Trump sides. I’m
not calling them Democratic or Republican since the real values of both parties
are in flux, and certainly not liberal or conservative since our president is
not a conservative:
First, in response to Mike Bebernes in the May 26th
Yahoo News, “Is the $600 unemployment bonus helping or hurting?,” the rough
answer is clear: It’s helping. It may be too high in many cases, but as I
have written more there is nothing more economically stimulative than jobless pay,
as it goes to people very likely to spend it.
As for any idea that they should be encouraged to work by being denied
it, that’s straight out of A Christmas Carol, when almost all of the
currently readily available jobs for which those who lost low-end ones are
qualified potentially expose them to Covid-19.
We are the farthest we have been in many decades from consistent workplace
safety – where is OSHA these days? – and nobody should be required to make that
choice.
Second, there is nothing wrong with a president’s son
crowing about a big stock market gain on the same day our cumulative virus
deaths reached 100,000. Many other
things happened then, and we should be complimenting ourselves for doing social
distancing so well that this total, as many people in early March openly
feared, was not in the millions. I don’t
want to be reminded of the “AIDS quilt” made with a square for everyone who had
ever died from that, when a similar “cancer quilt” might have been the size of
Rhode Island. There is also nothing
immoral about businesses choosing to reopen – or to stay closed.
Third, “World economic prospects darken, rebound
delayed: Reuters poll” (Shrutee Sarkar, Reuters,
May 26th) seems behind the curve – but were many people really
expecting a fast recovery? Jobs have
gone away not only from pandemic precautions, but from the loss of unemployed people
as customers. Reuters-poll projected
2020 world economy shrinkages have gone from 1.2% on April 3rd to
2.0% on April 26th and this week 3.2%. The last one still seems low to me; despite
the number of deaths being lower than expected, I expect it will be about
5%. Rapid normalization is not
promising, as it was also announced this week that Sweden, of the “herd
immunity” strategy, now tops the planet’s nations in per-capita
fatalities.
Fourth, I don’t think our current situation will kill off
ride providing or room sharing, but it is giving de facto hotel and taxi
businesses another severe blow, as shown in “California Sues Uber and Lyft,
Claiming Workers are Misclassified,” by Kate Conger in the May 5th New
York Times. As before, once these two
and Airbnb are legally obligated to the same rules as their established
equivalents, including being unable to call obvious employees “contractors”
with few rights, they will almost go away.
There will be niches in which they can survive, but eventually common
sense in regulation will cut them vastly back.
Fifth, how about those maps showing total coronavirus cases
by state giving us per-capita instead?
That would help when, as should be happening soon, we get good data on
month-before decisions to reopen. Ten
days after them, as in “Georgia Went First.
And It Screwed Up,” by Keren Landman in the April 30th New
York Times, is too soon for assessment, but in the next few weeks, we will
know a lot, and it would be good to see that graphically and clearly.
Sixth, in a few eventful months the Times Editorial
Board has gone from cellular phone surveillance being a huge national threat,
worthy of a whole special section, to the devices being “particularly useful at
this moment, when it’s crucial to know where infected people have been, and
whom they’ve been close to.” The same source,
May 1st’s “We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus,” even
seemed to laud “several countries around the world, as well as some American
states,” for starting “apps that either encourage or require their citizens to
check in regularly and report their locations.”
Whew! These problems could
challenge master philosophers, so how will we common folk resolve them? And some wonder why democracy has so often
been called a great experiment.
Seventh, is it truly necessary that spectator sports resume
this year?
Eighth, if the Democrats think they are on a path to win
back the White House this fall, they are mistaken – sportsbook.com, an offshore
casino where it is legal to bet on elections, has Trump as a 5 to 4 favorite.
Keep safe – next week we’ll see just how bad American
unemployment has officially become.