Much wishful thinking by the NYT-approved author.
17
"This Time Really Is Different"
Maybe, but not because of the coronavirus. The pandemic isn't the root cause of the markets' collapse; if it had not been coronavirus now, it would have been some other trigger in the not-too-distant future (but maybe not until after the November elections). The high Dow index did not reflect an increase in the value of corporations. It was pumped up by tax giveaways that were sold to as as creating jobs, but they did nothing of the sort. Instead of investing in plant and employees, companies bought back their stock, making it scarcer and therefore more valuable - a nice way for company executives to boost their portfolios.
13:40 EDT, 3/13
100
Government initiatives could be taken right now that would make a difference in flattening the curve:
1. $1000 / month payments to all low income workers or those affected who do not have unemployment insurance or sick days
2. food assistance to low income so that IF schools close children and those dependent on feeding programs / food banks will not go hungry
3. total moratorium on evictions and on foreclosure actions involving landlords of those properties, and for small business owners who may be critically impacted by lack of business
4. and, the hardest, providing childcare for those employed in necessary occuations like healthcare and skilled nursing facilities
The large population in this group forms the foundation of our economy. I'm sure this list is not all inclusive but would go a long way toward preventing risky behaviors by those who would need to ignore best practices becasue their lives depend on it.
74
thought for the day:
It was the black death pandemic of 1348 that brought about the end of the almost thousand year old feudal system of government in Europe. It was previously never encountered diseases that cleared the indigenous populations and enabled the European colonization of the Americas, not guns.
59
Andrew Yang's minimum income for all Americans doesn't look that crazy now.
104
Ironically, Trump's denial and bumbling response will make the economic downturn he feared would kill his re-election chances even worse.
65
One consequence conspicuously absent from your commentary?
The complete collapse of the Trump Regime. COVID-19 will harshly illuminate the absolute clarity of it's incompetence, it's callous disregard for working people, it's absolute inability to inspire greatness or community. We hear now Trump's family is sick. Fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of irony. Let me be among the first to wish them well and to wish them a semblance of wisdom. Please don't pay for COVID by taking free school lunch money away from our children!
80
Trump declares a national emergency.
He will love himself even more as he realizes he CAN do anything he wants in the name of protecting the people.
There is no congressional oversight under a state of emergency. Trump can sign any order he pleases.
Criticism will be abolished.
Registered Republicans will be free to move about the country. All others will be tracked.
The great boondoggle give away to all of his donors will now begin. You and I will pay the bill for a generation.
38
I think this pandemic has made it clear to many skeptics that US healthcare is a patchwork that requires universal healthcare. What was a 'radical' proposal last week makes absolute sense now. Ditto for a Green New Deal style jobs program that would make employment more stable for millions of Americans while moving the economy away from fossil fuels. The US is not built for a crisis, as we've all seen the past few days.
104
Beyond our current problems, the truth of California is that we're running out of doctors and other health care professionals. Aside from the availability of programs, competitiveness of entry, and duration of study, all daunting hurdles in themselves, cost is surely the severest filter on creation of new doctors. America really should be asking itself how we want to live and how important to health care is to quality of life.
46
The proposed payroll tax cut (timed to expire after the election!) will do little to nothing. What we have to worry about is the people who are laid off and companies that go bankrupt because their customer base evaporates. I'm thinking of people in the service and tourism industry. Giving workers a tax break means they will just move the money into savings while collecting their normal salary, and as always, those with the highest paychecks will benefit the most. It's not like people are suddenly going to plan a trip to Disney World. Meanwhile the government will go even more into debt. Trump squandered record economic growth on a tax cut for rich people, leaving us short when we need that money. So much for saving up for a rainy day.
71
It was always going to take a calamity of these proportions to make the capitalists appreciate the value and necessity of universal healthcare.
117
What's the difference between the coronavirus and the climate crisis?
People fear dying from the virus, because we don't have vaccines and other treatments yet. They see it as a real, personal threat - except for those in active denial. When people get sick, they feel it directly, and they can be tested to prove it's the virus. Eventually we will have it under control, though the big question is what the death toll will be. It's going to take a global response to deal with it - and the next disease to emerge.
People have trouble picturing the climate crisis affecting them directly, unless they live in a place being swallowed by rising seas. Storms, heat waves, drought, fire, flood - these things have always been around, so how can they tell it's different now?
We already have the means to deal with it, we know global action will be required - yet too many are still in denial. Lacking a dramatic event happening in real time that can't be denied, the 'boiled frog' metaphor is starting to look a little too literal. Plus there are huge financial incentives to keep burning fossil fuels even though we know it is making things worse.
Ironically, global pandemics are one of the consequences of the climate crisis. Increasing disruption of the environment, disruption of food and water supples, the increasing number of climate refugees, increasing war and civil unrest - all of that will amplify the normal disease threats.
You can't address one and not the other.
128
"A general conviction that government, businesses, [etc]... are responding effectively" comes from those entities actually responding effectively. Hoping and believing does not make a thing so.
21
This is a time of sweeping change. Our habits, priorities, aspirations and fears have all shifted. What hasn't changed is politics.
Some people will still be in favor of assistance to the most vulnerable among us; others will oppose it. Some will seek repay favors to the well-favored; others will oppose it. All in all, expecting Washington to be much help with this situation would probably be foolishly optimistic.
44
Consider this: 1.0 Trillion dollars on economic help is equal to $2,800 per person in the USA, assuming a population of 350 million. Imagine for a second that the Government gives $3,500 per adult and $2,500 per kid to every person in the USA, either american or green card holder, and that money is tied to essential items (cannot be used for alcohol purchases, tobacco, games, but only for food, medicines, cleaning supplies, etc). That money can be given in 10 monthly payments of $350 per adult and $250 per kid while the worst happens. At the same time, 0.5 trillion is spend in respirators, beds, testing, etc, etc, instead of helping the finance system. This is a way better way to spend 1.5 Trillion dollars instead of doing socialism for the rich in Wall Street to preserve 1000 points of the Dow Jones. Amazing that nobody is mentioning this!
186
@LAP My only comment is having an income cap before giving the money. Why should a billionaire receive anything from stimulus money? Even millionaires should not take advantage of a stimulus, although I'm sure millionaires and billionaires will be the first in line with their hands out.
97
This is the major failing of our adherence to Keynesian economic theory (sorry Thomas Friedman). Keynesian economics has for decades failed to account at all for negative environmental externalities that significantly impact health and well-being.
Because of Keynesian economic theory, Insurance agents no matter how professional and well-trained cannot comprehensively estimate the real economic value of ecosystem services, without a overhaul of economic assumptions to account for the life cycle of the goods and services, indexed by consumer behavior. Several factors remaining to be accounted for include: cost sharing, resource sharing, natural source reduction of raw materials, resource conservation and recovery, and pollution prevention. This is especially true as Economists look at each natural resource, e.g. jet fuel, as a ‘willingness to pay’ problem to be solved.
I wonder if the invisible hand is familiar with the Precautionary Principle? Can it ever balance long run supply and demand of goods related to environmental disasters as it impacts human health, quality of life, and well-being? What do Economists think about the Polluter Pays Principle?
If you only count household goods, you will measure home economics.
If you could people, diseases, and etiology, you will measure epidemiology.
If we all start to count humans as part of our environment, dependent on each other as parts of our greater ecosystem, maybe Humanity, Flora, and Fauna will still have a chance?
27
@M.A. I think you mean capitalism is the culprit, not just a particular economic theory about it. If you want to get particular, the Chicago School with its emphasis on shareholder value seems like a better candidate for the failures, Milton Friedman, not Thomas.
49
Sorry for the typo- I meant to say say if you count people!
4
What we have here is a major league threat being “managed” by double A people...
39
@J- Perhaps you meant a major league threat being managed by high school team?
23
I am wondering what a concerned citizen can do to help out at this time? Perhaps delivering school lunches to homebound students?
48
We know the things that will NOT solve this problem:
Tax cuts
Ignorance
Incompetence
Propaganda
Flag-waving
Blaming other countries, foreigners and 'others'
Science denialism
Denying reality
An unaffordable, for-profit healthcare extortion system
New 0.1% Welfare Queen programs
In other words, the Trump-GOP policy platform.
We know what will solve the problem.
Science
Planning
Expertise
Affordable, regulated universal healthcare
Free coronavirus testing for all
A well-funded government supported by higher taxes
Truth
Facts
Humility
Federal assistance to nonrich Americans
In other words, the progressive Democratic policy platform.
A left turn back to reality - away from incompetence, ignorance and Dunning-Krugerism - is long overdue.
Remember in November.
286
@Socrates Not only "left," but the rest of us, centrists, etc. It's not always a binary system.
27
@Socrates If your "progressive prescription" is the platform suggested by Sen. Bernie Sanders and presented by him, this will never happen: Sanders's method of "persuading" others during his public appearances and debate evenings is Just. The. Same. method as engaged in by Individual #1 in the Oval Office, DJT himself.
"Humility"?! Sanders? I can only hope that you have someone else in mind.
10
Okay, Cynthia.
Let's talk about these ideas divorced from personality.
The ideas still make sense, with or without Bernie Sanders presenting them.
The presenter shouldn't really make a difference since the ideas stand on their own merits, although obviously that's tough to achieve in American reality.
71
COVID-19 is the lesson to us that our the planet is a tiny self contained world of small vulnerable beings and that we survive together only when we care for each other. A pandemic is a war on all of humanity. You will not escape its consequences with all the money in the world. Global elites in G7 countries should acknowledge the threat to themselves and see that healthcare for all ought to be recognized as a human right. It's part of our Operation Order against this coronavirus and the pandemics that will occur.
119
Public generosity indeed. Like the kind that comes from societal solidarity manifest in ways like Universal Healthcare, housing being a right, paid sick leave and a living minimum wage for all? Plus maybe an investment in insuring the US has the highly educated workforce needed to compete well in the global economy by making college free? But all that was too radical so said the majority of the electorate. Hmmm, how radical is Medicare4All sounding now voters? How radical is making a billions-of-dollars investment in a green new deal so that cars are not a necessity and more people can work remotely sounding now voters? How radical is federally mandated paid sick leave sounding now voters? How radical is a federally mandated living wage so that people can save enough to afford to stay home when they need to self quarantine or take care of sick relatives for extended periods of time sounding now voters? The Afghanistan Papers showed the U.S. had trillions to waste war but voters ask how we might pay for a stronger US.
The pushback I anticipate to this comment will just further confirm for me how alienated I truly am from my fellow US citizens when it comes to a vision and values of how this nation should be run. It will be a wonder if I continue to participate in electoral politics at the federal level at all. I find the majority of people who vote to have an Overton Window that is so hopelessly slim in it's opening that it may spell the inevitable decline of this nation.
123
@Adreana Langston No pushback here. Spot on.
31
@Jamie
Ditto Jamie.
26
@Adreana Langston
I do hope you know that you have more company than you realize. : )
30
This would be an excellent time for corporations to bring home all that cash that they’ve stashed off shore. I see no reason to bail out any corporation that avoids taxes using the numerous loopholes that congress has allowed. If there was ever a time to pull together, it is now. These “corporate citizens “ need to step up and contribute to the common good.
238
@Gregory Thomas
"Citizenship" comes with requirements, including sacrifice in times of war and emergency.
37
The pandemic is a real-world argument for Democratic Socialism and further exposes the absolute failure of Neoliberalism as an organizing ideology. If humans ever want to attain an advanced society, we better start to build it now, as the Climate Crisis grows on top of Covid-19.
136
@Stephen Love -- strange how your second sentence makes total sense, but your first does not. FDR was not a socialist, but made sure we all had better lives. While I do not disagree that being more like Europe would be easier for people to handle, we might not be as productive as we are. Things can be done in a Democratic, but Capitalist, society as long as we only allow capitalism to drive the things that government should never be doing. However, it does not mean that the government should not being doing lots of things. Just not everything.
21