Tag: Amazon

Getting to a Safe Market Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Cash

By Stephen Macaulay

Although Christmas 2020 is behind us, the current situation vis-à-vis the COVID-relief bill brings Dickens’ classic holiday horror story to mind. While most of us remember that there are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, there is also the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s former partner, Jacob Marley. Marley is condemned to wander the earth wearing heavy chains because of his counting house-based greed and ill-will.

Donald Trump claimed that he didn’t want to sign the bill that was many months in the making and passed by both houses of Congress because, he belatedly claimed, the $600 that will go to adults with an adjusted gross annual income, in 2019, of up to $75,000 is too paltry. He wanted, as the Democrats had been working toward before they thought the best was the enemy of the good and negotiated it down, $2,000.

One wonders whether Saturday night during still another vacation at Mar-a-Lago he’d been visited by Jacob Marley. Or whether he wanted his Sharpie signature to be on something more robust. Bigly.

Without going all Scrooge, there is something that isn’t discussed a whole lot in light of the prevailing pandemic situation: the national debt.

If you want to see something that is both inexplicable and scary, go to usdebtclock.org and watch the number roll up at a rate that is probably best viewed on a gaming machine because it has a video card better capable of handling this rate of change.

As I am writing this the U.S. national debt is $27.5-trillion. By the time you read this, it may be higher.

So the question is, what’s a few trillion dollars more?

The first CARES Act was passed March 27, 2020. That was long before, arguably, the pandemic really hit the fan.

Let’s not just put Trump in the corner for his belated action on the demand for the increase in family funding. Congress is more than derelict in its response to the pandemic.

But here’s the thing. If $600 is too little, is $2,000 enough? Would $4,000 be better? How about more?

What is perhaps not recalled is that the CARES Act provided $1,200 per adult whose income was less than $99,000 and $500 per child under 17, or up to $3,400 for a family of four.

As Nic Woods points out, the economy is not going to get back into full swing unless people feel safe in the market. People — well, this is perhaps too broad a brush, because the images of the people filling airports during the holiday indicates that there are plenty who just don’t care or believe the danger — will not feel safe-ish until the pandemic is under control.

Citizens who are following the rules — wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands frequently — with a Trump-signed check for $2,000 aren’t likely to spend that money at their local small business as they might have, say, last February, because they know what the consequences can be. So they order from Amazon. Which is good for Jeff Bezos, but how about the local economies?

What is really needed is Operation Warp Speed Squared in terms of getting the vaccines into arms so that people can truly be safe and then more likely to go out in the world in a more normal way, as well as testing that doesn’t require idling in a car for a few hours.

Of course, there is nothing normal about current conditions.

Let’s make sure that those who have been blindsided by the pandemic get help, whether they are individuals or owners of a family bakery. Let’s make sure that the first responders as well as those who are on the front lines, from medical personnel to teachers to the people who are working in grocery stores, are given additional support: that woman who is ringing a register at Kroger hour after hour sure as hell didn’t sign up for a job that puts her life at risk. That young guy who is emptying bed pans and pushing people in wheel chairs probably didn’t imagine that his main concern is keeping his parents safe when he gets home from work.

But let’s make sure we are providing money to create the conditions that will make the market safe so the economy can get back on its feet. Vaccinations. Testing. Rinse. Repeat.

That debt clock is still racking up numbers. At some point we’re going to have to pay it down. But unless the virus is controlled, there will be continued strains on people: Do you go to work if your kid is sick? On the health care system: Do we really expect all of those hospital employees to continue to work as hard as they have for the past many months? And there will be continued strains on the economy as a whole.

It isn’t necessarily about spending more. It is about spending better. There is a real cost to all of this. We can’t ignore it.

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A New Hat For America

By Jim McCraw

While it is maddening to know that President-elect Biden couldn’t get a really good start on 2021 between President Trump’s recalcitrance and COVID-19, there will eventually be a Biden administration, and it will be in trouble up to its hips from Day One.

Herewith, a suggestion for Biden/Harris I believe is important, and eminently doable. As Congress fights over both short- and long-term follow-up bills to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which ends the day after Christmas, I think it might be time for something as ambitious (though relatively easy, considering the big funding levels already proposed) and quick to do as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), circa 1933. Let’s call the new one the American Reconstruction Corps (ARC).

Lord knows there are plenty of skilled and unskilled people out of work.  And there are plenty of American infrastructure projects, largely ignored by the previous administration, that need doing.

Biden is not FDR, and we do not have a modern Robert Moses, the mid-20th Century “master builder” of New York, Long Island, Rochester and Westchester counties (it’s certainly not Donald J. Trump).

We are not Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ford Motor Company Whiz Kids, nor the first seven astronauts. We are just Americans who recognize a need to get a lot of things done by a mass of people willing to work. There has got to be a way to do this.

With widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines likely coming with warmer weather next summer, why couldn’t we dispatch squadrons of out-of-work Americans to do road, tunnel and bridge repairs that have been waiting years for funding and final approvals?  And not just men, which is how the original CCC operated. Skilled and unskilled women need work, too. At, say, $20 per hour.

Why not send platoons of the willing into every one of the national parks to do repairs and cleaning?

While the original CCC troops had uniforms, meals and housing, I humbly suggest self-provided work clothing, bring-your-own meals, work near home, and ARC baseball caps in red, white and blue.

There will be periodic need for FEMA supplies and equipment after summer storms, so why not divert some FEMA funding, vehicles and materiel to help Americans fix the things that are already broken?

Yes, men and women working and sweating in close quarters for eight-hour days may be problematic from a health standpoint, but with masks, distancing and frequent washing and spraying, I think it could work. Let’s get some guys from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Ford, Google and Tesla to volunteer, put them in a room and see if they can figure this out while Biden and Harris get on with the rest of the recovery.

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