If we're going back to work by Easter, why are we wrecking our free market system now?
"If" indeed… Michael Kane does Rudyard Kipling, and does it rather well
Posted on 03/27/2020 7:25:45 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
I know all about the civil war and the endless arguments regarding it, good Lord, there have been enough endless threads about it over the years right her on FR to dredge every nook and cranny of those arguments.
In an existential crisis - and yes like the civil war this is that, you don’t put your economy purposely into cardiac arrest over something less, you don’t do that just and only to keep us geezers alive - the Constitution provides very limited guidance. In the real world that everyone is living in today, you probably couldn’t trade it for a roll of toilet paper. Maybe one day, when normalcy returns, it can again take its place as an agreement under which the people - all the people - agree to organize their affairs. But for today, people are trying to survive, with limited means at their disposal to do so.
We still have too many here who underestimate this thing. Supply chains all over the planet are crashing. Yeah, sure, we should cover all that (well, ok, most of it) ourselves, internally, but there’s just no way to reverse two generations of growing dependence on others built into the system in a few months, esp. with the economy faltering. Just the needed production engineering work alone is staggering, much less actually getting all the facilities and equipment built. Worse is the hit on the financial side, and I think that even though President Trump is trying to stay positive to not have EVERYBODY freak out, until at least some buffering measures can be in place, I expect the financial aspects of this situation to get considerably worse. I also think the health care people are telling him that in too many areas, some critical, like NYC, there is NOT yet sufficient slowing of COVID-19 to prevent overwhelming of the areas’ health care systems. That would result in a much increased fatality rate, the insurance industry (and all those derivatives) crashes, and then we have even bigger problems.
I sure hope I am wrong. Bad on the one side, worse on the other, and an exceedingly slippery path forward. To think that on New Years Eve, the future looked pretty good...
If we're going back to work by Easter, why are we wrecking our free market system now?
"If" indeed… Michael Kane does Rudyard Kipling, and does it rather well
Hint: we are not in an existential crisis. We weren’t in 2008, either, when the last, gargantuan Porkulus bill was passed. If we were, Pelosi, Schumer, and McConnel wouldn’t have played games with it and instead handed the President a clean bill to sign.
“We”, or Donald Trump?
Trump was smart not to straight up confront the hysteria. It would be like trying to block stampeding cattle. That is what the media expected and wanted.
Instead he is using this crisis to be “presidential”. The media is trapped. The more effort they put into fanning the flames to make Trump look bad, the more opportunities they give him to look presidential and competent.
He isn’t falling on his sword the way republicans usually do for the media, and they have no answer for that.
In the real world this is all perfectly rediculous and Trump knows it. He is even saying it just from alongside the stampede rather than in front of it.
I could not disagree with you more. Shutting down your economy is an existential crisis. If it goes on for a month, there won’t be anyone here who misses that.
We won’t be back up by Easter because the underlying condition will not allow it. The people are choosing their safety over their livelihood, and they will continue to do so until they can longer put food on the table or take care of other basic needs. That has been staved off for a little while - a month or two - by this printed money package. That will only probably work once because by the time a second is needed, the supply chain for basic necessities will likely have collapsed. Eventually, safety will be overcome by more basic needs...but it isn’t now.
You can thank your lucky stars that Massie is widely seen as a ridiculous fool by Republican voters and his own colleagues...because if his way held and the nation survived until November, you’d have Democrat president, 60-some Democrat senators and somewhere close to 400 Democrat House members.
Massie played by the rules to get everyone in the quorum(!) to put their names on the bill. They couldn’t handle it, coming from a junior Congressman.
Massie went on Rush’s show to talk about it on Friday, BTW. I can’t wait to hear from callers on Monday to tell Rush what a big meanie Massie was, how Trump and John Kerry were right to bash him, all without mentioning Pelosi or Schumer’s name. I’d be pretty surprised if Rush takes Trump’s side on this.
I reject your premise. We aren’t facing a Civil War nor the 1918 pandemic. It’s not yet an established fact that Covid-19 is comparable to the 1918 flu. A shut-down for two weeks to assess the situation was prudent. Keeping the engine that drives our economy and much of the world’s shut down past Easter will eventually hurt us more than help us.
Living is a calculated risk. It’s why people carry insurance. IMO, we should take proper precautions, brave the dangers, and get back to work.
“Politically, Massie was doing Trump a huge favor by getting the weasels to put their names to this monstrosity they passed! He should’ve thanked him instead of castigating him.”
A monstrosity which Trump immediately signed after Congress voted for the bill. Is Trump a weasel too?
The establishment Republican party chose economic destruction in the long term for short-term political survival. As Churchill (and representative Massie) might have said, we are likely to get both economic and political destruction.
The statute is not really an economic solution but a political salve. It is both bad politics and bad economics. Short-term, the politics look good. Long term the course is virtually unalterable because the statute will be virtually impossible to repeal. If this were a legitimate short-term economic fix it would contain a sunset clause but it does not and that should tell you gentlemen everything.
Listen!… Do you hear the last hurrahs mindlessly cheering the death of free markets and free men?
Donald is wrong about this one. Very, very wrong.
Of course not. Trump agreed to the bill and _had_ to sign it for it to pass into law. His name is attached to it. He couldn’t “deem it passed” the way Pelosi wanted nor hide anonymously in a chorus of “yeas” in a quorum. Trump’s name was going to be on it and Massie wanted to make sure the House was held accountable, too. No sin in my eyes.
Sure. LOL
“ A shut-down for two weeks to assess the situation was prudent. Keeping the engine that drives our economy and much of the world’s shut down past Easter will eventually hurt us more than help us.”
I do not disagree with you. But shutting down the nation’s economy IS an existential crisis. That is unprecedented, even in war. If it went on, it’d be suicide pact. And the insurance companies can’t cover it, they won’t survive it either.
In the situation we are in now, with the public thinking as they do, we have to have a cure or a treatment, without that this country will not come through this and be even close to the same.
“To think that on New Years Eve, the future looked pretty good...”
It sort of looked like smooth sailing ahead.
No doubt we are better off than had ANYBODY else been President.
Still,it kind of took the wind out of the sail?
Even though we have a big gapping hole in the side of the boat ..i pretty sure we can make it back to shore.
Okay, sail boat analogy over.
Both the house and senate control their own rules. It is not like they didn't know this vote was coming. Almost everyone at my company who can, is working from home now. This is the 21st century. They can have everyone who is not present on a conference call, and do a roll call that way. All they needed was a rule change, and it would happen. The fact that they are so short-sighted is their own problem, and they have no one else to blame. They can show up and do their freaking job.
“ All three of you gentlemen suffer from two fallacies: 1) the fallacy that the public health threat of the virus requires the destruction of the economy 2) the false choice that we must not only accept the deal with all its snares cut secretly by a very few individuals of dubious conservative credentials, but we must pull our forelocks and kowtow to that instrument of our undoing or face political as well as economic destruction.”
On 1) you are dead wrong...I DO NOT believe the threat of the virus requires the destruction of the economy. But I know the public reaction requires it, and it is ridiculous to attempt to go against the public consensus that the virus must addressed at all costs. It is as wise to do that as it is to stand on a beach and command the tidal wave to go back to the ocean.
And on 2), once you understand that you cannot stand against the tidal wave, you must take what action you can, seek the high ground, in order to come out on the other side with as much intact as you can.
The people, the masses, are driving this action. Go ahead, stand against them, you will accomplish absolutely nothing.
I disagree. Keeping productive people cooped up and the engine shut down will not bring us closer to treatments or cures. IMO, we need the engine in gear to make finding cures and treatments that much easier so we can distribute help to those in need that much faster.
As I understand, shutting down for two weeks—until Easter will make it a month—was to “flatten the curve” so the system would not be overwhelmed. Flattening the curve does not stop the contagion nor end the dying. It makes it manageable until we can get ahead of it.
We have a good picture of who is most susceptible to the illness (the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions that the virus claims), how to avoid it (take precautions for avoiding the flu, since it spreads along those paths), what to do if you present symptoms (get a test and let the medicos know who you are in contact with), and some idea of what can be done to treat it (the President is encouraged by physician-administered chloroquine treatment and there are positive signs in that direction).
We’re fortunate that the material machinery of our economy is not wrecked (the way it was in the South during our nation’s greatest crisis). But the machine cannot long remain idle before idleness itself takes a toll upon it. (It needs to be maintained).
Suppose we never find a cure? The common cold has no cure! So many cancers don’t! We can’t stay-in-place forever. Idling the economy past Easter strains serious credulity, IMO, and will begin to make it more difficult to recover when we finally do.
I think we need to get the engine going again, soon, to make the recovery in all areas faster and more effective.
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