Tag: Economic Damage from Virus

Saturday Soother – March 6, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Castle Hill Lighthouse, Newport, RI – photo by Ray Dickson

A few random Saturday thoughts: The Capitol wasn’t invaded by hordes of Trump dead enders on Thursday demanding that their leader assume the presidency.  But the House of Representatives was fearful enough to take the day off. So mission accomplished!

Second, those dead enders were probably too busy digging through their mom’s basements looking for their old Dr. Seuss books. They heard that Dr. Seuss has been “cancelled” by Biden and the Democrats. According to Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade:

“The cancel culture is canceling Dr. Seuss….It’s out of control.”

There’s nothing like a culture war to distract the Republican rank and file from noticing that none of their House and Senate representatives voted for the Covid Relief Bill or for HR 1.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises is a private company. It made a private business decision about its private property, taking six Seuss books out of circulation. Republicans, those stalwart defenders of private property and free-market capitalism, of course, are going nuts.

OTOH, the Dr. Seuss tempest is capitalism in action. Dr. Seuss Enterprises is minting money off the conservative backlash to the sidelining of his six racist books: Nine of the top ten bestselling books on Amazon right now are Seuss books that aren’t being “cancelled”.

Third, on the economic front, we added 379,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations. But we’re still about 9.5 million jobs behind where we were one year ago, before the pandemic hit. Even if we were to continue adding jobs at last month’s rate, it would take two full years just to get back to that level.

That should tell us that the only real answer to the jobs crisis is containing Covid. Too bad so many Republican governors are all about undermining that effort by refusing mask mandates. Here’s a map showing the states that have no mask mandate:

It shouldn’t be news that ALL these states have Republican governors, including WY and KS, who have limited mask mandates.

Fourth, here’s a great chart showing how many hours it took to pay rent back when the $7.25 minimum wage was new and how long people have to work for the same space now:

Source: WSJ

Back in 1968, no minimum wage worker had to work more than 20 hours/week to make rent. The chart makes it clear that even if a $15/hour minimum wage is passed, only workers in Toledo OH would be better off than they were in 1968. So, why can’t Republicans see this? Who are they afraid of? Certainly not their own economically distressed voters. Shouldn’t they get on board and say it’s time to pass the $15/hour minimum wage?

But enough of all that ails us, it’s Saturday, and time to take a break from the big questions of the day, and concentrate on smaller things, in other words, a Saturday Soother. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we have finally taken down our Christmas tree. Since it’s a faux tree, we have zero dead needles on the floor.

We’re also looking forward to setting up our new treadmill today. Because of the pandemic, these babies are in short supply. The delivery team said yesterday that we were their 12th stop of the day. Should have bought stock in that company.

Today we’re brewing up your coffee from the Brooklyn Roasting Company in Dumbo, on Brooklyn’s coffee waterfront. Today, let’s pop the top on a 12 oz. can of their 3D coffee, ($15) with its notes of berry, dark chocolate, and honey. The roaster says it pops out and pulls you in.

Now take a seat by a window and listen to “Meditation” from Jules Massenet’s opera, “Thaïs”. It is based on the novel “Thaïs” by Anatole France and was first performed in Paris in March 1894. Here it is played by Nathan Farrington on Bass, and Allison Allport on Harp, not the more traditional violin or orchestral version:

BTW, Wrongo checked, and today is the fifth time he’s featured the “Meditation” on a Saturday. He must really like it. If you’ve never listened to it before, please try it today!

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Our New Normal

The Daily Escape:

Abyss Pool, West Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone NP – 2020 photo by eTeT

The “New Normal” is here. Tuesday was the first day for school buses on the streets of Wrongtown, CT since March. Until the buses rolled, we could keep lying to ourselves about the pandemic. But now that school has started up for kids in K-12, the new normal is here. We’re soaking in it.

It’s a patchwork of online and in-person formats. Here in Wrongtown, we’re following a hybrid formula of kids physically in class for some days, and participating remotely on the rest. But confusion reigns. One parent asked on the town’s Facebook page whether her kid had to log on to the class website on the days when they were at home:

“He is in school on Thursdays and Fridays but do we need to log on every day Monday thru Wednesday considering those are the days he is home? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.”

Or, this one:

“Hi does anyone know how to sign in to distant learning?”

Ok, the new normal hasn’t been completely reduced to practice, and with respect to getting our kids an education, we’ve still got lots of learning to do.

But other things also dominate our new reality. First, despite the happy talk about the economy, many jobs aren’t coming back. Temporary layoffs are now starting to look permanent. From Barron’s: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Before the pandemic, a temporarily unemployed worker had a roughly 60% chance of finding a job in the next month. Lately, that probability has fallen to about 40%, while the chance for a permanently unemployed worker to find a job in a given month is about 20%.”

The US workforce is becoming increasingly divided into two groups: Those who are confident in keeping their jobs, and those who are pessimistic that they will ever return to their old jobs. The question for them is how will they cover their expenses as federal jobless benefits decrease or expire.

And we’re still more than 11 million jobs down from where we were in February.

Even if there is some GDP and jobs growth in the September report (the last one before the election), it won’t be enough to bail out the unemployed. The pandemic disproportionately hit workers in the leisure and hospitality sector (restaurants, hotels and travel); employment in that sector is still down around 25%.

Trump and the Republicans didn’t create the problems faced by low-wage Americans, but they made them worse by not dealing promptly with the pandemic, and then, by stressing the economy over the pandemic, which allowed Covid to roar back. And what economic recovery we have is bypassing those who most need to recover!

Finally, our new COVID reality: About 30,000 Americans died of Covid-19 in August.  And the number of new coronavirus cases has plateaued. Between Labor Day fun, and school re-openings, there’s a pretty good chance that America’s virus situation is about to take another turn for the worse.

Hundreds of colleges that had planned on having their students on campus have reversed their stances and decided on a virtual semester. The NYT reports that colleges have seen 51,000 cases since schools opened.

Kevin Drum reports that from August 2nd to September 2nd, the US recorded 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19. And according to a new study, 19% of those cases (266,000) were caused by the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

The riders refused to mask up, just like the college kids. People are tired of wearing masks, and they are tired of being cooped up. Apparently, six months of compliance is all that Americans can do. They want normalcy, but there’s a new normal that’s already here.

Until we have a safe and effective vaccine, there is no alternative to wearing a mask and staying physically distant whenever possible. We’re nearing 200,000 deaths and the flu season is coming. Think for a minute about that possible vaccine:

  • It needs to be approved, and 600M doses have to be manufactured and distributed.
  • We need 600M doses because the best guess now is that people will need to get two shots.
  • And we’re not sure how much time is required between shots.

Only when all people mask up, will most companies hire again. Only then will most kids be physically in school. Only then will most people be able to pay their bills with money earned in a paycheck. Or we can wait for the vaccine.

We have just 54 days until the election.

People shouldn’t get distracted from surviving the new normal by BS from the Trump campaign about Nancy Pelosi’s salon visit, or Biden’s supposed cognitive issues.

The new normal is the only issue that matters.

Vote to turn that into a non-toxic normal. And get your friends to vote for a non-toxic person.

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Saturday Soother – September 5, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Rocky Mountain NP, CO – August 2020 photo by mister69darkhorse

Let’s take a break from talking about politics, and talk about the economy. The NYT reported that the US added 1.4 million jobs in August, and unemployment fell to 8.4%

“Employers continued to bring back furloughed workers last month, but at a far slower pace than in the spring, and millions of Americans remain out of work.’

The August job growth number includes 240,000 temporary Census workers. Most of them will be laid off at the end of the month. Private-sector payrolls, (unaffected by census hires), rose by 1.0 million in August, down from 1.5 million in July. And the results were down sharply from the 4.8 million jobs added in June.

But despite the improvement in the headline unemployment rate, payrolls remain more than 11 million jobs below their pre-pandemic level, and permanent jobs lost increased by 534,000 to 3.1 million. Back in April, nearly 80% of unemployed workers reported being on a temporary layoff or furlough. In August, less than half say what they’re experiencing is a temporary job loss.

At the rate of job gains in the past two months, it will take another 8 months to regain all the jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic

Also, the shift from temporary to permanent job losses is worrying, because it suggests that companies don’t foresee a quick rebound. It means many of today’s jobless workers will have to start their job searches from scratch. Worse, Wolf Richter reports that:

“Continued unemployment claims jumped by 2.2 million to 29.2 million, worst since Aug 1, as claims by gig workers under federal PUA program soar.”

The PUA program means the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Wolf says that those 29.2 million lucky duckies now equal 18.3% of the civilian labor force.

Most of the media are saying that this report is relatively helpful to Trump. Those who see it that way should explain to the rest of us how it’s helpful to have 18% of the workforce on the sidelines. There will only be one more jobs report before the election, and unless there is a jobs miracle next month, Trump is going to face Election Day with an extremely poor jobs record.

For some context on Trump’s economic performance, the IRS now predicts that the US economy will have almost 40 million fewer jobs in 2021 than they predicted before the pandemic.

We’re maybe a month away from people understanding that despite Trump’s cheerleading, the economy isn’t going to “bounce right back” to near-full activity. In fact the current jobs depression will most likely continue for a long time, regardless of COVID, until there is widespread acceptance that we have a vaccine that is safe and effective.

Once again, there are just 58 days to go until Election Day. Biden needs to stay on offense, and attacking Trump on his poor economy is as good as attacking him on his COVID response. Sometime in the next two weeks, Coronavirus deaths will top 200,000. Yet there are still 17 states in which residents are not required to wear masks outside their homes. And all but one (Hawaii) have Republican governors.

No masks means a continuing weak jobs market. Even the Fed Chair Powell told NPR on Friday:

“There’s actually enormous economic gains to be had nationwide from people wearing masks and keeping their distance…”

But hey, this wouldn’t be happening if Donald Trump was president, right?

One final thought before we leave the politics bubble: Kamala Harris is older now than LBJ was on the day he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.

On to our long Labor Day weekend, when we can unplug and finish a couple of projects that we swore we’d get to while working from home. Forget them. Let’s get the holiday going with our Saturday Soother!

Start by brewing up a vente cup of Ethiopia Dame Dabaye ($16/12oz.) with its flavors of orchid, red plum, and lemon verbena. It’s brewed by Spokane, Washington’s Indaba Coffee, whose mission is “radical hospitality.” Not sure that’s something Wrongo wants to see.

Settle back at a proper physical distance, and listen to “September Song”, with music by Kurt Weill, and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson. It was introduced in the 1938 Broadway musical “Knickerbocker Holiday”. Here it is sung by Sarah Vaughn, backed by an all-star group including Clifford Brown on trumpet and Herbie Mann on flute. It was recorded on December 18, 1954, and you’ll enjoy Clifford Brown’s long trumpet solo:

Although the song was written as the lament of an old man on the passing of his youth, many women have recorded it, including Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Jo Stafford, Patti Page, Lena Horne and Eydie Gormé.

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Is Insurrection Brewing in Our Cities?

The Daily Escape:

Mt. McLoughlin, Cascades Range, OR – photo by kayalfainart. Unclear if that’s another mountain in the background, or Godzilla peeking at us.

“…and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” ― John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath”

This could be written today, because new grapes of wrath could again be harvested.

Think about the grim future ahead for today’s high school and college graduates. With 40 million unemployed, jobs will be scarce. Wages will be stagnant. Many of those 40 million may be out of work for quite a long time, as will many of the new grads. Many families will go hungry.

Add to that the people who are protesting the killing of George Floyd. This uprising involves a direct challenge to police power, along with a clear challenge to political power as well. That’s visible in Trump’s militarized reaction to Constitutionally-guaranteed protest.

We’re experiencing confusion and tension that has put many cops on edge at a time when their goal should be de-escalation, not escalation. There have been an untold number of similar incidents in the past where police officers have been exonerated in cases of seemingly obvious abuses of power.

That has led America to understand that its police forces can act with almost total impunity. As Wrongo has said earlier in the week, historically, this has hurt black and brown people the most. Here’s a chart that shows American’s current attitudes towards the police:

Source: Morning Consult

People may finally be fed up. There’s the tension over the pandemic, and the economic pressures it’s created. And there’s Trump, who seems only capable of pouring gasoline on what is already a bonfire.

The militarization of American law enforcement, already a massive problem, has been taken to the extreme by Trump. He thinks nothing of brutalizing a crowd of protesters so that he can be filmed walking across the street to wave:

“…an upside-down Bible in front of a church he rarely attends and whose leaders and congregation work against the policies he trumpets.”

Trump has threatened to use the US military to put down protests, even if state leaders do not want the US military in their states. Secretary of Defense Esper has spoken of a need to “dominate the battlespace” (he subsequently recanted) in reference to something that is not a battle, and that involves civilians, not a hostile enemy.

Our military is monitoring protests in multiple states, including flying drones over Minneapolis.

On Monday, Washington DC saw a bizarre “show of force” with helicopters hovering much lower than permitted over crowds of peaceful demonstrators. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, was patrolling near the White House in his camouflage uniform.

On Tuesday night, troops of the 82nd Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division and 1st Infantry Division arrived at Joint Base Andrews near Washington DC.

But who would they be fighting against? These tactics — mass arrests, tear gas, rubber bullets, intentional and unconstitutional attacks on peaceful demonstrators and journalists — are familiar, because they’re the tactics employed by authoritarian governments all over the world in response to local insurrection.

But, is what’s happening in our cities an insurrection?

Replacing the police with the military would only escalate the situation. Violence begets violence. But creating more “resistance” may well be the Trump Administration’s plan.

Let’s agree that there was unnecessary violence and property damage in many cities. Facebook and Twitter are ablaze with comments saying that a massive show of force is absolutely necessary to put down the insurrection.

Out of nowhere, GOP politicians from local to federal levels are singing a chorus of “Antifa” is a terror group, and the primary cause of the problems on the streets of America. Antifa, short for anti-fascists, describes an amorphous group of people whose political beliefs lean far left, and do not necessarily conform to the Democratic Party’s platform.

The problem with Trump’s claim that it’s a terror group is that it doesn’t have central leadership, according to federal law enforcement officials. Worse for Trump is that many of Antifa’s Twitter accounts turn out to be run by fascists in Europe.

“Antifa” is vapor in the US, and recognizing it as some defined group is a joke that has been taken seriously only by America’s Right.

Painting disparate punk assholes as some kind of formal group is ridiculous and counterproductive.

We desperately need to get the twin problems of the coronavirus and the nationwide civil disobedience behind us.

These infections need to be cured.

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Saturday Soother, Economic Damage Edition – May 16, 2020

The Daily Escape:

View of grasslands, south of Denver, CO – 2020 photo by crappydenverphotog

Happy Saturday fellow disease vectors!

Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that the effects of the pandemic could permanently damage the economy if Congress and the White House did not provide sufficient financial support. Job losses average 25% currently, and are higher in some states.

Powell thinks the country needs more funding for the segments of the economy that are seriously underwater. While the House has offered up a plan for new money, Mitch McConnell says he’s far from interested in new money for the states, or those who are out of work.

We can’t say often enough how badly federal leadership has failed us throughout this crisis.

In the executive branch, we’ve seen incompetence and political ideology overwhelm what little crisis leadership there might have been. Test kits were available from the WHO in January, but the CDC choose not to use them. Then, their own tests didn’t work.

Testing was deliberately limited by the administration as disease transmission grew, and the virus escaped early containment. Supplies of PPE were not allocated to hospitals according to need. And, no federal system to manage the global medical supply chains exists, despite every governor saying it’s needed.

Congress wasn’t much better. Action was marred by politics, and a misunderstanding of the economic issues. Instead of simply replacing lost wages, the SBA issued rules that firms found difficult to comply with. Banks gave preference to their big clients, and the money soon ran out. The effort to save the economy by pouring money into it through conventional channels was inadequate, inefficient, and in some cases, corrupt. The only thing that can be said is that it was better than doing nothing.

The push to reopen the economy is premature. Some state governments facing fiscal disaster are reopening. Georgia, for example, has now lost the jobs of 39.5% of those who were employed in February 2020. It is unclear that closed retail businesses can be profitable when reopened, since their capacity will be limited for public health reasons. Right now, many businesses may face bankruptcy.

In any event, rents, mortgages, utility bills and other debts continue to accrue for individuals and businesses. And we found out that 40% of low income households have experienced job losses, compared to 20% overall.

Employees are also potential victims of the reopening. The Trump administration is advising state governments on how to remove workers from unemployment insurance.  Employers can demand workers show up, and if they refuse, they no longer qualify. Why would the workers refuse? Because their workplaces will still be unsafe.

It gets worse: Nearly half of people surveyed by Magnify Money now say they have to draw money from their retirement accounts because of the COVID-19 lockdowns:

The majority of respondents who withdrew funds to cover basic expenses is disheartening. The survey revealed that 60% of respondents used their retirement funds to pay for groceries, 42% spent it on household bills, 31% used it for rent or mortgage payments and 27% used it for debt payments.

Although the scale of the pandemic-caused economic catastrophe was known almost immediately, the Trump administration had limited interest in the health and well-being of the rest of us. Their main interest appeared to be winning the presidency in November.

But you can’t beat something with nothing.

People need help. If they aren’t offered anything good, many will accept something pretty awful, like more Trump for example. Biden is promising a return to the status quo ante, but that’s magical thinking.

The economy wasn’t working for many Americans before the pandemic. Now, the pandemic has taken a sledgehammer to it, and we are looking at what is left. American Capitalism needs to be reformed.

Sorry that we’re entering the weekend on a gloomy note. Since it’s our Saturday Soother, let’s kick back and forget about all that’s weighing us down. Let’s free our minds for a few moments. It’s going to be a spring-like weekend here at the fields of Wrong, so time for more yard work.

To help you settle into the weekend, start by listening to Vaughan Williams composition from 1903, “The Solent”, played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Paul Daniel.

The Solent is the channel between the Isle of Wight and southern England:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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