Credit: The White House
Most of the economic carnage we see Americans suffer today is the result of measures that federal, state, and local governments have had to adopt to stem the spread of COVID-19—the social distancing, social isolation, and closing of borders and businesses. It follows, then, that the severity of the damage depends largely on how quickly and effectively a country responded the virus’s spread. South Korea moved quickly and dramatically, as did Germany. Here, Donald Trump became the Denier-in-Chief, and the deadly virus burrowed through American communities as the federal government and some governors dithered.
What if we had moved as quickly and decisively as South Korea or Germany? How much of our mounting economic costs could we have been spared as businesses closed down and jobs disappeared? Economic analysis can give us a rough estimate, and it suggests that America could have averted at least 40 percent of these terrible costs and perhaps as much as 86 percent of the economic damage. If President Trump had listened to […]
I did not like this article at all. Just a lot of if this and if that. Who cares about what If we had done something. What matters is what we do now and forget the past. We cannot redo the past, it is over. What we need is another thing to do now and that is take money from the rich to fix everything in a timely manner. This virus is similar to what happened in 1929, so let’s fix it like we did in those years: make the rich who have more money than they need to contribute to help save our country. It is their country, too, and they should do what they can to help protect themselves while helping the rest of us without whom they would not have their wealth.