Not a lot has happened since my last post five weeks ago.
More than sixty-five days of quarantine have passed and no one seems to have a
clear understanding of how we exit this condition and “reopen” the world’s economy
and move toward normalcy.
It is easy to deal with the lockdown when you are retired
and your pension and social security income continues to arrive at the bank on
a regular basis; when you are sequestered in one of the world’s most beautiful
landscapes and where days can pass without seeing another human being.
Do I worry that this might change—that our retirement income
will one day stop—that we will be without food and shelter? Do I worry that “online learning” and “social
distancing” will become the new norm for us, our children, and our children’s
children?
Honestly, no. I think we are smart enough to see this
trouble through to a successful conclusion. People will learn how to protect
themselves from the risk of infection from the Coronavirus. A vaccine will be
developed that we will take each year to protect us from future pandemics. Our
businesses will rebound just as they have throughout history and absent the
interference of some bad actors around the globe there will be a
recovery which will set us on a path to new and greater development and that
Golden Ring for which all Capitalists salivate—PROFITS.
I am not a big—or even a small—conspiracy theorist. I do not
believe the Coronavirus was created by some unknown group for the nefarious
purpose of achieving a radical, new world order. I do not foresee our
government defaulting on pensioners and retirees. Any politician who stopped
making the social security payments that retirees see as a New Deal-type promise
made to them years ago—that politician would be quickly and unceremoniously dumped
in the next election.
But there is work to be done and a big mess to clean-up.
Our society and our world have not prepared themselves to answer
questions of the value of human life, of an assembly-line of silicon-chip
makers or service industry workers who toil long, underpaid hours to serve
meals and cut hair and clean our teeth.
How to weigh the value of human capital against the value of
financial capital. Some can perform their jobs online; accessing their work
remotely, submitting their material from far off locations, answering customer
questions while in their pajamas and shushing the dog as they feed the baby in
her highchair.
Others must show-up to do their work; emptying our trash,
mowing our lawns, or fixing our cars. Others are not so easy—like cooking or
serving our meals, cashiering at our grocery stores, driving ambulances to our
hospitals, or providing necessary medical attention.
What is an essential job, anyway?
