By Kevin D. Williamson
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
First:
Don’t send Jeff Bezos money. Amazon shares are taking a
beating, but Bezos (pbuh) is, I am confident, going to be fine.
So are Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. And moving just a
few rungs down the income ladder, so am I and other people like me. Congress’s
plan to send everybody a check for $1,000 as a stimulus measure may have some
merit as a one-time thing, and as a simple measure it appeals to the simple
people who govern us. But if we are looking at months of economic disruption —
and it is likely that we are — then we are going to have to prioritize, and the
first thing we should do is send lower-income people money.
Lower-income people are less likely to have savings or
additional resources to help tide them over when they are out of work, as many
of them already are. Businesses that can afford to keep paying furloughed
workers for a time should do so, and Congress should help those businesses in
turn, perhaps by allowing them to treat wages paid to furloughed workers during
this crisis like a tax loss that can be carried forward.
About 25 million Americans make $11 an hour or less. By
redirecting something on the order of 8 percent of federal spending, we could,
if necessary, fund all of their paychecks, indefinitely. That’s a big
chunk of money, but it would not be impossible to do. But the fact is, we don’t
need to cover them all: Lots of those hourly workers are going to stay employed
as companies ranging from grocers and distributors to manufacturers of medical
devices ramp up production. We might not need to do this at all, but we need to
act now to get the facility in place to do it.
A one-time check is just a check. A commitment to help
throughout the episode is something else.
However this crisis shakes out, there is no scenario in
which having millions of people who can’t pay their rent or buy food makes it
easier to manage. I’ll be the first one saying “Get a job!” when the epidemic
has abated. Until then, write those checks.
Second:
Start looking for weaknesses in the supply chain now,
especially where food, pharmaceuticals, and basic consumer goods are concerned.
(As Claire Berlinski reports, France
is in the middle of this right now.) From the farms to the food-processing
centers to the distribution centers to the retailer warehouses to the store
shelves, much can go wrong.
The toilet-paper shortage is a good joke. Persistently
empty shelves in the grocery stores will cause civic disorder. We already have
store-imposed rationing at grocery stores on canned goods and certain other
items. The perception of shortages encourages panic buying, which can make
those perceptions a reality. State and local governments and corporate
managements should be war-gaming out worst-case scenarios right now. (Some of
them already are.) We should be looking at what happens if 10 percent or 15
percent of the workforce either does not or cannot show up for work.
It does not matter that there is “plenty of food in the
country.” It matters where it is and whether people can get to it.
Third:
Get ready for non-coronavirus trouble: Crises beget
crises.
For example, we are not that far away from the beginning
of hurricane season. The disruption caused by this epidemic could make an
ordinary pre-storm evacuation in Florida or Louisiana a much more complicated
affair. Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston — but it also left gasoline pumps
empty in North Texas and points beyond. The usual minor emergencies that are an
ordinary part of life are not going to stop because there’s an epidemic under
way.
Stocking up on food is usually the first thing on
people’s minds during a situation like this, but water, electricity, fuel,
transportation, communication, banking — all of these have vulnerabilities that
may be heightened or aggravated by the social and economic disruption that
already is under way with more to come.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, says this is not
the time to worry about the deficit. “Correct,” replied Rory Cooper. “The time
to worry about it was when times were good. But nobody did that, either.”
Cooper is, of course, correct. It would be better if we were going into this
crisis with a better fiscal position. And that, too, is a weakness that this
epidemic could leave painfully exposed.
We are going to learn some lessons. Let us hope that the
learning is not too painful.
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