Where are THE ECONOMISTS?

Public Health experts are trying their best to protect people from losing their lives. Meanwhile Congress is going on the biggest spending binge ever. And don’t they just love bickering over that?

They live for that, even while gleaning information that lets them sell stock to profit themselves or get grants called ‘pork’ for their states

Two trillion dollars???

Here’s the facts about that. My Alma Mater’s beloved former Chancellor, Donna Shalala now lives in Florida. Shalala was on MSNBC news today in her role as a former Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton from 1993-2001.

After chastising the Florida governor for his slow response in combatting the virus, she began shilling on the value of this huge sellout. She wasn’t dishonest about that. She even admitted they need another gigantic spending bill to compensate for what this one leaves out.

Here’s the ‘tell’ in what she said. She said that people should get most of their salaries. SALARIES. You know who gets salaries – managers of huge companies!

Ordinary workers get WAGES. And there are tons of those kinds of workers, who work for corporations and what the government calls “small businesses, a label that is almost a euphemism for entrepreneurs in the oil and gas, REIT or other lucrative companies that get huge tax breaks.

Shalala wasn’t dishonest about that.

Shalala said straight out that poor people were omitted from todays binge sale of taxpayer money. Make no mistake. She meant the homeless, independent contractors and self-employed. None of us make salaries!

Again and again, poor people are always neglected and told to wait. Wait for what? Starvation or death?

We all know there won’t be any third bill passed. Or if there, is it will just give money to the middle class to buy us off from protesting.

My junior high school hall-monitor lesson

My junior high was right across from a lovely park. At lunch in the spring we could go outside the building and eat. Then came a riot in that park. I wasn’t there for the riot, but I heard about it.

It was a race riot. A white girl provoked a black girl into a fight. That white girl was my friend with whom I’d written a poem that won the school prize. She paid for her actions with a broken arm. The rest of us paid with loss of our freedom. We were locked in at noon either in a noisy sweaty gym or the auditorium.

I had been a traffic crossing monitor during the winter. With my boy friends on the other corners we all used to call out the names of the models of cars that passed us by. I loved those guys.

The Principal of the school called me in and asked me to head the monitors at the doors who kept students in for lunch. I refused, imagining my traffic-crossing buddies would be as angry as I was..

As I walked out of the office, I saw all of my buddies proudly wearing their white belts standing at the doors to the outside. They didn’t see anything wrong with being cooped up like prisoners all day long. They loved being in power.

Where the heck are our Economists?

Media are calling this trillion dollar folly a stimulus. Don’t be fooled! It isn’t a stimulus. It’s merely maintenance. And it’s a big payoff for the middle class and the wealthy who will be sure to skim more than their share off the top.

It’s a bribe to salvage the egos of those laid off from work as “unnecessary human being workers”. People who will feel shame when shame is not warranted.

It’s not even going to the aid of those who need maintenance the most.

There are statistics from Columbia University going around about the number of people who die from poverty in the U.S. each year. Those are staggering numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

Although those numbers are for the year, the number of coronavirus cases we have is looking like it too will catch up and surpass poverty statistics if it continues for this year.

I’m not saying don’t pay people not to work or for working at home! I’m saying be prudent and logical. Pay the ones who need it the most and work up from there.

That’s even in everyone’s self-interest because those with the virus from all social levels in the U.S. are unwittingly giving the virus to those who are working with them trying to help save them.

The situation right now is intolerable for those in the medical and other public services. If we don’t protect them, then we, (the managers, the middle class and the poor) will be the next victims of that virus.

We do not know how long this virus will exist before a vaccination is found, but it’s prudent to think it could be many months. If we give away money to people who don’t need it as much now, where will we get the money later for anyone later.

In addition, there may be new cases or old cases that come back for a long time. There’s no time deadline on diseases. We don’t know yet and may never see when it is no more!

We haven’t even begun to test widely enough. It’s insanity to throw money into the air and hope it will be enough to outlast the virus or that it will magically die off because we want it to.

Where are our economists when we need them? Why aren’t they up there with our politicians on the news every day? Why aren’t they recommending better ways of spending our money.

The only economist I’ve seen on TV is Robert Reich. Why isn’t he at the White House?

The only other economist I’ve seen is Larry Kudlow, who has worked in media his whole career not economics.

And where are my buddies who were in college with me in a top ten university studying economics? Guys you’re getting an F these days! Man up! And show up!

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Self-employed? For more about government handouts, see Wolf Street’s blog post today:

Self-Employed Left Hanging after Spanish Government Promised to Protect Them from Worst of Covid-19 Fallout – http://ow.ly/mZvk50yVMdn