Coronavirus and the Reordering of America's Priorities
Article by Christian Josi in "PJMedia":
In the midst of the
madness--unprecedented upheaval and uncertainty for many of
us--Americans, myself included, are finding ourselves taking a fresh
look at what is truly important and what is not. For example, many who
obsess over live sports and sporting events on TV or in person are
realizing that they can, in fact, live without them. The life changes
demanded by these unique times are teaching us much about ourselves, it
seems.
Take how people look
at politics and government. A month ago, Americans were pretty much
firmly in one of two corners: "MAGA" versus "Never Trump," and ready for
a fight — sometimes verbally and sometimes with actual fists. Now, not
that we've put the gloves down entirely, but we are not able to be super
obsessed with that fight. There are bigger matters at hand.
Americans
are looking to government to do its job and find solutions to the
biggest, scariest challenge most of us among the living have ever faced:
a virus that is spreading fast with no medicine ready to treat and
prevent the illness. So fast and so vast that we are running out of
hospital beds, health care providers are near flameout from exhaustion,
and we keep hearing it's just going to get worse. As the global death
toll rises, people are rightly spooked and demanding competent--no,
extraordinary--leadership.
So yeah, issues that were such a
big deal before coronavirus just days ago, really, are suddenly not all
that important anymore. The fake outrage we normally see every day on
social media spurred by somebody making an inappropriate joke or saying
something that is not politically acceptable for another has slowed.
Government regulations on the economy that made little issues into big
ones seem unimportant. The media’s obsessive focus on everything Trump
just looks dopey right now.
Americans
need to take away two big lessons from the early response to the
coronavirus. First is that we, as a nation, have to deal with the
soul-crushing debt that we have accumulated. Congress is considering a
massive $2 trillion (plus!) "stimulus" package to combat economic
displacement caused by the coronavirus. Had we saved for this time of
crisis, we would have more flexibility today to dump cash we actually
have into the economy to prevent a recession or even a depression.
Our nation is in debt for about $24 trillion accumulated over our relatively brief history. The deficit for last year was just under $1 trillion.
With the pending massive stimulus and lower tax revenues expected this
year, because fewer people are working, the deficit for Fiscal Year 2020
is going to be astronomical. Had we mustered the discipline to save for
this rainy day, our federal financial situation would be far better
(Can't lie, I'm in a bit of a glass house here because the same argument
applies to my personal financial situation right now...yikes).
Further,
we need to get rid of regulations and government actions that don’t
actively help the economy. Partisan actions by the government simply
need to be scrapped. I wrote about a great example of this right here in PJ in
February. Quoting myself, “liberal lawyers at the Department of Labor
are implementing policies started by the Obama Administration that have
allowed liberal activists to threaten government contractors with no
future contracts on the baseless claim of discrimination.” It is a
situation where progressive lawyers in an obscure government agency
called the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) used
government-collected data from government contractors to bully them into
settlements with claims of discrimination.
We
are in a situation where our tech companies are rapidly developing
technology to help with communications resources to fight the
coronavirus and aid in testing. These companies are helping to collect
data on the spread that may help stem it while helping to keep homebound
Americans up to date and informed. Two of the companies targeted by
OFCCP are right now working to help get Americans back to work: Google and Oracle.
The Chamber of Commerce pointed
out the agency’s harassment of companies was over the line and a
product of ideologically-driven lawyers. Allowing the government to slow
big tech companies that are trying to fight the coronavirus because
some government lawyer does not like that company's data on hiring and
promotion practices makes no sense. It's like the reports over the last
few days of the FDA delaying the delivery of
desperately-needed masks and other supplies to hospitals and health
care professionals because of some bureaucratic reg-nonsense.
We just can't be doing this stuff anymore, and both sides are guilty as hell of it.
We'll
learn many lessons from having weathered this crisis. May ridding
ourselves of unhelpful policies and finding some way to balance the
budget so we are not caught entirely flat-footed when we hit the next
one be at the top of that list. That and kindness. In better times,
maybe we can have a big helping of social media distancing. A boy can still dream, no?
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