05-02-2020, 05:29 PM
(05-02-2020, 04:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-02-2020, 02:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: MASS DEATH!Hint: If the liberals keep playing games with numbers, people's lives and lively hoods, playing games with dates/deadlines and moving goal lines this is going end way worse and way more costly than World War II and financially wipe out every social program that followed in the process. I'm not concerned about America because America was built to succeed and survive.
The costs of COVID-19 in lives and public expenditures are analogous to those of a war. We might as well treat COVID-19 for what it is -- an enemy just as nasty as the Axis Powers of the Second World War. This is the definitive crisis of this Crisis Era. It might not be as horrible as a nuclear exchange that many of us used to fear. The deaths, to come with little recognition of heroism, so there will be no Congressional Medals of Honor for people who cover a live grenade in a fox-hole to save their buddies. The death is real, and protracted as it can be it is no less horrible. Consider this: the people dying of COVID-19 are often the same age as Vietnam-era veterans. In the last two months, COVID-19 has recently posed more danger to Vietnam vets than the NVA and the Vietcong ever did.
If we end the shutdowns we might get a spurt of economic activity, but at a cost of another surge of a costly illness and death. Those who die can never contribute more to the economy.
I trust that once COVID-19 is gone, Americans can resume normal lives again. People will do things that are undeniably human and necessary in the long term, like going to school, dating, marrying, having children, traveling, and working in the 'non-essential' activities that constitute much of the economy. People will be going to concerts, religious services, museums, casinos, and even strip clubs again. People will be having backyard barbecues, parties, and ice-cream socials again. people will take trips to places where there is something to do again or to do safely again. Nobody really challenges the assumptions of a free-market consumer-based economy.
But what if we have mass death instead? If the mass death largely hits the working people who do much of the hard, dirty work such as meat-packing, cleaning, and farm labor we could end up with food shortages. If enough people die, then places that people live in when the population is about 325 million instead of 250 million will be abandoned. Just take a good look at Detroit to see the effects of depopulation that has nothing to do with mass death -- much vacant housing and many open lots in what used to be the most prosperous city in the world. Municipalities that have much bonded indebtedness will be unable to collect property taxes on buildings that landlords can no longer lease. Utilities depend heavily upon captive markets, and with significantly fewer customers they will have costly excess capacity to finance and reduced revenues. People will be commuting shorter distances as outlying suburbs are the places most likely to be abandoned, so that will shrink the revenue of the fossil-fuels industry. Financial institutions and bond-holders will get hurt. So far, COVID-19 seems to be ravaging the elderly and near-elderly, so you can imagine what that does to the lucrative business of nursing homes. Construction activity will grind to a halt.
These are consequences heavily to businesses for which I have no fondness -- but when all of those businesses hurt, we all pay. OK, so rising wages and reduced rents will make life easier, just as after the Black Death. Sure -- there is a silver lining in every cloud. OK, maybe not the Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade, but I think that you get the idea.
It is the virus that is playing the games. It has more than 66,000 deaths as its wins already, surely with far more to come. I can think of nobody who doesn't want the shutdown to end so that life can be normal again in a way that fits them. Nobody wants an association with mass death, even if 'only' at the level of serial killers Ted Bundy or John Gacy. Both were judged worthy of execution in the states in which they were convicted of first-degree murder.
In case you wonder about the comparison to wars, then here is how COVID-19 matched up:
Rank
War
Years
Deaths
Deaths per day
U.S. population in first year of war
Deaths as percentage of population1
American Civil War
1861–65
750,000 (est.)(U.S./Confederate)[86]
520
31,443,000
2.385% (1860)
2
World War II
1941–45
405,399
297
133,402,000
0.307% (1940)
3
World War I
1917–18
116,516
279
103,268,000
0.110% (1920)
4
==== COVID-19 over 65.000 as of today ====
Vietnam War
1961–75
58,209
11
179,323,175
0.032% (1970)
5
Korean War
1950–53
54,246
45
151,325,000
0.036% (1950)
Yes, America is built to succeed and survive. America has a heritage of consumerism and free enterprise, and both will be back to normal once the danger of the virus abates. Central planning, with a government deciding who gets to recover and who doesn't, will be a bad idea. Landlords will need tenants again, and the perfect tenant will be a business owner who has already been successful before the shutdown. We will end up paying more for much of the stuff that we now get, especially if top leadership (that means, for now, the President and state Governors) fail to their jobs.
The shorter the shutdown, the easier it will be for people to return to old habits that allow profitable businesses to operate and the less erosion people will find in their workplace skills. Above all, the less will be the disruption in the collection of taxes and payment of bills. But note well: any relaxation of the shutdown that allows people to spread a disease that so far has killed more than 5% of its victims could devastate America. Unless COVID-19 is stopped, all that will stop it is for the disease to run out of potential victims. How does 15 million deaths sound to you? Such would far surpass the death rate of the American Civil War.
I doubt that you fully understand how dangerous this disease is. You are not alone in that. Some people are stupid enough to participate in protests of the shutdown, often failing to do social distancing or to wear masks. Be safe. Don't contract it.
If nearly everyone is taking a similar hit, then we will recover more or less alike.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.