Who cares about being strategic WHEN WE HAVE FOOD BANKS? 🙄
Almost exactly a month ago — while admitting that my tarot cards have failed like almost everyone else’s this year, but assuming President Trump still wants to be reelected — I maintained that another tranche of Congress-crafted coronavirus relief is certain.
I still believe it.
And yet, we see the $600 supplemental unemployment payments to Americans have expired with Democrats and Republicans fighting over a renewal that has a $400 cut versus full renewal of benefits.
Okay, I understand that the Party of No Brains now wants just a $200 cut in benefits.
Another remarkable observation is the PoNB’s straight-faced idea that a ‘stimulus’ bill can offer the greenlight for companies to become free from workplace safety liability while forcing low-paid employees back to jobs that are positioned to become COVID killing fields. Plus, PoNB makes a spectacular proposal to leave states underfunded.
But no one’s discussing the big picture here: stuff is about to become worse, and Congress isn’t even discussing real stimulus yet.
Like I said on July 8, consumer spend represents 70 percent of the US economy.
That spend manifests itself in rent and loan payments, groceries and other family needs. Stifling that spend will quickly lead to a disruption to the real estate and financial markets, and the subsequent fix will require way more money than extra unemployment.
“Disruption” is probably a euphemism, since I think a more damaging and uglier form of the Great Depression will follow.
But … Congress is fighting over unemployment insurance and backdoor permission to kill essential workers with impunity.
Without tricks and corporate loophole provisions, Congress should quickly pass a bill that will maintain economic stability, and then discuss a stimulus package that can be taken seriously.
A proper stimulus package is about four decades overdue. I’m on record with my observations of the fragile American workforce, where rising costs and anemic compensation growth since the 1970s have required a larger number of income earners per household to maintain a stable living situation. These families remain one or two missed paychecks from financially flatlining.
America’s next stimulus should encourage new industry creation and growth; the resuscitation of dissolved small-business resources; upgrade of worker skill sets and incomes; and a transformational education platform that will prepare the nation for a new future.
These aren’t daydreams. America has done this sort of thing before.
But for the moment, Congress battles over how to protect companies saturated with virus risk from legal exposure while Americans are forced back to those low-paying jobs.
This picture tells me who really loves America …
Song currently stuck in my head: “synthetic substitution” – mel bliss
mentalunrest.com 