The painful truth about Covid and the economy – Trump is to blame
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The painful truth about Covid and the economy – Trump is to blame
August 2, 2020, 1:00 AM
Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
“The recovery has been very strong,” Donald Trump said on Monday. Then the commerce department reported the US economy contracted between April and June at the fastest pace in nearly three-quarters of a century, which is as long as economists have been keeping track. The drop wiped out five years of economic growth.
But pesky facts have never stopped Trump. Having lied for five months about the coronavirus, he’s now filling social media and the airwaves with untruths about the economy so he can dupe his way to election day.
The comeback “won’t take very long”, he reassured Americans on Thursday. But every indicator shows that after a small uptick in June, the US economy is tanking again. Restaurant reservations are down, traffic at retail stores is dwindling, more small businesses are closing, the small rebound in air travel is reversing.
What’s Trump’s plan to revive the economy? The same one he’s been pushing for months: just “reopen” it.
He wants the public to believe the shutdown orders that began in March caused the economy to tank in the first place, so reversing them will bring the economy back.
People can’t go back to work because there is very little work for them to do
Rubbish. It was the virus that caused the downturn, and its resurgence is taking the economy down again. The virus is surging back because governors reopened prematurely, before the virus was under control – at Trump’s repeated insistence.
The sequence of cause-and-effect is clear. The virus has surged most in states that were among the first to reopen, such as Florida, South Carolina, Texas and much of the rest of the sun belt.
Because of this resurgence, many states are pausing plans to reopen and some are reimposing restrictions. But these restrictions are not the reason the economy is slowing. They are the necessary consequence of allowing the pandemic to get out of control.
Even the White House’s own coronavirus taskforce concludes that 21 states have outbreaks serious enough to justify more restrictions.
Notably, the economy is sliding again even though the government has pumped trillions of dollars into it. What happens when the money stops?
We’re about to find out. Senate Republicans can’t agree among themselves, let alone with House Democrats, about more funding, while Trump says “we really don’t care” about reaching a spending agreement.
That means starting this week more than 30 million Americans will no longer receive $600 in extra weekly employment benefits. As a result, tens of millions will not be able to make rent or mortgage payments. More will go hungry, including children. The economy is likely to slide even further.
The White House argues that the extra unemployment payments have discouraged workers from seeking jobs because some are receiving more money in benefits than they would earn by working.
“We don’t want to create disincentives to work,” says Trump adviser Larry Kudlow.
More rubbish. A study by Yale economists finds “no evidence” that people who have lost their jobs are choosing to stay unemployed because of the extra federal aid. In fact, “workers facing larger [unemployment] expansions generally appear to be quicker to return to work than others, not slower.”
People can’t go back to work because there is very little work for them to do. Fourteen million more people are unemployed than there are jobs.
Related: Paul Begala on Trump: 'Nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars'
In fact, the extra benefits have been keeping some 3 million employed because the money has gone into the pockets of people who spend it, thereby sustaining economic activity. Shrinking those benefits will put less money into consumer pockets, with the result that millions more jobs will be lost.
Lies about the economy are harder to spot than lies about the coronavirus because the virus’s grim death count is painfully apparent while the economy is complicated. But Trump’s economic lies are no less egregious, and they’re about to cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering.
Trump and Senate Republicans may not like it, but that’s the painful truth.
-
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good . His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It , is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US
Tags
Who is online
210 visitors
Yes, tRump is to blame yet he places all the blame on democrats/progressives/liberals and Joe Biden.
Oh, that's right we all know that the liberal left Democrats are totally blameless and pure as the newfallen snow!
We are blameless in this.
Then the left won't mind reining in their moronic Brown Shirt protesters right? Or are you (plural) going to pretend they aren't a major factor in the virus flare up, or the state of the economy?
No we aren't and that goes for people of all parties. Even before the reopening of states, self entitled assholes were making this thing spread like wild fire. The "it is all about me" crowds gathered in large groups, had covid parties, massive pool parties, massive protest where the unmasked outnumber the masked, intentionally coughing on people, licking items in stores, threatening violence and often doing personal violence to employees trying to enforce masks, using B and B's for 700 person parties, some business owners saying "screw the shut down" continuing business as usual with many of them not even sanitizing the work environments, feeling sick without being tested but still think their right to party outweighs health concerns of others and end up infecting friends and families, knowing you have underlying health conditions but insist on attending packed events where there is no social distancing, hand washing, or masks, knowing they have it but keep it to themselves resulting in friends and families being infected, and packing people into airplanes like sardines with few safeguards enforced, little if any concern or action taken by the WH to take this seriously, but take to heart the words of whack job quacks who are taken more seriously than reputable doctors, scientists, and specialists.
Every example is based on actual incidents.
Other countries are way ahead of us in containment because they and their governments did take this seriously.
Thanks Paula for the truth!
I am just so sick of being forced further into seclusion because of people I cited as examples continue to put me at risk.
I screwed up. It should have read.....No...we are. Apologies.
There's some truth in that. The Democrats/liberals/progressives, et al, have done diddlely squat to mitigate any problems we are no facing, other than play the blame game
No cooperation, no reaching across the aisle to find common solutions And yet we continue to be told that the pandemic task force being in place would have made all the difference?
I can't wait to see what Biden will do about the pandemic and faltering economy that was caused by democrat governors and mayors.
The protesters have nothing to do with the Co-Vid flare ups. Typical that you blame that on the protests.
At a protest rally in DC, some 20 activated NG soldiers tested positive after the march but the numbers are still being crunched as to how many if any protesters have been infected. I listed protests in my previous comment solely as an example that if they must gather in large crowds at least wear masks. Social distancing was not possible but hopefully most carried hand sanitizers.
This from the same guy who pushed Sarah Palin on John McCain as his VP running mate!🤣