Parting Shot: Low Bar, Crow Bar
To do better in the next 100 days is such a low bar for achievement. Why does it take so much effort to do so?
To ask what the Biden Admin can, or should, do, during its first 100 days. Well … the bar is pretty low considering the fkery we just experienced.
That’s not to say there is not a lot of work to do. The US is suffering both a health and economic emergency. As bad as the death toll is, the disruption to the economy is just as deep with some significant levels of permanency.
That said, the bar is pretty low for establishing the foundation for a recovery. As talked about in “The Notion of Compensation and Negotiations”, the baseline for a recovery would start with replacing or repairing what people lost over the past year. THEN we need, pronto, tinder to stimulate the economy. However, it seems like it takes a crow bar to open these mfs up to the Obvious.
The Obvious:
Health care — organize the system of access and distribution. Since market-based private insurance companies are going to control the flow of health care services, it can still be organized so that basic needs are met more quickly. Establish an emergency provision for Medicare to last as long as the pandemic poses a health and safety threat. Hire people to process the applications for this relief. Hire people to help adminster it. Let’s do what we can to make sure the sick are cured and spread of the virus is contained.
Housing — come on. Suspensions of evictions are cool, but if a mf can’t pay you for (fill in the blank) months of rent, how do you expect them to have your loot when landlords can evict? Establish a program where renters apply for relief. Simple qualifications: provide copy of lease and evidencing the deficiency. Pay the landlord directly while providing renter certificate of payment as proof. Install rent control for a minimum of five years.
Jobs program — one jobs program is add people to the federal payroll — either directly or via contractor — to administer the health programs. Or to help administer all programs under a relief package. Beyond that, we need all kinds of work that is basic to health and safety, and industries where they say there is a shortage of qualified people. Also opportunities for training programs — paid training.
Minimum wage — since we’re talking jobs, $15/hour was too low when the Fight for 15 movement started. In 2021, it’s pretty much a poverty wage. BUT let’s start at $15 and then incrementally increase it annually until it’s chained to the cost of living index. Afterwards, the cost of living index becomes the permanent standard for establishing the level of minimum wage.
Student debt relief — this one is critical because a default means the government can take your income tax refund and/or your social security benefits. (The ability to take one’s social security benefits is just unconscionable. That is often one’s sole means of income, which is subsistence level anyway). You lose your income source, you can’t pay your loans. You can’t pay your loans, you’re in danger of default. Similar to the eviction moratorium, what happens when the forebearances expire? Defaults were already occurring at a high rate via un-and underemployment. The banks are getting bailed out. But the defaults remain. The Treasury or Fed could do what it’s been doing with these risk-taking corporations they’ve been bailing out on the DL — purchase debt obligations. No reason it can’t buy er’body’s student loans, too. Or it could change the bankruptcy rules and restore dischargeability of student loans. Or both.
This short list contains low bar items. Can be done as quickly as they passed the 2017 tax bill and Patriot Act.
So why the crow bar to open up legislation and appropriations to get a bottom-up recovery done? After all, the players in the market got stupid rich. Insurance companies, in a pandemic, got stupid rich — and that’s with less insured customers. The tech giants (Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.) became even more powerful. Hell, Bill Gates just became the largest owner of farmland in the US.
Meanwhile, the rest of our lives are an experience akin to an organ transplant without the benefit of pain medication or anesthesia. Yet questions and/or debates on how to pull the country out of the controlled demolition seem to dominate and block relief.
The bar is pretty low. Any level of economic and health measures will beat the abuse of power that is expressed by the exercise and privilege to be immoral, amoral, predatory, and gluttonous in raping the economy and dreams of its citizens. Unless you have aspirations to join that crowd. But it’s VERY difficult to get in that club. You’ll need a crow bar to open that door.
We lived with “It could be worse” as a standard for beyond too long. Besides, we’re already there, i.e Worse. It’s not difficult to restore dignity and security to the economy. Just do it.
