If We Want to Avert Economic Disaster in the Wake of the Pandemic, There’s Only One Good Way: Crypto-cryo-economicosis!
We have four choices when it comes to the current economic crisis; it’s very simple. We either, 1., open up the economy and expect a majority of ourselves to rapidly get sick, leading to over a million deaths (not to mention becoming an embarrassing biohazard to the rest of the world); 2. we do nothing economically except shutter businesses, which leads to great economic suffering and a deep recession that lasts well beyond the end of the pandemic; 3. we do what we’re trying to start doing now: shuttering businesses and having the government pay businesses and individuals to — in turn — pay all their bills, etc., leading to a less severe recession and then a sluggish economy that persists for, perhaps, almost a decade after; or 4., we follow the advice set forth in the economic playbook I just published, which will allow a country to shutter temporarily, then bounce back to full economic health immediately after the pandemic is over. The thing is, the course we take needs to be set immediately. This is a TL;DR of the article containing that playbook.
Basically what we want to do is what a tardigrade does when it goes into cryptobiosis: shut down and “freeze” for months on end, then revive at full health. That’s the economic challenge. The economic playbook I just published puts forward a plan that I call crypto-cryo-economicosis [which is fun to say!], and which will allow an extended — though temporary — shutdown of half — or even 70% — of an economy, then get revived. Nobody takes the fall. Not businesses, not landlords, not employees. No one upstream nor downstream. Everyone retains the ownership and control that they had before the pandemic started. Nobody gets taxed out of the game; no double standards are applied to one groups’ profits at the expense of another. Everything pops back to normal when the vaccine is in hand. And when it’s all over, the Mr. Potters of the world haven’t bought up half of their respective towns.
Here is a link to the full article:
It turns out that the only way to accomplish everything described above (in a way that is also constitutional in the US), is for a certain kind of tax to be increased on “landlords” to stop them from collecting on tenants shuttered or quarantined by the pandemic. Unlike recent, ill-conceived bills that are being put forward by progressive lawmakers like Ilhan Omar; the only plan that can actually avert tragedy is one that doesn’t just cancel rents but lowers everyone’s economic expectations gently: my article describes a tax that works within constitutional limits to not only grant rent relief to those who aren’t able to pay due to the virus, but also effectively cancel landlords’ mortgage payments, and the payments made on those payments by their mortgage holding companies, etc., until reaching a key point in the financial system that will diffuse the problem; in addition, landlords whose tenants no longer pay rent ought to get a rebate that equalizes the value from all rents, whether affected by the virus or not. This is really the only law that will solve our problems without creating more. Read the full article to understand why.
Note that it’s up to you to let those in power know that crypto-cryo-economicosis has even been discovered, and is the only full-bodied solution.
