Profits Over People?

Profits Over People?
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
April 24, 2020

Angry, with good reason, yet peaceful, protests are growing and taking place in a greater number of states as a greater number of people have come to realize their states’ governors are treating their constituents like subjects and children.

They simply want to return to work and some semblance of a life, albeit an altered life.

These people are being called selfish, inconsiderate, and greedy by people who, themselves, are selfish, inconsiderate, and greedy. My youngest daughter, a college student, which explains quite a bit, has a go to mantra, “Are you putting profits over people?”

The answer is certainly not. More than 20 million people have lost jobs during this siege, and putting them back to work is not about profit, but preservation. This is survival over suicide, and that is not hyperbole, as suicide rates are sharply on the rise. Poverty will kill more people than the Coronavirus. “To burn down the village to save it is foolish,” said Senator John Kennedy (R-LA).

Mom and pop shops, single proprietorships, small businesses with fewer than a couple hundred people have closed their doors because their government asked them to. They are without income, and unable to pay salaries and furloughed staff. They are without income, and unable to pay rents or mortgages and utilities. All of these affected people are struggling to put food on their tables, pay their own rent or mortgages, make car payments, running higher credit card debts, and are hemorrhaging money to the point of bankruptcy and the loss of their businesses, their savings, and possibly their homes and or cars.

Local restaurants, those that are able to remain open are limited to take out and delivery service, and are also losing money. Many more are closed, and perhaps permanently. Should the owners lose their life’s work, their livelihood, and not have the ability to start over? What about losing their life savings? How is anyone supposed to actually live when they literally have nothing? Will restaurants even be able to survive a “new normal,” whatever the hell that is going to be? Can a 100 seat restaurant survive with only 50 seats? Will people be able to afford to eat out? Will they even want to?

Not a fan of priming the pump to begin with, there’s only so far government can go in what it is doing to help people and businesses. And as is becoming more evident, the government plans are running awry. When a Harvard University or a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse are benefiting from government largesse, that is wrong. Harvard has an endowment of more than $41 billion, and Ruth’s Chris is a chain of more than 100 restaurants. The country can’t keep printing money, for it will eventually be worthless and people will have to carry boxes of paper with numbers printed on them to buy a simple loaf of bread. Inflation will double and triple every other month, then week, then day, as the economy becomes worse than the Great Depression in the United States and Germany during that same time. Look at how inflation destroyed the economy of Venezuela.

It is not selfish, inconsiderate, or greedy for people to want to get back to work and save their family, save their family business, save the health - mental and physical of their loved ones. Eventually the protests will turn ugly - it’s human nature. Profits? No; preservation. As of Friday, April 24, the overwhelming majority of those reporting back to work are lower income workers, not the “swells” who can afford to sit on the sidelines and point fingers. “The economy has been waterboarded,” said Sen. Kennedy, adding, “lives and livelihoods are important.”

What is selfish and inconsiderate? Think about all the people risking their lives to keep you alive - truckers bring you your food, supermarket workers, restaurant workers, food delivery people, trash collectors, mailmen, bank tellers, fire fighters, doctors and nurses, our troops - many of whom are working for low wages, while so many are hunkering down feeling entitled.

Why else do people need to return to work? Because $1,200 doesn’t go very far, and the government cannot take care of the American people like they are children. The longer people are not working, the longer they are not producing revenue for the government - taxes that are deducted from people’s pay. No pay, no tax revenue. Remember, there is no such thing as government money. And in this case, socialism isn’t about running out of other people’s money, it’s about running out of our own money - first that which is in our bank accounts, and second, that which the government uses.

This virus, courtesy of the Communist Chinese Party, has demonstrated the fragility of the economy, not just that of the United States, but the rest of the world. For as the US falls, so too does the rest of the globe. As anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows, additional printing of money will ultimately do much more harm than good. Money should be reappropriated from every department and from that which is designated for foreign aid. After all, if the government can require what they consider “non-essential” employees to stay at home and lose thousands upon thousands of dollars, certainly the government can use money more wisely, for essential expenses only.

Stop borrowing from the Chinese. Stop doing business with the Chinese. The Chinese, for their lies and deceptions must be made to pay. The state of Missouri is already filing a lawsuit against China. Perhaps the remaining 49 states will do likewise. The federal government should withhold payment to China of any debt owed to that tyrannical regime, as should all other nations in debt to China. Remember, the goal of the Communist Chinese Party is to protect the top first and to protect the collective. This is just one reason the Chinese lied about the severity of the virus that came from the Wuhan Province. There is little question the Chinese also lied about the enormous number of fatalities to their own people. Additionally, the World Health Organization is complicit in this crime against humanity - for defending China, for believing China blindly, and for harming Taiwan.

Support local businesses. If it doesn’t have to be bought right now, hold off until neighborhood shops are reopened. Avoid chain stores and if at all possible, do not purchase Chinese made goods. If ordering something online and are not sure of its origin, ask before buying. All businesses are essential to those who own them and rely upon them for their livelihood as well as the livelihoods of those they employ.

One of the most important things the United States absolutely must do as soon as humanly possible - bring our antibiotics home. About 97 percent of American antibiotics are made in China. That is an obscenity. No one foreign power should have that much control over another. The United States has the capability to produce its own drugs and it is imperative to do so. Contact your member of Congress and demand they stop doing business with China and that antibiotics being produced in the United States is a top priority. More drug production at home, more jobs created.

And on the subject of drugs, the Coronavirus has demonstrated yet another reason why a single payer system and mandatory medicare for all as healthcare in the United States would be a dismal failure. Government alone is not able to fight this virus. Corporate America has been enlisted in this important battle. Consider the myriad companies that have repurposed themselves to provide ventilators and other necessary materials as deemed essential.

Congress must behave responsibly - an enormous expectation, so don’t hold your breath. Bills designed for relief or stimulus should be limited to just those proponents and nothing more. No special projects the House Democrats are trying to sneak in the back door; no election reform, no “larding” up the bill as the expression goes. After all, lard isn’t kosher. They sit up there in their ivory towers playing politics with people’s lives and livelihoods.

So while many of the entitled masses are sitting home so superiorly and smugly, and others are risking their lives to give those at home a life, the suffering is more than the Coronavirus. It’s the jobless millions who simply want to go back to work and support their families before there is nothing left with which to support them. Profits over people? No. More like cutting loses; maybe breaking even, but probably not for a while still. Survival over suicide - economically or physically.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.