Spike is Best

There is no such thing as "sacrificing the economy". But there is such a thing as sacrificing your ideology and your fear. That is, your fear of losing your idea of the economy.

An economy can be rebuilt/restarted/re-set literally overnight. This is why the Great Depression was not mere fallout. It was deliberately sustained through the contraction of the money supply. The money supply was squeezed more and more with each passing year.

The Great Depression wasn't some fallout from "inflation". There is no such thing as an economic fallout over a ten year period. It is impossible. The Great Depression was deliberately sustained. There. Was. No. Money.

There was no money because the private banks were squeezing it out of the system. It was asset stripping. The "calling of arrears". It was a decade-long power grab. And it wasn't that the power-grabbers were merely saving their own skins. The point of the parasite is to parasitize the host.

You think that the general population worrying about the economy has anything on the fears of the 1%? The 1% is the bracket that feels every tick on the seismograph over and above anyone else. The more power and wealth you attain, the more the fear of losing - no, not all of it - the more the fear of losing the least amount.

You can take that as a form of consolation. The widow with her mite will always be a billion times more generous than a billionaire donating even half his fortune.

If the criminals who sustained the Great Depression had done what was right instead, it would not have meant their impoverishment. Not at all. You see, they wanted to continue their wicked accumulation; they viewed their sacking of the nation as "automatic".

The Ring came to ME!

People mention the Great Depression like it was an economic failure/tragedy that happened in some once-upon-a-time that looked like a black and white photo in some high school textbook.

What we call the Great Depression was in truth a crime against humanity.

Money is a transaction token. Any value, any definition one wishes to say of money - "money is a unit of labour saved", etc. etc. - is already assumed under "transaction token".

Let me put it this way: when two people engage in a transaction with each other, are either of those two people, by engaging in the transaction, seeking to impoverish themselves?

We already bring and assume all the values. Money is a transaction token. And the 1% know and understand that fact very well.

What needs to happen in pandemic is to keep things puttering along. Cancel debts, mortgage payments/loans in whatever ways, whether it's total cancellation, or suspension until pandemic is completely past. And that, in tandem with some form of UBI (for the duration of pandemic), while shutting out from monetary aid the big corporation billionaires.

All that would be to ensure that those businesses and jobs are there to "return to". Ample money supply needs to be circulating in order to keep things puttering along while the country is in lockdown.

The powers don't want this for the simple reason that they know how good it will look. Imagine that: they know and fear that right-and-just emergency measures with a view towards solidarity in a crisis will outshine decades of so-called free market trickle down triple-ply financialized capitalism. LOL.

But this is guaranteed: if you "re-open" the economy while pandemic is still happening, you will crash the economy. That is an absolute guarantee. I'm sure those in favour of "re-opening" would later scapegoat the lockdown measures.

Also, but more importantly, if you "re-open" the economy while a pandemic is happening, you are confirming that economy beyond all dispute as an economy of death.

It is well within the power of the Republicans to do what is right. The truly sick thing is to realize they won't do it because it would cast a light back upon the previous decades, and people would start thinking new thoughts.