Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
Do you personally have a limit though as to what is an acceptable level of public safety relative to economic damage? I'm not sure how much U.S. federal debt is attributable directly to Covid but I would have to guess it's not insignificant. I just wonder if major developed countries do start to face austerity measures in the not to far future whether we will look back at some of these actions as catalysts.
|
Well that seems to be a 2-part question: (1) What public health measures to take and (2) What measures the government should take to help those adversely affected.
Prior to vaccine availability, I favored closing "non-essential" indoor activities and that would include bars, clubs serving alcohol and indoor dining. Grocery stores obviously couldn't be closed nor other stores selling things where people enter, grab what they want, pay and leave. It's really services where customers necessarily linger that were problematic.
Now that there's a vaccine, if it were up to me, I'd require vaccination for entry to those same indoor services. I don't think at this point I'd require anything to be closed but besides indoor services, I'd require vaccination for entry to indoor entertainment and sports venues and other activities, more or less as France is doing.
Then the question is what should government be doing about those affected. I favored extra federal unemployment benefits (in the US, that's $600/wk until September). But I did NOT favor sending extra checks to everybody below a certain income. Most of those were below that income before covid and will be after covid and their need is independent of covid. Rather than send out such checks to individuals, the government probably should have provided more assistance to small business owners forced to close (as far as I understand it, in the US they just got loans, not grants). I'd have to know more to approve of things like airline bailouts: My understanding is that Delta and Southwest would have survived covid regardless, but United might not and I'm uncertain about American. These airlines were NOT forced to quit flying remember--it's just nobody wanted to fly.
I do believe the Biden Administration has been taking advantage of the covid situation to implement a certain amount of left wing wet dream stuff. I mean they gave local governments so much money that most of them can't spend it all on anything related to covid and are now being asked to spend it on police (how ironic THAT!).
Covid-related spending so far has been $3 trillion (
https://www.usaspending.gov/disaster/covid-19 ). The US federal debt is now on the order of 100% of GDP. That's a lot though less than some other developed countries still. But I think it's time to call a halt and the Biden $3.5 trillion social spending proposal (which he calls "infrastructure") is a step too far. The US does badly need infrastructure spending and I think we should be spending more on roads, bridges, broadband, water projects, climate change stuff like flooding prevention on the coasts, transit and high speed rail. But the $3.5 trillion isn't for that--I'd take a $1 trillion of the 3.5 and add it to the $1 trillion actually for infrastructure and make it $2 trillion and pass it.