Who's Going to Pay the Bills?: Purpose-Driven Coronavirus Business Shutdowns Cause Economic Catastrophe

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One concern is that this might further concentrate control of aspects of the economy in the hands of the few.
Small businesses unable to survive, may be replaced by box stores or small restaurants by larger chains.
I worry, not just bringing jobs back, but also about diversifying economic structures, or enabling people and small businesses to function with a degree of independence.
We’re all looking to find some sort of balance in an unstable period and figuring out the best way to go about this is difficult.
 
Does the same guy think that we shouldn’t be taking measures to mitigate the spread now as well?

Could a second wave be worse, possibly. Should we be way better prepared for it? Well if we aren’t, we are a bunch of idiots.

We should have better testing, tracing and treatments. Yes we should, so will the death rate be the same? I certainly hope not.
 
AlNg said:
Where is the due process of law as guaranteed by the US Constitution?
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Its called ‘in an emergency’. That’s why government declares states of emergency. It by passes those normal requirements.
AlNg said:
What happened to the right to peaceful assembly as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
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See: State of emergency
AlNg said:
Can some politician or bureaucrat decide to abrogate these hallowed rights without due process of the law?
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Yes
 
AlNg said:
Totalitarian and dictatorial regimes often declare a state of emergency as a pretext to override the human rights of their citizens and to consolidate their iron fist policies.
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Sure, but you are getting stuck on details that do not apply.
 
AlNg said:
Totalitarian and dictatorial regimes often declare a state of emergency as a pretext to override the human rights of their citizens and to consolidate their iron fist policies.
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Those regimes also often enjoy cookies and milk. That doesn’t mean everyone who enjoys cookies and milk is a dictator.
 
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farronwolf said:
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HarryStotle:
If governors of individual states are undermining rights guaranteed under the Constitution the president would be duty-bound and have the authority to overrule them. His authority with regard to defending the rights of every citizen afforded by the Constitution is absolute. He can rescind laws (or guidelines) imposed by governors of states if those laws undermine the Bill of Rights.
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Um, no he can’t. That is what the courts are for.

The President can’t just say, that law/rule/guideline is unjust and make it go away.
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Where state and federal laws disagree — i.e., where a state law infringes on the Constitutional rights of citizens — the supremacy clause , (part of Article VI of the Constitution) can be invoked. The supremacy cause contains the doctrine of pre-emption, which gives the federal government and the executive branch authority to involve itself in the case of state legislation that conflicts with the Constitution. If state and federal laws contradict each other the federal government can intervene. If the state does not back down, then the conflict would go to the courts.
 
farronwolf said:
Does the same guy think that we shouldn’t be taking measures to mitigate the spread now as well?

Could a second wave be worse, possibly. Should we be way better prepared for it? Well if we aren’t, we are a bunch of idiots.

We should have better testing, tracing and treatments. Yes we should, so will the death rate be the same? I certainly hope not.
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Sweden might well be on the way to achieving “herd immunity” within several weeks according to its chief epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell and Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, and the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.


 
PetraG said:
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HarryStotle:
I suppose you have looked at the ‘authority’ of the President of the United States, having to do with the subject we’re talking about…" and you have determined that according to the law the President’s powers (regarding the subject being spoken of) are not absolute?

Could you provide specific citations?
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The Washington Times? Sounds like “the media” to me. I think someone reads the news with confirmation bias! But hey! Who needs the media to make things up that have no basis, when we have the forum members at Catholic Answers? You can say anything you like, and you’re never going to be proven wrong because you reserve total power to reject any source of a counter-argument that you don’t like as "Fake News." That’s a great gig, if you can get it!
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The delicious irony here is that YOU are the one reserving “total power” to reject any source of a counter-argument that you don’t like as “Fake News.”

To wit: The Washington Times? Sounds like “the media” to me.

I haven’t rejected any source at all as “fake news” — that was YOU, above; and yet you accuse me of doing exactly what you did. 🤔

You didn’t even attempt to engage with what the article from the Washington Times was arguing, you simply dismissed it.
PetraG said:
The governors do not have to craft laws! Our state has public health laws on the books that allow our governor to do this.
Read: https://govsite-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/jkAULYKcSh6DoDF8wBM0_EO 20-12.pdf

The President does NOT have the authority to usurp powers not ceded by the States when the Constitution was ratified. If the Constitution does not give a power to the federal government, that power belongs to the States.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Your contention that the governors don’t have the authority to do what they’re doing does NOT imply that the President has anything like “total authority.” If someone with standing to sue for their rights has a beef, they go to the federal courts to have their rights recognized, not to the President.

Even the President has backpedaled on what he said. He made something up out of whole cloth to make himself sound more important than he is, as if being President isn’t good enough when what you want to be is a dictator. He was wrong. Give it up!!
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See Post #334

The powers “not delegated” to the United States (i.e., the Federal Government) by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people, but the “supremacy clause” can be used where Constitutional rights are infringed by State law.
 
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HarryStotle said:
Sweden might well be on the way to achieving “herd immunity” within several weeks
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While Sweden with no lockdowns can achieve herd immunity, the USA is facing a second and much worse wave of corona virus deaths several months down the line.
 
(continued)
  1. people are myopic (which is polite of “appearing stupid”. This is not a local issue; it is not a regional issue, nor an issue of this country. It is a world-wide issue; It is not as if our economy can spring back like a weed popping up in the lawn. It is beyond hard to do business with another country if they are upside down and in economic chaos.
  2. There are liberals who are bleating like sheep about the changes they want to make. We also have ballot boxes. Failure to use them effectively is acting like sheep.
 
More innocent victims of the coronavirus-related business shutdowns by state Governors:


The workers who have filed initial jobless claims in the last five weeks account for about 16 percent of the American workforce. If they formed their own state, it would be the nation’s third-largest by population with more people than New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania combined.

The pandemic’s impact on the labor force is “close if not very close to the Great Depression level roughly a century ago,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, told The Post. “These are just massive job losses on a scale that we’ve never seen before, and it could cause a lot of problems.

Most of the country is living under lockdown measures meant to stem the spread of the virus, which have forced many businesses to close and cut workers.
 
HarryStotle said:
Where state and federal laws disagree — i.e., where a state law infringes on the Constitutional rights of citizens — the supremacy clause , (part of Article VI of the Constitution) can be invoked. The supremacy cause contains the doctrine of pre-emption, which gives the federal government and the executive branch authority to involve itself in the case of state legislation that conflicts with the Constitution. If state and federal laws contradict each other the federal government can intervene. If the state does not back down, then the conflict would go to the courts.
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State and federal law aren’t at odds here. Both feds and states have emergency powers.

Take for instance our current situation. The President was encouraging states to open back up, so we could get the economy going. Georgia’s governor has decided to open his state up this weekend.

Now the President is back tracking a bit on whether that is such a good idea. I can only assume this is after he listened to some of his appointed officials who actually know what they are talking about.

Will the feds sweep in and declare the governor is breaking some law and roll in the military to shut it down. Nope.
 
farronwolf said:
Will the feds sweep in and declare the governor is breaking some law and roll in the military to shut it down. Nope.
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Why would they? The state isn’t essentially restricting the Constitutional rights of its citizens by loosening restrictions.

Where this might become a battle is if some states don’t reopen in a timely manner (Virginia officials hinted at a possible two year shutdown, then clarified) and the federal government becomes concerned that the governors in those states are acting contrary to the welfare of citizens.
 
I am coming late to this particular thread, so if I am repeating what someone else has said, I apologize.

In addition to the current economic problems (unemployment, etc.) caused by our current shut down caused by the coronavirus, I think that there is an additional problem that will have to be addressed. As I write this, the federal government has authorized approximately 2.5 trillion dollars for relief to workers and businesses. As some point, this money will have to be paid back. The last time that we had a surplus in the federal budget was in the Clinton administration and that surplus was around 50 billion dollars. At that rate, it will take 50 YEARS for the government to pay off the bill just for the coronavirus. This does not include the the 20 some trillion that was on the books before we got to the current situation.

@1cthlctrth said it correctly above- if the government is just printing money to cover the bills, then eventually the money will be worthless. The happened at the end of World War I. The allies imposed heavy penalties on the Germans. The only way that the Germans could respond was by printing money so that the Deutschmark became useless. One story that I heard (and it could be apocryphal but it still makes the point) was that a guy took a wheelbarrow full of Deutschmarks down to the local bakery and left it on the street, knowing that no one would want the money since it was worthless. He went into the bakery to beg the baker to give him a loaf of bread for his money. The baker took pity on him and agreed to give him the bread for the money. When they went outside to get the money, they found it laying on the street. Someone had stolen the wheelbarrow and had left the money there.

It will take much intestinal fortitude for the Federal Government to curb spending and balance the budget to the point where there is a surplus to start paying this off. History would indicate that the Federal Government does not have that fortitude.

I have a granddaughter who is not yet two years old. I hope and pray that she will not have to pay $10,000 for a loaf of bread when she gets older.

Pax
 
What I don’t understand is, what was the purpose of giving everyone the $1200 stimulus check? Why didn’t they target that money for those actually affected by unemployment, cut hours, etc? Don’t get me wrong, if the government has extra money to give away, I’ll take it, but it seems like a huge waste of resources. Not everyone is financially affected by this - everyone at my company is working from home and collecting the same paycheck as before. Why are we eligible for this money?
 
I’m going to speculate here. I think it was an effort to get the money in everyone’s hands as fast as possible. Knowing how slow the bureaucracy is in Washington, I think that it would take a lot more time for everyone to apply, have their application reviewed, etc. The Government wanted to get some money into as many people’s hands as fast as possible.

As I said, I’m only speculating. If someone else has some other insight, I’d be glad to hear it.

Pax
 
fredystairs said:
I have a granddaughter who is not yet two years old. I hope and pray that she will not have to pay $10,000 for a loaf of bread when she gets older.
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What other governments have done in the past are things like replacing the old dollars by new dollars so that one new dollar is worth 100000 old dollars. That way the loaf of bread that you thought cost $10,000 (old money) will now only cost 10 cents in the new money. Printing trillions of dollars, declaring a state of emergency, cancelling all rental payments and many other debts is a method similar to what has been tried in the past with dire economic consequences as millions of people are thrown out of work. In desperation, hard hit citizens will attempt to solve their problems by electing a demagogue which only results in making things a lot worse. Much, much worse.
 
Excellent points on the decrease in the value of money if the government keeps printing more. And these relief bills STILL are not enough, as the $2.2 trillion already quickly disappeared.
The Governors’ covid-19-related state shutdowns affect lower-income households the most:


As the economic toll from the coronavirus outbreak continues to mount, a new Pew Research Center survey finds the impact is falling more heavily on lower-income adults – a group that was feeling significant financial pressure well before the current crisis. Overall, 43% of U.S. adults now say that they or someone in their household has lost a job or taken a cut in pay due to the outbreak, up from 33% in the latter half of March. Among lower-income adults, an even higher share (52%) say they or someone in their household has experienced this type of job upheaval.
In addition to being among the hardest hit by the economic fallout from COVID-19, lower-income adults are less prepared to withstand a financial shock than those with higher incomes. While 53% of lower-income adults say they will have trouble paying some of their bills this month, about a quarter of middle-income adults and 11% of those in the upper income tier say the same.
 
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I hesitate to enter this morass, but as usual I see a lot of opinions and few facts.

First, to address the “they’re taking away my rights” crowd, see any number of legal articles about this. I’ll post a link to the Heritage Foundation’s article simply because it’s conservative in outlook and the conservatives here may take it more seriously. https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/constitutional-guide-emergency-powers

You could also turn to the Supreme Court, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905:

“The Constitution,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for a 7-2 majority, “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic.” Its members “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

The Supreme Court has also pointed out in the past that a state of emergency does not create any new powers on behalf of either the federal or state governments, but it does allow dormant powers to be used. And “police power” is very broad and belongs solely to the states.

Second. As of last night (April 27), the US had 988,197 confirmed cases and 56,521 deaths. Very close to Vietnam war deaths (58,220) and in less than two months, not spread over 13-14 years. Clearly, at least to rational observers, things are not going well. Trump claims to be doing an “incredible job.” I agree 100%, it’s hard to believe.

As for the number of deaths and the death rates, you could argue two ways:
  1. the number of deaths is much greater–and the death rate underestimated–because people are dying of the virus and not being tested (this has happened in my home town–people in nursing homes have been dying with all the symptoms, and relatives are refusing to test them because they feel the tests could be better used elsewhere). And of course the number of “normal” deaths has increased greatly (see Wash. Post article 4-28) far beyond “normal” levels for the same period last year for all sorts of reasons, including inability or fear of getting treatment at hospitals, etc.
  2. the death rate is overestimated because there are many times as many people infected but not tested. So if you only take deaths divided by confirmed cases, it overestimates. This may change some as the US does more (some? any?) tests for anti-bodies.
Frankly, we will never know. No one is going to dig up a dead body to test it for the virus. And no one in some countries is going to puzzle over whether someone died of pneumonia or the virus.
 
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