There’s a story in today’s Wall Street Journal that starts out like this: “The U.S. economy could take the better part of a decade to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns, a U.S. budget agency said, as a series of surveys pointed to continuing weakness in global manufacturing.”
Oh great, short-term losses and indignities of the COVID-19 and now this!
The public health response to the pandemic threat helped tank the economy. Now we have a lot of work in front of us to repair the damage.
We can start with the plea to the state legislature and local elected officials for “primum non nocere”, first do no harm. In haste to help people, don’t pile new regulatory and financial burdens on businesses that finish them off or disincentivize them from hiring people.
Another thing is to recognize we’re still in the reopening phase, but the Chamber and other partners are looking further into the future to focus on ‘re-igniting’ and rebuilding the economy. More on that over time.
In the meantime, we should all try to be people of good cheer and good deeds. Everybody has been adversely impacted in some manner by what has happened. Yelling at the clerk in a store doesn’t help anyone. It ruins their day and makes the yeller look like a jerk!
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George Floyd
The video of an officer of the law kneeling on the neck of a man who is begging him to stop is jolting and mortifying. But he didn’t stop, and George Floyd died, cruelly and unnecessarily. George Floyd’s treatment was brutal and unjust. Maybe something good will eventually come from this tragedy, but at the moment it’s hard to think of one damn thing.
In the weeks and months ahead various aspects of this tragedy and the aftermath will be debated hotly. In the meantime, two thoughts: Racism in any form is unacceptable. And, my thoughts are with his family. This should not have happened.