Jobs Are Disappearing By the Millions, But These Guys Want to Cut Off Unemployment Benefits?

As a fresh demonstration that we are in a dire economic crisis for which the Trump administration has absolutely no plan, check out these two articles from The New York Times.  The first, titled “Many Jobs May Vanish Forever As Layoffs Mount,” reviews mounting evidence that the coronavirus is sparking shifts in the economy that could well suppress employment far into the future.  To date, some 38.6 million jobless claims have been filed across the United States.  But according to a study by a Stanford economist, more than 40% of these jobs may not come back.  Fewer people in offices will impact businesses that depend on their patronage, like nearby restaurants and stores; meanwhile, the incentive to automate jobs has increased exponentially.  It seems likely that evidence will continue to emerge on the pandemic’s depressive effects on employment.  In combination with the overwhelming fact that the economy cannot operate at anything like normal so long as Americans fear for their lives every time they come into contact with other people, the employment and economic picture looks ghastly.

To hear Larry Kudlow talk, though, you’d think he was living on a different planet than the rest of us.  Late last week, the White House economic advisor said that there’s no need to extend unemployment benefits past their current limits.  Apparently, Trump officials are convinced that too many Americans are choosing cushy unemployment over returning to non-existent or perilous jobs.  Ironically, in the same interview, Kudlow acknowledged uncertainty around the speed of the economic recovery, speaking more cautiously than President Trump and his assertions of the economy’s impending magical turn-around.  Yet this admission just makes his comments on unemployment benefits more nonsensical, and points to a basic truth of the White House response to our economic crisis: these guys really have no idea what they’re doing, and certainly can’t be trusted to navigate us out of the worst financial crisis in a century.

I don’t see how anyone can look at the predictions of an economy with permanently high unemployment levels, and not conclude that massive public intervention is needed to ensure our economy and society aren’t hobbled for years on end.  I worry in particular about the absolute devastation being inflicted on small businesses across the U.S.; these account not only for a disproportionate amount of job creation, but for much of the dynamism in the U.S. economy.  You would think that protecting them now and in the future would be a non-partisan issue — but the federal government’s maladministration of relief funds intended for such companies speaks to a basic indifference to this enormous sector of the economy.  I suspect this indifference is driven by a combination of basic incompetence, alongside an innate preference for the big corporate donors who stand to profit if they’re able to gain a greater share of the US market as smaller competitors die off.

This is obviously a huge and complicated topic, but leaving our economic future to the whims of predatory corporations, indifferent Trump administration officials, and the unavoidable impacts of the coronavirus is simply not an option.  We all need to be thinking about what sort of economy we want and need, and working to make sure we have a government that works for this vision.  At a minimum, this means continued aid to workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  Anything else is cruelty and economic stupidity.