Countdown 22 Days Until Election       

OUR FUTURE THE RESULT OF TRUMP           

Fareed Zakaria, author has written a book titled “Ten Lessions for a Post-Pandemic World.”  He was interviewed on Morning Joe and here are a few highlights.  This book is his insight into the world we could find ourselves living in.  The most important lessons are in front of us.  He makes the case that it is not the Chinese responsible for where we are now with the virus.  He does this by using Taiwan as an example. 

Taiwan sits right off the coast with China and has free movement of Chinese tourists from the mainland and has maintained that link.  Taiwan gets millions of tourist each year.  Late January was the new year and created mass Chinese population movement around the world in celebration.  Taiwan with a population of 22 million had it’s 1^st case of Covid-19 before the United States.  Taiwan has had to date only 7 covid deaths. 

Trump says it’s all about China, yet New York with a similar population has had 34,000 deaths.  The problem is not China but our inept and inadequate response, and it continues.  The problem is not all Trump’s fault it goes beyond Trump.  Fareed argues the response is as a result of failures to correct a problem that was instated by the Policies of Ronald Reagan in his attitude toward the Federal Government.

Reagan famously said: “Government is not the solution it is the problem.”  This attitude along with his economic advisor Grover Norquest who said my goal is to shrink the size of the Federal government to a size that I can drown in a bathtub.  Steve Bannon saying: “I want to deconstruct the administrative state and after 4 years politicizing all his departments Trump has succeed in 4 years that the republicans have tried to do for the last 40 years.  If your mission is to destroy, cripple, deconstruct and drown, the Federal government you are not going to ever be able to provide an adequate united response to a pandemic.  It’s not the quantity of your government but the quality that matters Fareed argues.  The quality of government during this pandemic has been very bad.

The quality of our government matters, with trump ignoring science and medical advice and surrounding himself with grifters, sycophants and criminals does not give confidence in this the leadership.  One would think an individual leader would pick the best and brightest, and perhaps in his crowd these are they-sad.

Trump at the time he abdicated the responsibility of the pandemic to the governors was the last dying breath of a functioning Federal response to civil public health crisis in the CDC and the FDA.  The actions taken by the administration was to insure that the departments were not independent and functioning above the water line.  His demands for emergency authorizations of experimental drugs, his insistence on listening to quack medicine and miracle cures only helps enforce the need to support not destroy a centralized response with a vital respected medical and scientific response.

These attitudes were implemented by using voodoo economics that basically said if you cut taxes the additional revenue from growth would cover the reduced taxes.  It was based on the Arthur Laffer model.  It did not work, has not worked and only has exacerbated the disparity between highest and lowest income groups.  Remember that in the 50’s the tax rate on the highest income groups was 76%, now is 37% and with deductions no individual in that tax bracket with a tax attorney pays anything like that rate.  Some like the Donald pay little or nothing in taxes.

Fareed cautioned that the pandemic has accelerated the disparity of incomes as the disproportionate numbers of infections, job loses, and deaths have fallen on the least among us.  The poorest weakest and most venerable among us are the groups most effected.  During the last 30-40 years during a recession the top and bottom wage earners are usually equally impacted, however not this time.  For the bottom 25% of income employment has cratered.  These are primarily service workers whose jobs may not come back for months if ever. 

Small businesses are now having to adapt or are out of business whereas Amazon, Costco, and Walmart are thriving the mom and pop stores are closing.   All is due to the acceleration of what the future will be, and all due to the pandemic.  Consolidation with the huge gobbling up the small market share and internet shopping will take over.

Fareed said that the stimulus is necessary and it’s crazy that congress is not acting.  He claims it would ward off facing an impending uprising and a social revolution as a result of both structural changes making the problem worse, and also the cyclical changes in the economy.  Because Trump is blind to economic plight and only wants to paint a rosy picture, the bottom 25% may suffer and could rise up.

Trump is talking and acting as if he is on steroids. He is politicizing the therapeutics as a cure while he is on steroids.  Demanding Biden and Hillary be indicted as a result of the Durham scam.  The Mussolini pose at the White House balcony and his actions since his taking the steroids are scary.

It did not need to be this way.  If only we had a leader, instead we got a day trading, reality show host, and carnival snake oil sales barker bare naked on stage.  Someone that does not believe in science, medicine, or in any government standards of comportment.  He thinks laws are meant to be bent to the point of fracture and when they break he litigates the outcome.  All just to Gaslight his audience of sycophants and dotards in training.  This must be what covfefe looks like. Pure mishigas!