<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">From Dr. Don McCain<div class=""><br class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The New York TimesMarch 30, 2020</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere. Why Is That?</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">It’s not too late to start protecting employment or to make medical care</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">for Covid-19 free.</span><div class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">By Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman</span></div><div class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The coronavirus pandemic is laying bare structural deficiencies in</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">America’s social programs. The relief package passed by Congress last</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">week provides emergency fixes for some of these issues, but it also leaves</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">critical problems untouched. To avoid a Great Depression, Congress must</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">quickly design a more forceful response to the crisis.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Start with the labor market. In just one week, from March 15 to March 21,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">3.3 million workers filed for unemployment insurance. According to some</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">projections, the unemployment rate might rise as high as 30 percent in the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">second quarter of 2020.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">This dramatic spike in jobless claims is an American peculiarity. In</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">almost</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">no other country are jobs being destroyed so fast. Why? Because throughout</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">the world, governments are protecting employment. Workers keep their jobs,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">even in industries that are shut down. The government covers most of their</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">wage through direct payments to employers. Wages are, in effect,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">socialized</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">for the duration of the crisis.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Instead of safeguarding employment,</span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""> America is relying on beefed-up</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">unemployment benefits to shield laid-off </span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">workers from economic hardship.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">To </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">give just one example, in both the United States and Britain, the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">government is asking restaurant workers to stay home. But in Britain,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">workers are receiving 80 percent of their pay (up to £2,500 a month, or</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">$3,125) and are guaranteed to get their job back once the shutdown is</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">over.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">In America, the workers are laid off; they must then file for unemployment</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">insurance and wait for the economy to start up again before they can apply</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">for a new job, and if all goes well, sign a new contract and resume</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">working.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Even if unemployment is generously compensated — as it is in the $2.2</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">trillion bill Congress passed — there is nothing efficient in letting the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">unemployment rate rise to double digits. Losing one’s job is anxiety</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">inducing. Applying for unemployment benefits is burdensome. The</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">unemployment system risks being swamped soon by tens of millions of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">claims.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Although some businesses may rehire their workers once the shutdown is</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">over, others will have disappeared. When social distancing ends, millions</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">of employer-employee relationships will have been destroyed, slowing down</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">the recovery. In Europe, people will be able to return to work, as if they</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">had been on a long, government-paid leave.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The battle for the speediest recovery starts today. The next congressional</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">bill needs measures to protect employment for the duration of the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">shutdown.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">This does not raise insuperable technical difficulties. The bill passed</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">last week provides support for wages in one industry, airlines. Congress</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">could easily extend this program to other sectors. Some countries — like</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Germany, with its Kurzarbeit system, a policy aimed at job retention in</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">times of crisis — already had the government infrastructure in place to</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">send workers home while the state replaced most of their lost earnings.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">But</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">several nations with no experience in that area — like Britain, Ireland</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">and Denmark — were able to introduce brand-new employment guarantee</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">programs on the fly during the epidemic.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">This situation for laid-off workers would be bad enough if it were not</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">aggravated by a second American peculiarity. As they are losing their</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">jobs,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">many workers are also losing their employer-provided health insurance —</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">and now find themselves faced with the Kafkaesque task of obtaining</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">coverage on their own.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">One option involves continuing to be covered by one’s former employer, a</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">program known as COBRA. It is prohibitively expensive: Participants have</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">to</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">bear the full cost of insurance, $20,500 per year on average. Another</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">option is to go shopping for a plan on the Affordable Care Act insurance</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">exchange, where one is faced with a bewildering choice between plans like</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Blue Shield’s Bronze 60 PPO (with a deductible of up to $12,600 per year)</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">and Aetna’s Silver Copay HNOnly (with a $7,000 deductible and up to</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">$14,000 in annual out-of-pocket expenses). The last option is to join the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">ranks of the uninsured, a catastrophic solution during a pandemic. </span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The bill passed last week does nothing to reduce co-pays, deductibles or</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">premiums on the insurance exchanges; nor does it reduce the price of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">COBRA.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The next bill should introduce a Covidcare for All program. This federal</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">program would guarantee access to Covid-19 care at no cost to all U.S.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">residents — no matter their employment status, age or immigration status.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Fighting the pandemic starts with eradicating the spread of the virus,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">which means that everybody must be covered.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The big battles — be they wars or pandemics — are fought and won</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">collectively. In this period of national crisis, hatred of the government</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">is the surest path to self-destruction.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman are economists at the University of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">California, Berkeley.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html" style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html</a><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">[1]</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Comment by Don McCanne</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Much has been written about how having an equitable, efficient,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">comprehensive national health program (i.e., single payer Medicare for</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">All)</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">would have been extremely helpful combating illnesses caused by the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">coronavirus pandemic. We would still have other problems such as the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">pending permanent closure of a multitude of businesses that are not able</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">to</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">survive the shutdown that is occurring during this pandemic.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman are experts in income and wealth</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">inequality and the adverse consequences that occur when the one entity</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">that</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">could remedy these problems fails to act, and that entity is the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">government.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">In this article, they provide, as an example, an explanation of how in</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">other nations many of the businesses will survive because of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">implementation</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">of beneficial government policies. They contrast that with the dire</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">prognosis in the United States which we can expect because of our failure</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">to enact and implement socioeconomic programs that would help protect all</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">of us, even during crises like the current pandemic. A recession would be</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">understandable, but our lack of foresight could result in a prolonged</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">depression.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The authors explain why our current health care financing system is not</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">satisfactory. They propose an emergency financing program, but it would</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">have been far better to have had a single payer Medicare for All system</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">already in place. The crisis is difficult enough without adding the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">additional task of creating a massive new Covidcare for All program.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">We are hardly into our national nightmare and yet the lesson for us is</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">already obvious. We need greater solidarity in working together through</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">our</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">government, and that includes following the Willie Sutton rule (go where</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">the money is) in establishing equitable, progressive taxes.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">As Saez and Zucman state, "The big battles — be they wars or pandemics</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">— are fought and won collectively. In this period of national crisis,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">hatred of the government is the surest path to self-destruction."</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Links:</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">------</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">[1]</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html" style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html</a><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""></div></div></body></html>