Sunday 3 May 2020

This 'Essential' versus 'Non-Essential' Argument

For about two months, I've sat back and observed this continual chatter over essential and non-essential.  I've seen the arguments in Europe, and in the US.  It's a fascinating topic.

The problem with this, is that you could line up a hundred people, and ask them to have a front-porch talk with you, with the topic being essential and non-essential, and you'd get one-hundred different explanations over the two degrees of a mighty important topic.

Some folks would tell you that McDonalds is an essential service.  Some would argue that while dining-in with McDonalds is not essential....as long as you can drive up and buy via the 'window'.....then it's essential.

Some folks would tell you that beer or alcohol sales is extremely essential, and you shouldn't be messing with that part of society.  Some other folks would tell you that the first non-essential thing that they'd shut down....is bars and nightclubs.

Some folks would argue that entertainment divisions (like TV)....aren't essential, and you could easily shutdown live shows on TV without any loss to society.  Others would argue that TV is essential, in all functions (even gutter-soap opera stuff).

Some folks would say that open dialog with a friend each Tuesday at the city park for an hour....debating bad movies....is essential for their mental well-being.  Others....particularly the police....would approach you and your friend, and try to chase you away....saying this dialog isn't essential.

Drug dealers would tell you that their occupation and thriving business....is absolutely essential.  The police would say otherwise.

Some authorities would say that religion isn't really essential, and shutting down church operations for two or three months isn't a big deal.  Others would argue that their entire perspective on living and believing in something....is geared toward a weekly visit to some church, and they need religion.

Some teachers will say their teaching business with your 12-year old kid is essential.  After four weeks of the kid at home, and trying to make due without school.....you (the parent) eventually discover that the kid really isn't that smart, and whatever they are doing at the school.....doesn't appear to anything essential, and in some ways....a joke.  You also say the same thing about your 20-year old daughter in her second year of college, and she's remarkably dimwited compared to your 12-year-old son.

You and your spouse might reach a point where you openly debate essential things and non-essential things nightly....with the spouse suggesting that your skipping a bath every other day is messing up hygiene expectations.  You counter that staying clean while you exist on furlough.....doesn't really mean nightly baths are necessary.

During this virus period.....you start to think over your attire, and dress mostly in Hawaiian shirts and shorts out of the 1980s (the stuff you kept in storage)....saying this is the new essential 'you'.  The wife argues about this and threatens to burn the essential attire.

You have TV moderators and pretender journalists who want to bring in experts on essentialness, and they spend forty-odd minutes trying to talk over non-essential stuff, and mostly put you into the mindset of hitting mute-button....because the chatter is non-essential.

You sit amazed nightly as your governor or mayor tries to imply that they are experts at life, and know what's essential.  Along about the third week of this....you figure out that this idiot political figure lives in some fantasy world, and has no attachment to ordinary people.

So I leave with this one thought.....you don't really know what is essential, until you reach the point of missing it.  It's kinda like walking in and doing your business in the toilet and reaching for the toilet-paper....to realize there's simply none left.  Then for a moment, TP is remarkably essential.

Corona Economics (101-level)

This is my essay over the Coronavirus, the current of the world economy, and where this is leading onto.  Bear in mind, I have only around six college classes in business management and basic economics, over the past decade....probably put in a minimum of 1,000 hours into studying business success, economic spirals, and listening to various lectures. 

1.  Corona-tax-revenue-spiral.  When political figures and national/state leaders (doesn't matter which country you bring up)....got into this discussion....they really didn't care about the economic 'end' of the disease, and the effect on people.  Safety....at least at that point, was the priority.

So about four to six weeks into this (doesn't matter if chatting Italy, Germany or the US)....reality went to a new level as economic failures became obvious. 

When you shut down the business sector, which is where your tax revenue comes from.....you ensure that tax revenues don't flow.  If you sell garden furniture in Germany.....nineteen-percent of the cost is tax revenue.  If you don't sell the stupid furniture....that comes up as a shortfall.  If you do this for four weeks, you can figure that 7-to-10 percent of your tax revenue bucket is missing funds.

Same story in the US with a barbershop.  If it's closed for four weeks by the order of the governor.....it's not paying into the pot.  A bar, a restaurant, or a bookstore?  Same story.

You can go four weeks in this type of game.  But if you were talking about two months of this, it's a mess that can't be easily cleaned up.  And the idiot suggesting three or four months?  You can go and expect some type of revolution to start up because of massive debt that the nation or state is incurring.

2.  Jobs.  Just about every segment of the job market has gone to short hours or furlough.  You can look at the Frankfurt Airport....where one entire terminal (two of them) is shutdown entirely (doors locked).  From the other operating terminal, there's only one quarter of the work-force there, and out of 23,000....barely 4,000 total employees throughout the entire complex. 

You can go into various areas of Chicago or Miami and find the same situation brewing. 

The question on the minds of these....when will normal levels start back up?  Then you go and try to be honest....suggesting that normal levels are a minimum of eight to twelve months away.

Purchasing power from this furlough group?  Marginal....just enough to survive.

3.  Pay-check to pay-check people.  There's a large segment of society which got used to to pay-check to pay-check living style.  There are couples who pull in $250,000 a year.....who are barely making it.  There are couples who make $40,000 a year between them, and spend $44k a year (don't ask where the extra four-thousand comes from).

When you see all these cars lined up and people trying to get a free-bag or two of grocery items....you can figure that more than half of those people were in the pay-check group.  There was no savings....no three-month stock of money sitting there for emergencies.

4.  The arrival of dimwit PhD 'experts'.  I've sat the past couple of weeks watching the Business Channel, Fox Business and CNN.  Frankly, there are dozens of people who've shown up and seem to claim some 'expert-status' yet seem to be out of touch with regular people or the finance business. 

On some of these occasions, it reminds of the crew that was trying to advise FDR in the 1930s....who seemed to have degrees and were always 'book-smart' but never ran a company, small-business, or a farm. 

In the case of some of these professors....I'm kinda wondering what kind of students attend, and how they will handle reality when they graduate into the real world.

5.  The business folks who are talking to bankruptcy experts after six weeks of shut-down? 

Lets be humble and honest.  If they are that bad off after six weeks.....they were marginally making it and this was simply a 'test'. 

6.  The number of products leading back to China? 

Reality may have finally arrived and we all now realize that a vast majority of what Wal-Mart sells.....is non-American, and non-Mexican. 

Maybe it bothers us a good bit, but you don't see any Senators or Congressmen reacting....do you?

7.  So to the final topic....getting over this.

Most cultures will require a fair amount of time (you see that in Germany and Italy).  The US situation?  It'd different.  I might agree that the next hundred days will be harsh and some folks will blame a lot of characters (not just Trump, but their Democratic governors as well).

The problem here is if you dwell a lot on the negative, and do virtually nothing....then we can enjoy a nice long recession and harsh year ahead.  If you dwell on this as a test of your recovery ability, then you might come out ahead and see the light at the end of the tunnel by the end of 2020. 

Simply Observvations

1.  Jeff Epstein, the dead guy....had an office provided at Harvard, with a telephone, and wandered into the office forty-odd times from 2008 until he was sent off to jail?

The simple answer is yes.  Why is really the question to put upon Harvard, but remember this....it's not a public college, it's a private organization with well-off-contributors and the top people in the nation agree to pay $50,000 a year for tuition, to get their 'Wanda' into the institution. 

In this case, Biden's 'economic intercourse' occurred.  Harvard got 'something' for his services or help, and they provided Epstein the office/phone in return. 

My humble guess is that he mentioned to the leadership of Harvard that he could help draw in tens of millions for some special project.  Then he said that he'd have to have an office to meet and greet his people.  He probably had a business-card made up and noted 'Harvard' in the background....implying he was connected to the college and this got him introduced to a far different crowd than normal.

Along the way, he might have had people approach him and say that their kid needed 'approval' to get into Harvard, and I would guess that he would find the right people to ensure that 'Wanda' got the entry deal....whether she was qualified or not. 

But here's the thing....Epstein is dead, and nothing matters at this point.....right?

2.  90-percent of farmers support Trump?

Yes.  Lets be honest though....the other ten-percent?  They were iron-clad Democrats and nothing has really changed since 2016. 

Now, if you were to say that 50-percent of blacks and Latinos support Trump....that's something that HAS changed.  But lets just wait and see how this plays out.

3.  Kim alive?

With the images and a close-up of his arm.....it does appear that he had some type of stint surgery or heart 'action'.  So we can go back to the Kim-era and relax now.  Course, none of this will change his eating habits or screwed-up lifestyle, so don't go and suspect that this guy really bought more than ten more years (he's 36 right now).

4.  This Justin Amash 'character' running for President?

Well, this is the Representative from Michigan, who basically tried to sell folks on the idea that he was a Republican (for eight years).  In the middle of 2019, he came out to say he was now a NO-Trump kinda guy and a member of the Libertarian Party. 

Yeah, he was a fake Republican the whole time (since 2011)....it's just that no one ever asked questions or got real answers from him. 

This district (3rd)?  It's in the southwestern area of the state and votes primarily GOP. 

As for the campaign?  He's getting some marginal amount of money and appears headed to a 'McMuffin' type circus-campaign.  The votes for McMuffin?  731,000 total across the fifty states.  Amash might be able to get around two-thirds of that (I'm suggesting 400,000 votes possibly).  These voters are the type who want to pretend to be Republican but really aren't. 

Note: you might want to look up McMuffin's VP (she never gets mentioned)....Mindy Finn.  DC type lobbyist and connected to the Tech industry.  It might be curious to see if she's involved in the Amash campaign.

5.  The postal service ceasing existence by mid-summer?

There's this chatter going on, that their cash 'bucket' is drying up.  Trump has issued guidelines on how they would get money from the government, and they aren't interested in his talk. 

There are some Republicans and a significant amount of Democrats who are worried about this business approach, but lets be honest....the postal folks are running an operation that is based on the 1950s approach to their service.  Email really took out the bulk of envelopes over the past twenty years. 

I might suspect that about two weeks away from running out of cash....all sides will come to the table, and some change will occur (probably five-day a week delivery will occur, and some significant rise on package costs....10-percent rise or more).  This will help push more customers away from USPS and toward the FEDEX crowd.  In five years, the postal guys will admit they are in serious trouble now.

6.  The interviews with Joe Biden in the past two weeks....seem awful 'wooden'?

Really?  The TV pretenders send the script questions to Joe's crew, and they write the answers which appear on the teleprompter.  It's that simple.  Just another sign that Joe isn't really in control of his thinking, and heading in a negative way.

7.  People getting arrested for showing up on a US beach, but not for crossing the US border illegally?

There's this word....hypocrite.    It fits the current narrative very well. 

8.  Legislation moving to prevent Trump from putting his name on the next batch of stimulus checks?

Well, here we have two topics.  First, it's true....NY's Schumer intends to prevent Trump's name from being on the check.  Very low odds that he'll win.  But if he does achieve this....Trump could come right back and put the slogan 'Make America Great Again' on the check instead.

Second topic?  Will there be another round of money?  A whole lot of chatter is going on and one might suspect this second check to occur by late May.  My humble bet is that it'll be a repeat....same amount of money.  And I might go and suspect by July that a third 'gift' will occur.

9.  What really happens if 50-percent of blacks show up and vote for Trump in 2020?

A serious meeting for the DNC would likely occur, and the chatter would be....do we go entirely for the Latino crowd, and dump blacks politically (the lost cause situation).  Black journalists for CNN would stand there in disbelief and quiz the insiders on how logical this is, and in a matter of weeks....you'd see Democratic blacks shaking their head....their world collapsing and no understanding on politics in general.

10.  Kansas City requiring churches who have members entering....to ID them (address, name, etc)?  For virus 'control'?

Yes.  Churches are evaluating the situation....no idea how they will react. 

My advice...if you were going to such a church....I'd respond that my name is Micky Mouse, and I live in the 'Magic Kingdom'.  Asking for an ID....I'd say I'm like so many in the nation....I have no ID but it's Ok, because I can vote that way.

Lets be honest here, if this makes sense, then the same ID info should be provided when you enter Piggly Wiggly or Wal-Mart.  Same deal for entering any federal building.  Same deal when entering a bank.

If you kinda notice a lot of political folks doing stupid things, I think it's because of the virus, and it's affected them in a more SPECIAL way.