Thomas Friedman’s Deadly Rx

It is a cynical play on economic fears to pit workers against their own protection.

By Timothy P Holmberg

It is always the case that the last ones to understand the party is over are usually the drunkest ones.

Thus, it was only a matter of time before Wall Street’s bull market boozers were going to start beating the drums. They wish us to “show the world how real capitalism does things”, and run us roughshod back into the workplace in the midst of a global pandemic.

It is a sign of the times that Thomas Friedman’s economic “plan”, a script you could not have sold to Hollywood only a few years ago, is now debated as a serious idea.

See Friedman's: A Plan to Get America Back to Work

Ostensibly, this is being done to save ourselves from a quarantine cure worse than the virus that ails us. But in reality, as his been the case in so many wars of the past, the wealthy seek to promote their financial prospects with other people’s bodies. Of course, most of those dispensing this elixir will not be facing the same realities as the rest of us, so this advice comes easy to them.

No offense to mister Friedman, but we, the working class feel it necessary to point out some flaws in these strategies to reopen the Wall Street party bar. 

On the face of it, there would seem to be merit to the suggestion that we bring the younger workers with more robust immune systems back into the work place. Then slowly establish “herd immunity” (pun intended), thereby staging the return of older workers and protecting precious stock prices and . . most lives.

The plan seems to be cousin of one that is generating uproar in Sweden, and one just recently reversed in England. But never let a bad idea die so easy. It is appropriately clothed in intellectual credential, which is more than can be said for many ideas these days.

It is of course worth mentioning that such an economic re-engagement plan will be needed, just not this one. 

The economic salvation Friedman and friends advance is akin to leaving half the gears out of a clock and expecting it to still tell time. 

Never mind that we are already doing much of what is suggested by Friedman et al. Most state’s “stay at home” orders leave much of the underlying economy functioning. Gas stations, grocery stores, hardware stores, legal offices and litany of other “essential” businesses qualify to remain operational. Takeout at restaurants are even still allowed.

These orders are already too porous and lightly adhered to, and infection rates are showing this.  But in many cases, it is not the big bad government’s order that is preventing businesses and the economy from being open, it is consumer and worker sentiment. 

Airlines are bereft of customers because of the realities of how COVID19 spreads. Restaurants were already ghost towns because consumers recognized the inherent danger. We can produce scads of cars, but people are not going to be in show rooms buying with all the uncertainty of this disease hanging over their head. Home purchase? Forget it. 

To rework a phrase from Bill Clinton’s campaign, “It’s the disease, stupid”

If we are going to usher our millennials back out into the workforce, we must also face up to another reality - many are still living with their parents (thanks to our pre-disease economy, eh hem). And many lack health insurance themselves.

When they go to work, and do their patriotic capitalist duty, they will come home to infect family (the number one mode of transmission btw). That porosity is by itself likely to be enough to drive this disease to heights of lethality that *should* be unthinkable. 

But what really brings home the lack of sobriety in these plans to rush back to work is already pointed out by Mr. Friedman. 

Epidemiological data. 

We don’t have it. We are not likely even under the best scenarios to have it for months. Thus, we are flying blind no matter what “county by county” dreams the president agitates for.

Our failure to adequately use the Defense Production Act to fill gaps and organize industry has left corporations tripping over each other, while hospitals and states are subjected to a capitalist gang rape.

It also should be mentioned that whatever error Friedman’s plan consummates through lack of data will be be committed against an already reeling set of emergency rooms who will have to pick up the bodies. 

The data we do have to advise our actions are scraps that are conflicting, and in some cases are already upending conclusions from previous data. That is in part because America is not a monolith. Neither are millennials, or “boomers”.

Underlying health conditions are not an exclusive province of the elderly, and thus this disease will display many faces as it runs its scythe across differing fields.   

The US population in general has higher rates of preexisting conditions than other advanced societies in part due to lack of sufficient healthcare and higher rates of poverty.

So the disease will present differently here than it might in Italy or China. Asthma, obesity, smoking and high levels of stress are candy to this disease, and they are present across US demographics and geographies. Which means we are far less certain of the impacts of throwing America’s doors open for business.

Urban centers, underserved rural towns and poor suburban communities alike will bear the brunt of this, because all suffer to varying degrees from decades of festering societal and economic failures.

We are also imbedded into a global economy that is also on lockdown, and disinclined to accept our leadership when it has been so self absorbed of late. Trade cannot occur if other nations are locked in a death battle with the COVID19 foe, while we are humming along in a grisly and ignorant bliss. And as we learned from the post WWII Marshal Plan, trade is vital to any economic recovery. 

The feats of dissociation from conscience and consequences Friedman’s “plan” represents, would have been unthinkable in a different age and ethical norm.

Coming from Friedman, who regularly gets star billing at Democratic events, some will likely note how closely his message aligns with the conservative Hoover Institute. The bitter irony of a party that billed itself as the defender of the working class, now sees its elites so readily embracing a viral mauling of them should be lost on no one. 

But in this day, lives will finally and completely be placed secondary to dollars, and corporations will become more human than their workers. The attempted slight of hand is that we are supposed to accept at face value that more lives may be lost to our current course of economic sequestering.

It is a cynical play on economic fears to pit workers against their own protection. It is in fact a form of social Darwinism that exposes the sociopathy that has evolved among our nation’s elite thinkers. And, not surprisingly it is a logic pretzel that is uninformed by the voices of those it proposes to place as economic canon fodder to save the wealthy class of this nation. 

Timothy P. Holmberg is an independent journalist who has served as a reporter for San Diego based publications. He has been published in The San Diego Free Press, The Gay & Lesbian Times, Uptown News Magazine and has extensively covered the HIV epidemic.