The end of April will be a pivotal month in our economy for one important reason. No salaries for a lot of people.
In March there was very little warning that companies were to be subjected to a three week shut-down. I am willing to bet many regret paying VAT on time. Add two weeks to the unscheduled three and cash-flow will fly out the window. The real pain is going to start in May. Even with scheduled returns to work, the repercussions of the collected cash-flow vacuum are going to pinch hard.
The most recent COVID 19 Risk Adjusted Strategy is outlined in https://sacoronavirus.co.za/covid-19-risk-adjusted-strategy/
London, 1901. An exhausted mother and child sleep after making matchboxes at home. The average working time for homeworkers was 16 hours a day.
John Donne said, in 1624, that no man is an island, in fact he wrote a poem to elaborate his idea. Here is the first verse;
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The loss of livelihood is going to effect us all, great and small. And in a mirroring of our labour laws, last in will be first out. In other words those with generational wealth, health and skills will be the last to sink. It is the new members of the economy who will be scrabbling around to make ends meet.
Our current way of life is such that we easily forget we are not islands. It is very easy to not care too much for our whole society. It is so big in any case that it is just not possible. Luckily the state does that for us. As long we pay our dues, the State will sort out the queues. Inevitably the State will present a potpourri of ideas, gestated in think tanks and displayed with Gaussian vagueness.
Our State is rolling the dice with very dire consequences. It is in the invidious position of having to choose lives over livelihoods. What would Solomon have done?
King Solomon’s choice
Well we happen to know that Solomon let the real mother make the choice. To elicit this response, Solomon mooted cutting the baby in half – that sounds fair. For the real mother this proposal was a bridge too far and she pretended that baby was not hers.
Can this analogy be applied now where lives are deemed more important livelihoods? Could it be simply a case of each to their own? Is it possible that we can decide for ourselves – to isolate or not, to wear protective gear or not? Solomon’s choice allowed common sense to bubble to the surface. Our well meaning State might do the same – if they could just ask the right question.
In the graph above it can be seen that the daily death rate in the USA is no longer on the steep up and up. Can we read anything from this – or is it too soon to tell?