My writing isn’t always as clear as it could be. Fortunately, the news of the day has provided me with an illustration of what I’m talking about.
I’ve seen other writers address the same point that I was making in my previous post. Many of them have done it far better than I did – or could. I saw graphic on-line that compared the “curve” for COVID-19 with a much bigger curve labeled Famine. Yesterday morning, the Wall St. Journal printed an editorial about why inflation might be a problem this time around (unlike 2008). This echos, albeit distantly, the on-line dread of “inevitable” hyper-inflation that must result from our current massive infusion of borrowed/printed money. I’ve seen other on-line discussion analyzing the rate of closures among restaurants and projecting that out to estimate economic damage. I should welcome all these opinions as those of fellow travelers because the majority of the articles that I read are focused on how things are already turning around and how quickly the economy will recover. Yet I feel like even those with whom I agree the most with are missing the real issue at play here.
Some, any, or all of the economic red flags might be at play now, soon, or maybe not until later. Or maybe not. My point was that there is simply no way to know.
So, here’s what happened instead.
“But,” you must be thinking, “this has nothing to do with viruses or restaurant shutdowns.” It does, though. Everything we do as a society is interrelated and nothing happens in isolation. Would a police officer have killed a man in broad daylight, on camera, if it weren’t for the environment that “quarantine” and “lock-down” engendered? I have a hard time believing that this is the case.
Folks have torched Targets before*, and life goes on. But could it, this time, be the straw that breaks Target’s humped back when 28 stores shut down amidst government-imposed 50% capacity reductions, supply chain disruptions, and inflationary pressures?
It could be. Or maybe not. There is simply no way to know.
*OK. I don’t actually know whether Target has been the, eh, “target” of looting during past periods of civil unrest. A quick search doesn’t help me. In any case, I mean this metaphorically.
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