The Fed Will Have Given About a Trillion Dollars a Year to Rich People Since 2008 by the End of 2020
by John Lawrence
The Federal Reserve prints money and gives it to rich people. According to CNBC, it will have printed about $10 trillion by the end of 2020. This policy is called quantitative easing. It represents a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for rich people, but so far, despite Andrew Yang's proposal and the Second Great Depression we find ourselves in due to the coronavirus, there is no UBI in the works for the rest of us. In addition the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero for rich people, but credit card rates for poor people still top 30%. So the rich can borrow unlimited amounts of money to buy up all the foreclosures and failing businesses caused by the Second Great Depression.
The economy is not going to bounce back to where it was which was an economy in which consumerism was 70% of GDP. There just is no way when large scale venues and bars operating at 25% capacity will be the norm for the foreseeable future. There is also the possibility of multiple waves or spikes in the number of cases as states and cities try to open too much too soon. Plus people are just not going to feel comfortable going on cruises and going to professional sports venues until there is a vaccine which is not a foregone conclusion that one can even be developed. The economy as it existed pre pandemic was one in which we were entertaining ourselvesr to death. It was an economy built on entertainment, an economy predicated on selling each other lattes. Even though we can still be entertained at home via TV and via the internet, there is still a substantial enough loss of revenues and jobs that the economy will stumble along at half or three quarters speed unless a fundamental change is made in how the economy functions.
Government investment in the economy similar to FDR's New Deal is not only necessary to get the economy working again, it is essential to change an economy of entertainment and titillation to an economy where real and essential work will once again be the norm. We have a multi trillion dollar deficit in infrastructure in the US. This can be addressed by forgetting the defunct economy consisting of selling each other lattes and putting people to work doing real and essential jobs. This will also contribute to a revitalization of the American spirit. America was built by people doing real work whether that was in agriculture or manufacturing and not by people entertaining us to death.
The book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman made the argument very cogently. According to Wikipedia,
The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.
Postman was on to something. Entertainment and not religion is the opium of the masses. When people like the Kardashians can make their living by just advocating consumerism and indolence, America has lost its work ethic. A UBI which just allows the consumer economy to reinvent itself would to a certain extent be a missed opportunity for government to create meaningful jobs that the private sector can't create to build a better, more meaningful society, a society built on helping people here and around the world. FDR was on to something. His New Deal can be emulated in a Green New Deal which at one and the same time can address the global warming crisis, build a stronger and more resilient infrastructure and create meaningful jobs for every American.
