Your money or your life

There’s the old Jack Benny joke where he is being robbed and the thief demands, “Your money or your life?”

After a long pause, the frustrated thief asks, what’s taking so long?

“I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”

This question is being asked again of the whole country—and no longer does it get a laugh.

“Your money or your life,” has become a lot more complicated as we wage this war against the corona-virus. Part of what makes it complicated is the role that money plays in our lives and the inequitable distribution of it over the last fifty years.

We are engaged in a war against a corona-virus. The virus can only win by continuing to exist, by infiltrating our society. “Just looking for a home,” like that nasty old boll weevil.

Our victory depends on denying the virus a home, or if it happens to move in, like an uninvited guest, kicking it out as quickly as possible.

Until we can acquire overwhelming firepower against the disease—vaccines, medicines, herd immunity, which sounds a little archaic, but I’m not much of a joiner in the first place—our best weapon is social distancing, sheltering in place.

The virus’ war plan calls for guerrilla maneuvers—randomly striking when no one is looking, catching us when our guard is down. This tactic, commonly resorted to by enemies that don’t have the big guns, little bugs for instance, can be very effective simply instilling fear.

So, we have two combatants, one microscopic bug striking a lot of fear and doing real damage by attacking, attacking, attacking; and one large human race passively shutting down its economy. Something doesn’t seem right, and yet, as Donald Rumsfeld said, and I never thought I’d be quoting him, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.”

Passive avoidance is the best weapon we have right now. The good news is, it’s working.

We are at sort of a standstill right now with the enemy, by gaining the upper hand, limiting the spread, in spite of incurring heavy casualties. That doesn’t mean the enemy isn’t also out there, waiting, waiting.

Scientists, who know something about fighting viruses, are urging us to continue sheltering in place, at least as much as possible. However, some soldiers—and in this war, everyone’s been drafted—some soldiers are grumbling as soldiers tend to do. They are getting impatient. They want to confront the enemy by meeting him head on.

They are playing into the guerillas’ hands.

This war has come down to what a lot of wars come down to—a battle of will power.

Troops are being distracted from what the original war was all about—saving lives, to the new war—saving the economy. A certain panic is setting in as the stock market crashes, jobs are lost and bills go unpaid.

We might not be able to see the bug we’re fighting, but a quick glance at the evening news and state houses around the country tells us insurrection is in the air.

Again, it comes down to our money or our lives.

Money should be a medium of exchange. It started out that way and made life a whole lot easier. Farmers didn’t have to carry a chicken with them when they needed a new pair of pants, tailors didn’t have to take along a rack of ties when they went to the butcher.

Somewhere along the line, but the last fifty years stands out, money became a measure of wealth and hoarding it became a national pastime.

The true measure of a man has come down to how wealthy he is. When wealth becomes so important, the loss of wealth becomes a crisis, something some people would be willing to risk their lives to prevent.

The economy has slowed, but it still exists. An economy is nothing more than the exchange of goods and services. That isn’t going away. We didn’t become the wealthiest nation in the world for nothing. Money is everywhere. Well, not everywhere. For the most part, it is in all the wrong places. 

It’s hanging on the walls inside mansions, or floating in marinas, or in that Lamborghini that just passed. Money is flying through the ether in split-second trades between banks and investment firms, never staying anywhere long enough to do any good, but always growing. Maybe it’s time to put it where it can do the most good.

If the people and corporations that have spent the last fifty years trying to corner the money supply—and I’d have to say, they’ve done a damn good job—decided to give some of it back to the American workers whose labor created their wealth, then maybe some of the anxiety about loss of income might be alleviated.

If they remained convinced that they’ve earned every last nickel they have, which is pretty much every last nickel of what was in the economy to begin with, then government should declare that this national emergency, which asks workers to sacrifice their jobs and income, can also ask the wealthy to sacrifice some of their wealth. The tax rate for the super rich could be raised to 45-50 percent, which would still be light-years from what it was in the fifties, but a substantial help in protecting the economy.

More income, less wealth. It might not be the perfect solution, but neither is more wealth, less income. People losing some of their wealth right now might be mad, but they aren’t desperate. People losing income are so desperate, they’re willing to put their lives on the line. This makes the wealthiest nation on the planet a little less than the greatest nation.

If one appreciates that money’s role is as a medium of exchange, they’d understand that all the things that were needed before in the economy before corona-virus will be needed again.

Everything is relative. Whatever money could buy before, it will be able to buy again, regardless of how much money is floating around, which is all money should ever be doing in the first place—floating around, doing its thing. All these transactions will again be pumping money into the economy. The economy isn’t going anywhere because we are not going anywhere—unless we lose the fight against the corona-virus because we lost the will to fight because workers lost the little money this great economy has been meagerly doling out to them.

Now, there might be less money floating around when all this is over, but whatever amount is out there will be enough to get the job done, because that is what money does—get the job done. The rich will still be rich, the poor will still be poor and the middle class will still be in the middle, complaining about the poor and striving to become the rich. The distance between the fewer rich and the fewer poor might be a little less. 

There might even be a bigger group in the middle, which might be the final step in putting social distancing behind us.