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.

Just Asking

I don’t know if all the coronavirus talk going around was the catalyst for the question, or if it was just something that was going to come up at some point no matter what. Some things are inevitable.

Art Linkletter made a dog-gone good living bringing the darndest things kids say to the American audiance's attention.

The question I’m referring to did come from a kid, which is encouraging in its own way. In a world changing faster than many of us can keep up with it’s comforting to know kids haven’t changed—at least those kids under the age of six or seven. They still say the darndest things.

I was having a conversation with my grandson—just talking about anything that came up. The planets. Pro wrestling. Fights with school bullies. We were all over the map, which is where we both like our conversations to go. He even commented that the two of us were “very similar” in that way, after asking the question in question.

He’s right. I’m ten years retired from my last real job, and he’s probably about a decade away from his first. We’ve both got time on our hands.

In the middle of our conversation, and it may have been the result of the crazy times we’re living in or it was something he thought up on the spur of the moment, he asked the question.

“Papa, how long do you think you’re gonna live?”

There really is no good answer to this question. He’s too old and too smart for me to say forever. Pulling an exact age out of the hat, regardless of what age I picked, was only going to open up a whole new can of more wormy questions.

Rather than pick an age, I just said, “I’m hoping for at least another month.” I said it in a way that let him know I was joking and that I planned on being around for a long time. I just couldn’t tell him how long.

The more I thought about this question, which I’ve thought about enough to tell this story several times, the more I realized that we often don’t give kids enough credit.

His question may have been unusual, even unexpected, or it may have been totally normal and to be expected. I’ve only been asked it once in the direct manner he posed it, but with seven grandkids, variations of this question have come up before.

The reality is, I’m 73 years old and he’s seven. If nothing else, his was a legitimate question.

So maybe kids don’t say the darndest things.

I started thinking about some of the things adults ask their kids. Darn it if they don’t say some of the darndest things, too—questions that don’t have easy answers.

“Who told you, you could do that?”

“What made you think you could get away with that?”

“What were you thinking?”

“What’s come over you?”

“What have you done?”

“What’s the big idea?”

Pretty much any question adults ask that begin with what is looking for an answer that doesn’t exist.

By the same token, “When are you going to grow up and start acting your age?” practically begs for the answer, “I dunno. Maybe in about a month.”

I’m searching for a good punch line to end this and haven’t come up with one. Given the subject matter, maybe I shouldn’t take any chances. I should just post it while I still can.

  

  

Nature, doing what nature does—Get even

My original intention was to write something commemorating Earth Day. I seem to have wound up killing several birds with one stone, namely Evangelicals’ role in politics, the fact that we keep putting God in the center of issues in a way that takes us off the hook, and our lack of respect for the environment, which may be coming back to haunt us.

Mother Nature doesn't always need a hammer

Evangelicals, who often appear to be very at home living in a Biblical world, are convinced God spends all His time punishing us for our transgressions—legalized abortion and homosexuality, and possibly being anti-Trumpers.

On the other hand, they believe that being pro-life and taking a stand against homosexuality will incur the favor of a more benevolent God.  Also, supporting Trump can’t hurt.

Ministers like Joel Osteen have a very simple message. “Do right and God will do right by you. In Joel’s message, the reward he’s talking about isn’t heaven so much as monetary success.

This all goes back to Biblical days, when God was flooding the earth, creating famines and releasing swarms of locusts or armies of frogs.

All this reward and punishment talk, I suppose, is a means of preparing us for the apocalyptical war that will be waged between good and evil. Evangelicals tell us—and I must say sometimes they seem a little, what’s the word, anxious, maybe too excited at the prospect—but they say this war is right around the corner, and promises to be, at long last, the war to finally end all wars. Armies for this war are being built and plans are being drawn in churches.

Despite what the Bible says, I find it hard to picture God leading an army. I also can’t picture Him putting up with the devil for more than a few hours, before shouting, “Hit the road, Satan.”

God had to have foreseen man behaving badly when He gave us free will. It’s hard to picture him being caught off-guard. I think the concept of sin is more man’s creation.

I don’t see God paying attention to every minute deed of man, when He pretty much lets the rest of the universe operate on automatic.

Is He really choosing sides in sporting events—not big events like the Super Bowl, which I can see Him being interested in, but rather every single contest, at every single level, on every single playground, every single minute of every single day? Like all those crap games going on in all those back alleys. The people participating in those events certainly think He’s engaged.

Is He really involved in choosing the exact time of death for not just you and me, but every single man, woman and child on Earth? If so, was there something that only God was aware of, for not letting Bing Crosby make it back to the clubhouse? Did God have to take him out on the putting green? Seems very un-Godlike.

I kind of like the idea of free will, where not only are we free to make our own choices, but no one, and in this case, no one means Someone, is looking over our shoulders, jotting down notes and second-guessing us. That said, I believe there is a price to pay for our actions. It’s just not coming from Heaven Headquarters. Maybe we’ll pay that price down the road to Someone, but what happens in this world, I think, gets punished in this world.

So who does the punishing?