I wish I could say I did not understand why we are almost nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, it is worse than ever and people are dying at record rates. I wish I could say that our government had already done everything it could possibly could to slow the spread and stop this tragedy. It has not.
As we top 250,000 deaths nationwide, restaurants and bars are open. You can go to the gym and do a full-blown workout. In some places you can take a workout class. In South Dakota you don't even have to wear a mask to do any of these things. People report to work in jobs from restaurants to retail to office work in many cases because they would not have enough income to live on otherwise.
The argument for keeping the workplaces open is economic — many businesses would go bankrupt if they were to close. My question is, why are we keeping businesses open if we want people to stay home? In order for businesses to operate, people need to be going to those businesses and eating in those restaurants but such activities have been proven to spread the deadly COVID-19 virus. Working at such places has proven to be dangerous for employees.
A study of people in Chicago that tracked cell phone locations showed that if restaurants were authorized to be open at full capacity, they would be responsible for 600,000 infections in a city like Chicago.
There is a simple solution to what seems like a dramatic overwhelming problem. Pay the people to stay home and pay the businesses to stay closed. Where does this money come from you ask?
The military budget.
The current military budget is $732 billion. Here is a chart to put that into perspective:
The U.S. is not in a massive military conflict right now that requires a budget larger than the one we had during World War II (adjusted for modern money). However, we are facing the largest public health crisis of our lifetimes. We are at war with COVID-19 to put it into the hawkish terms our country prefers. It is time to divert some of this money to help America survive a crucial lockdown.
We need to close businesses and pay people $600/ month to stay home. We need to cancel student debt. And we need to pay businesses what it will take to help them survive the shutdown.
It is not my job to do the math on this.
Gabe Murphy, a columnist for Mercury News already did.
"To get a sense of what those cuts in Pentagon spending could mean for California, consider this: 10 percent of the roughly $100 billion Californians spent on the military in 2019 could cover the cost of employing roughly two-thirds of the state’s elementary school teachers for a year, or the cost of low-income health care for 5.8 million children for a year."
Point being, this money can make a huge difference in the lives of Americans. Several top political leaders are already calling on the Biden administration to take drastic action like cancelling all student debt. This action would equate to a giant stimulus package that would decrease the necessity that people go to work.
As a side note, paying people to stay home might mean that conditions would be safe enough for students to attend school. Education is essential and virtual education is not the same. The New York Public School System was forced to close after the positivity rate in the city reached 3%. Positivity rate in the schools was less than 1%. If people were staying home, kids would not be getting COVID-19 from their parents who are forced to go to work and then bringing it to school with them.
Paying people to stay home would mean increased education and also decreased transmission. It is a no brainer.
Comments