People NEED groceries. People don't NEED to ride space mountain. I do agree they seem to have done a good job. I just question if reopening now is the right time.
It's true that people don't need to ride Space Mountain. They don't need to eat in restaurants, stay in hotels, or to travel.
Except for the people whose jobs rely on theme parks, restaurants, hotels, and the travel industry. That's roughly 25MM of the 155MM jobs in the U.S. (about 16%). And, of course, the people employed in those industries spend money on everything else in the economy, like food, services, electronics, cars, and homes.
I think the vast majority of people's "Plan A" would've been to stay at home until we developed a vaccine. The U.S. doesn't have social programs to accomplish that. So a substantial part of the U.S. economy needed a Plan B.
Plan B The U.S. implemented additional unemployment insurance. That ends in 16 days and hasn't been extended. But let's assume that every person who needed it, got it, it all worked perfectly, and it was enough to cover everyone's expenses.
Employers got up to 2.5 months of payroll expenses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Let's say that all of that worked perfectly too, that companies didn't have other expenses besides payroll, and that everyone who needed the PPP, got it. Assuming that started in April, that would've lasted until mid-June. Emergency (EIDL) loans are available for up to $150K. Let's say that gets 2.5 months too, through the end of August, and that EIDL worked perfectly.
Plan C Thus, at the end of July (workers) or August (companies), lots of people need a Plan C. Let's assume that Plan C is that everyone perfectly followed what financial advisors said, and had 3 to 6 months of emergency money sitting around. That gets us to November to January.
Plan D Assuming everything went exactly to plan at every step along the way, workers and companies will run out of their own emergency savings and all existing government assistance programs starting in a little over 100 days from now.
The economy will not be fixed 100 days from now.
It's worth pointing out that 46 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have laws that mandate balanced budgets - they can't run deficits, even if they wanted to implement their own emergency social programs. (They could change those laws, of course. As far as I can tell, no state is considering doing so.)
If you're trying to plan ahead, then, the two most likely options for Plan D are "hope the federal government helps" or "figure it out for yourself."
Again, the right thing to do would be for everyone to re-isolate until a vaccine is available. To do that without destroying the lives and livelihoods of 1/6th of the U.S. economy for the next decade, the federal government would need to indicate now that it's going to do whatever it takes to support the economy.
The federal government isn't doing that.
That's why businesses like theme parks are re-opening.
As usual, I could be wrong.
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