STIMULUS MAYBE ‘TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE’

Writer Umair Haque has warned in his recent Medium News Digest essay that the US economy is committing suicide by crafting stimulus packages that are designed to support individuals and small companies only for just one week.

Haque noted that the US economy, which is $20 trillion a year, and of all businesses, 99% is composed of small firms, but their support fund only amounts to $500 billion, which means that it could sustain only 2.5% of the economy in one year.

“The US has 127 million households, give or take. Divided equally, that produces income per household of about $150,000. But of course, Americans aren’t nearly that rich. Median income is only about $60K — because the rich skim a full half the economy right off the top. 60K is about $1100 a week. That means the much vaunted $1,200 stimulus check equals about just a week’s worth of the average person’s income,” he added.

Haque warned that the US unemployment rate may shatter the ceiling after 33 million filed for unemployment benefits in May 2020, which is already more than a fifth of the US labor force of 164 million people.

“Coronavirus is an extinction level event for modern economies. That is why all this, my friends, is an event the likes of which the modern world has never really seen before. Not even in war, natural calamity, or financial crisis. Because when a society reaches even about 25% or so of sudden, irreversible, long-term, hardcore unemployment, the economy is more or less finished. It cannot recover for generations,” he concluded. #coronavirusimpact #COVID19