Mitch is forgetting the lessons of the Black Death

Rich Mitch and the Republicans (good name for a rock band, no?) have been advancing the theory, since last Friday’s disappointing unemployment rate announcement, that this shows that the socialist (nay, Communist!) policies of the Biden administration are causing Americans to sit at home and not work, while plenty of good minimum wage jobs are going begging (in fact, some that pay more than the minimum wage!). Specifically, it’s the extra $300 a week that was guaranteed by the jobs act in January that’s the culprit, since obviously $300 a week lets you live like a king. Given an extra $300, who wouldn’t take the chance to lie about and watch soap operas (or whatever’s on daytime TV nowadays) all day, rather than go back to work as an investment banker?

Of course, I agree with this argument totally, except for these small quibbles:

1.      Employment actually increased by about 1 million jobs last month, which would normally cause economists to dance in the streets. But because in normal years jobs increase in the spring, the seasonal adjustment made this look like a paltry 266,000 new jobs. If this were a normal year, maybe that would be true. But – in case you haven’t noticed – this isn’t a normal year. So seasonal adjustments will probably be meaningless this year – the Labor Dept. ought to just publish the actual numbers.

2.      There’s no evidence that even the $600/week benefit passed in the CARES Act (by Democrats and Republicans) last spring and early summer caused people to stay home when they had the chance to go back to work, since lots of people went back to work when offered the same job at the same pay, that they’d been laid off from at the beginning of the pandemic. But a lot of employers simply didn’t want to bring workers back because it wasn’t…you know…safe. Not that safety was ever any big concern for McConnell and his friends, even at the worst of the pandemic (Mitch and his friends were quite safe, of course! You don’t have to worry about that, thank goodness…).

3.      People who were getting benefits at work have plenty of incentive to go back now, even if the enhanced unemployment benefits make their pay the same whether they work or not. The unemployment benefits don’t come with health insurance, for one – which was, in case Mitch didn’t notice, a key concern, what with the pandemic raging and all that.

4.      Many people now are still concerned about going back to work for health reasons. Yes, they’ve been vaccinated, but what about all the people who refuse to be vaccinated? Many of them are refusing because they’re being egged on by Trump and his friends, who have all been vaccinated – in secret, of course - but aren’t making much of an effort to urge others to do the same. Plus there are idiots like Tucker Carlson, who are trying to make their living the only way they know: by scaring people about Democratic plots to take their freedoms away. And today, the plot de jour is vaccination (although was Carlson himself vaccinated? He won’t say, unfortunately. Imagine that!).

5.      Neither Mitch nor any of his friends seem to have thought that perhaps – just perhaps! – there might be two problems. The first is that a lot of parents are still at home with their kids, since their schools are still wholly or partially closed. Of course, McConnell and the GOP rail against the teacher’s unions, etc. that they blame for that situation – but the fact remains that child care is unaffordable for a lot of the people that McConnell wants to go back to work. So maybe they should lock their kids in a closet all day with a few crusts of bread, so they can get off their lazy butts and help Mitch’s friends afford their third and fourth houses again. Of course, Mitch is dead set against the universal childcare in Biden’s infrastructure plan. Because that’s socialism, dontcha know?

6.      However, the thought just occurred to me that perhaps some of Mitch’s friends would have better luck bringing people back to work if they…you know…paid them more! Then maybe the $300 a week wouldn’t look like such a good deal. How dare these ruffians think in economically rational terms! If the Republicans hadn’t been so dead set against any increase in the minimum wage, they might have solved this “problem” already.

However, if Mitch would just reach back to the real good ol’ days – the 1300’s – he would realize that a rise in wages is pretty much inevitable after a serious plague. After the Black Death (ah, they really knew how to name plagues in those days! No “pandemic” for them!), workers’ wages rose significantly in Europe, since…well, there were a lot fewer workers than there had been before the plague. Then as today, the lower classes suffered much more from the plague than the rest of us. As this site put up by Dartmouth says:

Because of illness and death workers became exceedingly scarce, so even peasants felt the effects of the new rise in wages. The demand for people to work the land was so high that it threatened the manorial holdings. Serfs were no longer tied to one master; if one left the land, another lord would instantly hire them. The lords had to make changes in order to make the situation more profitable for the peasants and so keep them on their land. In general, wages outpaced prices and the standard of living was subsequently raised.

Horrors! Not only did wages go up, but the serfs – who of course weren’t paid wages, being little more than slaves – now could choose their masters and play one off against the other to get a better deal.

It seems that these serfs and peasants had read their Karl Marx. Obviously, socialism was just as much a menace in the 1300’s as it is now. But don’t worry, we have Mitch standing in the breach, protecting us from the socialist hordes demanding more than a minimum wage! Atta’ boy, Mitch!

How are trends? Total cases continue to grow at a slower 7-day rate. Last week it was .9%, vs. 1.1% the previous week (and 8.4% in early January!). On the other hand, deaths are growing at a slightly higher rate - .9% vs. .8% - but that’s not very significant. In mid-January, they were growing at over 6%!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for May 9.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during period	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,064	3,163	123%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	72,693	2,345	105%
Month of April	47,593	1,598	66%
Total Pandemic so far	596,203	1,371

 

I. Total deaths

Average deaths last seven days: 733

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.9%

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases as of yesterday: 33,485,060

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 294,006 (= 42,001/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.9%  

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.