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| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #9 1. Yes! Trump is ready to open America – and wants our advice! Larry Kudlow is already President Trump’s top economic adviser and yesterday the president announced 11 outside thought leaders to advise him on opening the economy — and three of them are named Laffer, Forbes, and Moore! We’re going to push hard to get the V-shaped recovery America needs by getting America back to work on – or before – May 1. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-announces-great-american-economic-revival-industry-groups/ 2. A citizen’s revolt against state lockdowns is growing. In Michigan, where a quarter of the workforce has filed for unemployment, protestors plan an in-vehicle rally against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s edicts, which include a ban on buying seeds, gardening supplies and flowers. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/04/10/critics-why-michigans-restrictions-different-than-other-states/5131283002/ In Wisconsin, a group called Open Wisconsin Now is putting up signs and planning their own in-vehicle rally to demand flexibility. Their anger is fueled by stories like that of Leah Vukmir, a former state senator. On Tuesday, she reported on Twitter that Governor Tony Evers had just banned “window visits” between family members and the elderly in long-term care facilities. “I understand protecting the health of our sick and elderly,” she wrote. “But now I can’t visit my mother who has dementia through a window.” Luckily, public outrage forced the governor to reverse his edict. In Ohio, 100 protestors gathered outside the state Capitol building in Columbus. GOP lawmakers in Ohio are going against their own party’s governor and demanding a reopening. “We need to get the economy open, even if that means social distancing of some sort for months to come,” Senator Andrew Brenner wrote on Facebook. https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200413/gop-lawmakers-protesters-call-on-dewine-to-begin-re-opening-ohio 3. The Sheer Lunacy of the $2 Trillion Stimulus BillOne of our members and a resident of Tennessee who owns six car washes sent us this story about his business. He asked us to withhold his name in the fear that the “authorities” might harass him and shut his business down. Given the lockdown, we’ve kept just a skeleton staff working. To look after the rest of our employees, we’re paying them their average weekly pay to stay at home. We thought we were doing them a favor by not laying them off. Boy, were we wrong. The state of TN will pay 80% of one’s weekly income (up to $280) for 26 weeks if they are laid off. If you were making $200/week, your TN unemployment benefits would be $160/week. The CARES act contributes an additional $600/week regardless of prior income for 13 weeks. So we’re paying our employee the original $200/week to stay home, but if we lay them off, they would collect $760/week (Combined TN + CARES unemployment payments). Nearly 4x their previous pay. Let’s say we’re shut down for 6 weeks. When we reopen we’d want to rehire our staff. But, who will want their old $200/wk job if they can stay home for $760?This thing is a complete mess. 4. Gavin Newsom’s “Reopening” Is More like a Permanent Lockdown California’s 40 million people once represented the world’s fifth-largest economy. The past tense is used, because if Governor Gavin Newsom’s six new requirements for BEGINNING to lift the state’s lockdown are followed it’s doubtful anyone will be investing much in the state’s future. On Tuesday, Governor Newsom warned Californians that life will be dramatically different from now on: “There is no light switch here. Think of it as a dimmer. It will toggle between less restrictive and more restrictive.” The LAist.com news site reports Governor Newsom announced today “if the hospitalization and ICU numbers decline over the next two weeks, contact tracing infrastructure is ready, and personal protective equipment is available, he will be able to provide a timeline” for starting to lift the lockdown in the first week of May. https://laist.com/latest/post/20200414/coronavirus-los-angeles-county-updates-april-14 His plan calls for another year of social distancing, and if restaurants are allowed to reopen, how many will be able to survive? Newsom said restaurants may perhaps be allowed only HALF as many tables. Retail stores will have to be redesigned to accommodate social distancing, meaning they will be able to carry only a portion of their former inventory. Office re-designs will mean many more employees will have to work from home. Joel Hay, a professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at the USC School of Pharmacy at the University of Southern California, calls the restrictions ruinously draconian: “California lockdowns will last forever and switch between low lockdown mode and high lockdown mode, depending on the whims of politicians.” 5. New York Passes the Peak Even the extremely cautious FiveThirtyEight acknowledged that the share of tests that are positive strongly suggests New York has passed its peak.  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-york-coronavirus-curve/And the raw hospital data is extremely encouraging, with Governor Cuomo noting yesterday that net hospitalizations fell for the first time since the crisis began. 6. Does the virus peter out after 70 days, lockdown or no lockdown? That’s the provocative theory from an eminent math professor in Israel who has crunched all the numbers: “Mathematician and former general Prof Isaac Ben Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development… describes research that he has conducted with a fellow professor, which he says shows that the number of new cases of the virus peaks after about 40 days and declines to near zero after 70 days, no matter where in the world it strikes and no matter whether countries shut down their economies or not. “High death tolls in some countries are a factor of their healthcare systems being overwhelmed, he acknowledges. When Barbash cites New York as one example of an overwhelmed healthcare system, and argues that only radical measures are preventing worse crises worldwide, Ben Israel says the latest indications from New York are that the strain on the healthcare system is starting to recede — in line with his statistics that show daily new cases figures peaking and starting to fall after 40 days.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/top-israeli-prof-claims-virus-plays-itself-out-after-70-days 7. Trump pulls WHO funding When the WHO emergency committee discussed whether to declare COVID-19 a public-health emergency on January 23, international observers had definitively discredited Chinese health data. Yet Tedros relied on that data in arguing against declaring an emergency — over the objections of other committee members. That decision delayed the mobilization of public-health resources around the world. John Mackenzie, a committee member, attributed the delay to “very poor reporting” and “very poor communication” from the CCP. After finally declaring an emergency on January 30, Tedros continued to lavish praise on China. As late as February 20, he argued that Chinese actions were “slowing the spread [of coronavirus] to the rest of the world.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-world-health-organization-failed/ 8. Quote of the Day Everyone of Us Can Make a Difference in Stopping the Madness that Has Overtaken Our Nation This quote from Edmund Burke, sent to us from our friend Mark Skousen, a first-rate economic historian, gives us inspiration in these troubling times, and hopefully can spring us all to action as we strive to protect our freedoms and our prosperity: “How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have no such man amongst us? I am sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without salutation, without public functions of any kind exists at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is. I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.” (Works of Edmund Burke 5:124) |
