Looking again at Michael Bradley’s piece in Crikey referred to yesterday, it occurred to me that, instead of JobKeeper excluding over a million vulnerable workers, this crisis was an opportunity to test a Universal Basic Income with this control group for the six months of lock-down. A universal wage subsidy, Bradley suggests, was too much of an ideological leap for the Morrison government.
Also, I want to finish with O’Hehir’s view from yesterday of the US “as an imperial power in decline, revealed before the world as a weak, divided and ineffectual nation.” The impact of the pandemic, he says, “has stripped away much of America’s pompous, self-aggrandizing façade and has made many aspects of the nation’s decline, and its fast-decaying claim to world leadership, even more obvious that they already were” and concludes that it has been “a baleful force in human history over the last seven or eight decades, and that overall its decline is more a good thing than a bad thing.”
While on America, Donald’s helpful tip from down under today is to find a gas that is a little stronger than oxygen to feed into your ventilator when you get to that stage. It will fill your brain cavity, gently replacing whatever mush you have in there at present, and kill COVID-19 as well of course.
We now appear to be in conflict with China. We have poked the 300 pound gorilla by suggesting it might be useful to enquire how this pandemic started. A trade boycott has been threatened if we don’t withdraw this unwarranted slur. China generally responds with hurt feelings when challenged on, well anything, including human rights violations. Because we do so much trade with China we are apparently obliged to be obsequious and not tread on sensitivities. The brow beating diplomacy is being led by its well briefed ambassador. But the Chinese people may still want our tourism dollars, to drink our wine, buy our agriculture and send students to universities here (and the spying opportunity they represent). It should just make us more determined to diversify our trading partners, instead of having all $153 billion eggs in one China basket.
As we get close to the end of the shutdown journal journey, what do you miss about your pre-virus world? In a Crikey article yesterday, Nick Carr listed touch, certainty and, curiously, traffic. What are your three?
Numbers today: World 3,126,806 cases and 217,555 deaths. Australia 19 new cases today for 6,746 and 90 deaths. NSW share 11 new cases for 3,016 and 41 deaths. US cases have topped one million (and 58,355 deaths).
Awesomely Astute 