We fiddle ... while Rome burns :(

Consider this:

If a corporate executive gets a $100,000 bonus for steering a company through a difficult year, while four $25,000-per-year restaurant workers lose their jobs entirely, the net effect on total compensation is zero — even though in human terms a great deal of pain has been incurred.

This is a perfect illustration of why quantitative literacy is important in this modern world.  I wonder what percentage of a literate population, heck even college graduates, will be able to make sense of that simple arithmetic.  I have done my part to educate a few and will perhaps have one final opportunity in the fall term that could even be in the real world, after all the virtual interactions.

It is also a perfect illustration of why we need an economic restructuring, and create a new political economy that will address the human suffering when four workers lose their jobs.

So ... "Even as millions of individuals faced great financial hardship this year, Americans in the aggregate were building savings at a startling rate."

One of the most counter-intuitive outcomes ever, right, when we might have expected differently in what has been awful loss of jobs?

The trend became clear six months into the pandemic.  Professionals and high-income earners didn't seem to lose jobs.  Low-wage workers bore the brunt of the recession.

Back in September, as the university's president and his aides were developing the plans for firing quite a few tenured and adjunct faculty and staff because of the Covid-induced budgetary crisis, I wrote to the president: "It certainly is surprising that Oregon’s current budget won't be significantly affected by COVID-19, and that projections into the future might not be that dark after all."  Always evidence-based in my arguments, I attached the report from the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

It has been more than three months since I sent that email; I am yet to hear from the president or his aides.  I suppose I will soon hear from them!

Will there be protection for low-wage workers not only through this pandemic but--and more importantly--even after conditions return to "normal"?

I worry it won't.

Why this pessimism?

For the same reason that I have offered many times.  Like here:

I will once again say the same thing: We work out the solutions politically.  Unlike a challenge of how to get humans to the moon and back, or how to vaccinate people, these are not technical issues.  In a democracy, we are, therefore, at the mercy of voters and politicians.

At the mercy of politicians.  Picture in your mind the likes of mItch mcConnell, tEd cRuz, mArco rUbio, kEvin mcCarthy, ... who will do everything that they can to stop doing anything good for the less-privileged, even as they kiss rich white asses!