Apparently, LA Mayor Garcetti has issued an even stricter order that seems to leverage California Governor Newsom’s month long lockdown to effectively turn LA homes into cheap prisons for the state. I have some of my own theories on why he implemented this plan, but the bottom line is that I doubt this “plan” will prove effective. Instead, I will offer my thoughts on what a real plan should look like in this situation.
The biggest thing in controlling COVID-19 is to develop trust and respect between the government/state and its citizens. All the politicians have proven is to be empty headed, worthless and thoughtless tools of the elite that only use the lockdowns as a means of protecting themselves. The result has been a growing resentment between citizens and the government since the orders only benefit in a single direction.
Because of the tone used in these campaigns, the government must figure out a way to regain the trust of the public, especially in light of the controversial elections, the Black Lives Matter movement and pervasive problems in the overreaching hand of the government.
My proposal in getting some of that trust back is by incentivizing the lockdown approach. First, anyone who cannot work and is the owner/renter of a household should be disqualified from paying rent or money for property. If you say that the state and city are locked down, then it only makes sense to have no money flow back into the state because you’ve effectively killed it’s ability to do anything.
By removing the cost of rent/property ownership, you will solve a major issue in the fear generated by people who are on the edge of losing the ability to have a roof over their heads, which means that for those who work multiple jobs, they can afford for the time being to not worry about attending a job that might cause them to be infected.
The next thing that is needed is to create a supply chain of basic food and home essentials (e.g. toilet paper, cleaners, etc.) to households. For that you would need to create an online site for people to be able to register their home and detail the number of people per household along with dietary preferences. In turn, markets and major retail stores like Walmart and Target can be converted into hubs for distributing these care packages.
Uber/Lyft can use their driving force to coordinate with these supply hubs where drivers can be provided with tests, masks, etc. to help run supplies to people. In exchange for this deal, the state would grant these drivers full insurance coverage to make up for their independent contract status and offer overtime as a bonus.
Basic utility would be considered free until the emergency is lifted. We need gas, water, electricity and the internet to continue running.
Any kind of business that requires essential workers will get a massive tax incentive to continue operating and workers would have their salaries bumped on top of having access to cheaper insurance. Normally, insurance works the other way, but in this case, we want to make sure those in the field are well protected.
In addition to eliminating rent, there will be a tax credit given for each day a person stays within their homes. This is a per-person deal so that larger families won’t feel trapped and encourage each other to avoid the public. To get a bonus like this, there will be an app that a person can install for tracking whether or not the person is at their place the entire time. It’s optional so people shouldn’t feel that their privacy is being invaded.
Big influencers who have massive parties will be penalized on a per person basis. Instead of just sending these fuckers to jail, I would just issue a giant bill to their doorstep. That’s how you partly will pay for these tax credits.
For owners of property, I would provide massive tax credits in the future for the free rent incentive. The idea is that we scratch your back, you scratch ours. Also, the idea is that if you want a future, you need to invest now.
The big thing is to figure out how to contain the actual virus itself. While data points have identified hot spots, I haven’t really seen much in the way of action. The only thing we know thus far is that the poor are most likely affected and the majority are minorities.
My guess is that not only do these people lack the resources to be able to access insurance, they have poor living conditions and education to combat the situation. Generally, I’ve seen families in lower income areas have a large number of kids (partly for tax purposes/well fare support, but also because they can’t control themselves). So households with larger numbers of people will mean that the risk of catching the disease is higher just based on the crowded space.
While it’s impossible to straight out move people in a time like now from such conditions, what needs to happen is to dig around parts of the issues like insurance and being forced to work multiple jobs that may lead to the higher probability of catching the virus. So again, the tax incentive, free rent and free food should aid in this regard.
But one policy I think should be reversed is the tax credit per child. I would say that children before 2020 should still be allowed credit. However, to penalize large families, I would incur a massive credit penalty to discourage people from having kids right now, especially if their family already is large enough.
The reason this makes sense to me is because:
- More people in this world means more risk for children to die inside of the hospital
- Less available space in overcrowded hospitals
- More risk for parents and their immediate families
- More mouths to feed in a strained situation
Non-essential businesses that demand to be open (e.g. theaters, Disneyland, etc.) can do so but at a monstrous penalty. You effectively want to give them the option but show that they’re damned if they take it.
Small businesses that have been deemed non-essential should be able to file to temporary suspension. What that means to me is that while this lockdown continues, the state must either 1) prevent these businesses from being forced to pay bills that they can no longer afford; 2) be allowed to negotiate away from contracts that would otherwise kill their business; 3) be provided some form of repayment to make up for the lost potential income. What a small business (e.g. small restaurant, hair salon, independent shoe store) should be able to do is provide previous years’ taxes to show what their estimated income would be. In turn, the state should be able to forgive or grant them an equivalent amount so that if/when things return to normal, they are able to do so.
There’s other things that can be done here too. But the message is that the state needs to start giving back if all its doing is taking. While my ideas may sound socialistic in various elite assholes’ minds, the truth is that we cannot live in a capitalistic system in this current period because the current period is not normal.
In order for COVID-19 to be brought down, a new infrastructure must take the place of the current system. Money just doesn’t make sense in a prison state where the assumption is that every person has the equal ability to earn income. The government shouldn’t just take an imperialistic tone to handle these matters either but must show that they have the true earnest interest in resolving the situation.