The economy is not "a thing" it is people, people who work, whose labor generates income and profit. "The economy" is not taxed. Individuals are taxed. And since Seattle relies on regressive taxation (especially reliant on sales tax), with so many people not working and so many businesses that are going to be struggling for years (if they manage to keep their doors open), Seattle is going to go through a really rough time. So is the rest of the country.

Despite what anyone believes, sick, dying, and dead people will not bring back a roaring economy and make no mistake, without the proper management of the coronavirus (no longer even remotely possible thanks to Trump), there will be sick, dying, and dead people among everyone else trying to survive until there is a vaccine or enough people have gotten sick and died in this country for it to finally (as the trolls like say) be no worse than the flu.

Given the rate of infection, we're not even remotely close to that point. We may have over a third of the cases in the world, but as far as this country's population, were not even over 1%. We have a year or more to go before a viable vaccine is even possible and if this virus does turn out to be like the flu, that will not mean much as we will be dealing with this very contagious and lethal virus every single year.

I couldn't agree more Charles.

I, for one, don't want things to "get back to normal." Normal is toil and suffering for millions and untold wealth and power for a handful. I'd prefer the virus keeps people from spending and in turn, economies, governments, and societies collapse. I've had it with the devil we know. I'd rather take my chances with the devil we don't.

Anyone who has been out protesting in the streets must self-quarantine for two weeks.

@4- I have to salute you for a candid, intellectually coherent and radical posture.
Not sure I share it (yet) but let's get it out there.

I think Charles is spot on with these two points.
And I also agree that we can create a different, better sort of economy that doesn't rely on toil (@4) and death and unbalanced extraction and extermination of species.

As one observer puts it:

"money is really just a human product, a set of promises, that by its nature can always be renegotiated."

Indeed. Let the renegotiations start now.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon are going to come out of this better than ever. Every brick & mortar store that ceases to function, even temporarily, means more business for Amazon. Way to go, idiots.

@8 - Americans don’t have the attention span to re-negotiate shit. The powers that be will toss us all a juicy enough bone to make us feel like something changed, but we will just let the underlying awfulness continue, because no one gives a real shit about anything but themselves. As long as that is true, nothing will actually get better in this moral wasteland masquerading as a society.

@10 - Au contraire: The discussion and terms of debate have changed radically in the last week. Open discussion of 'racist police' is now taken as the fact it is. Major shifts are already underway. The protests not only got Derek Chauvin charged, AND the three cops with him charged, but his charges have now been upped to 2nd degree murder.
So, as they say, direct action gets the goods. We'll take on money soon enough. Take a truly careful look, you may be pleasantly surprised :¬)

@9 - Blame the virus my friend, blame SARS-CoV-2. Start there. We can take on Bezos when we need to.

@11 - Yes, we’ll catch a few of the bad apples, a policy here or there will change, and that’s good; but the fundamental unfairness of the economy, within which more and more people are pushed into indentured servitude (and black people stay there and continue to get incarcerated at ridiculous rates) - all that will just keep going, because we’ve draped it in the bland hues of normalcy and orderliness. We’ll turn a blind eye to it, just like we essentially turned a blind eye to covid. Overall, everyone decided that “getting back to normal” was worth more than 100,000 people’s lives.

So yeah, things will get marginally better, but stay institutionally awful. The republicans (read: retrograde slave drivers) have the patience for institutional awfulness. People of conscience do not to the same degree, and the soft middle of the distracted and selfish definitely don’t have any patience at all.

@12 - How long was abject slavery a thing in this country? something like 375 years? How many years has it BEEN since slavery was formally abolished... 140 years you say? And that change occurred while capitalism as we currently know it was still in ascendancy. Farm labor was replaced with near-slavery, where it is still largely today. Incarceration rates --and their forced labor-- are unconscionable.

Ultimately we need to change the type of economy that we rely on, an economy based on exploitation will never relinquish free people. This is why I make arguments for 'alternate' currencies that do not use the "positive-interest" model that capitalism relies on.

We may have a window of opportunity now.