What's the rush? Consumers rule -- May 7, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

“We’re all in this together.”

Those encouraging words burble from politicians, TV commercials and the public address system in the supermarket as you survey still-empty shelves.

Are we in this together? Not really.

As COVID-19 ravages the country, with more than 1.2 million confirmed cases and more than 73,000 deaths, the disease disproportionately affects the elderly, people of color and the poor.

Meanwhile, the political chasm grows wider and deeper.

President Donald Trump and many Republican governors are pushing to reopen the economy – ignoring the White House’s own guidelines on how to do so safely.

The guidelines include a 14 day-trend of declining COVID-19 cases or of positive tests as a percent of tests. In more than half the states easing restrictions, both measures are trending upwards, not down, the New York Times reported.

But there are signs we’re in this together in one way. Most Americans are united around an idea: Don’t rush to reopen. Do it right.

The angry protesters who demand their states be “liberated” get oodles of news coverage, but they are a minority. Most Americans say they are willing to stay home and observe social distancing a while longer. To do otherwise is to court later waves of disease and future lockdowns, which could be disastrous.

Many recent polls have found a strong majority of Americans want the government to slow the spread of the virus first, even if the economy is hurt in the short run. Rather than pretending everything is fine, elected officials should respond accordingly.

Two-thirds of people say they would be uncomfortable shopping at a retail clothing store and nearly eight in 10 said they would be uncomfortable eating at a sit-down restaurant, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll reported this week.

Interestingly, people in states with looser restrictions reported levels of discomfort similar to those in states with stricter rules.

Six in 10 people support stay-at-home restrictions and more than half are more concerned about stopping the virus’s spread than about the economic fallout, according to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll last month.

Americans by vast majorities are not ready to return to school, go back to work, attend large sports events or eat in restaurants, a PBS-NPR-Marist poll reported.

And, remember, it’s consumers who hold the keys to the car. If they aren’t willing to take it for a spin, it’s sitting in the driveway.

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell warned April 29 that while stay-at-home and social distancing orders stopped the economy cold, the economy won’t heal until consumers feel COVID-19 is under control.

“It’s worth remembering that the measures we are taking to contain the virus represent an investment in our individual and collective health,” Powell said April 29.

So what’s the rush? Trump believes his reelection depends on a booming economy. He acknowledges reopening will mean the sacrifice of American lives.

“Will some people be affected? Yes,” he said on his trip to Arizona Tuesday. “Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.”

On Wednesday, he said the country “may very well” need to accept greater loss of life as the economy reopens. He insists, despite polls to the contrary, that social distancing rules are not sustainable.

The economic ruin that has swamped the country is horrific and unprecedented. Thirty-three million Americans have filed for unemployment, and the picture is likely to get much worse before it finally gets better, Powell said.

To reopen successfully, we need reliable widespread testing and contact tracing.

Real national leadership would acknowledge that reality and move to make testing and tracing a national priority, not left to each state.

Real national leadership would advise patience while scientists develop a vaccine and effective treatments.

Americans will make their own decisions for themselves and their families. Just because the government says you should go back out and spend money doesn’t mean you must.

If masks are voluntary, as Trump insists, so too is shopping at the mall, going to bars and restaurants and getting a manicure.

Be smart. Staying home, covering your face and observing social distancing are still the safest bet.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Economy: Impossible? -- Can any president fix it? -- Sept. 6, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

On the Food Network’s hit show “Restaurant: Impossible,” Chef Robert Irvine sweeps in and transforms a failing restaurant in just two days with $10,000.

He installs new décor, menu and image, diners flock to the place, the grateful owner beams in amazement, credits roll. Viewers eat all this up; the show is in its fourth season.

We Americans love turnarounds – especially when the miracles come quickly and under budget.

Alas, there’s no TV show called “Economy: Impossible.” Nobody has invented the formula to turn around the economy quickly. Unemployment is stuck above 8 percent, consumer confidence is down, and the presidential race is neck and neck.

The key question in 2012: Will voters fire President Barack Obama and hire former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to engineer the country’s economic makeover?

And that leads to another question: Does who’s in the White House affect the economy? You’d certainly think so, to hear the politicians.

Romney insists that he has the business savvy to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, although he hasn’t spelled out details. Obama blames Republicans in Congress for thwarting his plans to rebuild the economy.

Presidents are praised when the economy is going well and blamed when it’s not. Many economists think the world picture is more complicated and that the president actually has little control over economic success or failure.

Here’s Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s former top economic adviser and a University of Chicago Booth Business School professor: “I think the world vests too much power – certainly in the president, probably in Washington in general – for its influence on the economy, because most all of the economy has nothing to do with the government.”

Romney does have business experience, but most presidents don’t. Bill Clinton had none but George W. Bush did – and yet the economy thrived under Clinton and fell under Bush into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Still, since James Carville tacked up the sign that read “the economy, stupid” in Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters in 1992, candidates have tried to persuade voters they can work economic miracles.

At the GOP national convention in Tampa, Republicans urged disappointed Obama voters to jump ship. Romney conceded Obama’s popularity four years ago but said, “You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”

His running mate, Paul Ryan, evoked the image of young, jobless Obama voters living in their parents’ basements, staring at fading Obama posters.

In Charlotte, the Democrats tried to put to rest the nagging question of whether we’re better off than we were four years ago. Clinton emphatically said the country is better off with Obama, although nobody is satisfied with the current economy.

Obama “has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity. And if you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel it,” Clinton promised, adding, “whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election.”

Affable Clinton rebutted Republican charges one by one, including the frequent knock that Obama doesn’t believe in free enterprise and despises individual success.

“This Republican narrative – this alternative universe – says that every one of us in this room who amounts to anything, we’re all completely self-made,” Clinton said.

He quoted one of the all-time great lines in American politics, from Bob Strauss, Democratic Party chairman in the 1970s, “Every politician wants every voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself.”

Clinton insisted that Obama has the values, ideas and direction we need to build a stronger, 21st century economy – “a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.”

But he also served up a cautionary note. In 1994, although he and his advisers felt their policies were bringing the economy around, voters couldn’t feel it, Clinton said. The result was the Republican takeover of the House for the first time in decades.

As we move through the fall, both campaigns will target the very few voters who are still undecided. Much will depend on whether these voters feel that the economy is moving in the right direction.

© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.