I’ve been self-isolating since April 2nd. No, I am not feeling sick, not running a fever, have none of the symptoms but I am 65 years old with high blood pressure and asthma. I’m in the cross hairs of this virus and I need to stay clear of it. I have ventured out of the house to go on a bike ride, walk the dog, go food shopping once (in & out quick) and yes, I had to go to an Urgent Care facility to check on my blood pressure, may have go again soon, but overall, I am staying home, alone. It’s eerie in a way but familiar in other ways.
The first Letter to the Editor that I ever wrote was published in a local paper back in the early 70’s. I was concerned about the rolling back of so-called Blue Laws that prohibited the openings of many retailers. In short, it was one day a week when we agreed to Shut Down the Economy and Focus on Each Other. It was a day when we could plan birthday parties, reunions, social gatherings with the knowledge that very few of us were working and we could all get together. It was also one day a week where most of us could count on as a day of rest from the rat race of production and consumption. Those were good times.
My letter fell on deaf ears and in short time, everything was open everyday, some 24 hours a day. The economy had become more important than the social unit.
It used to be normal to have a day when we focused on ourselves instead of the economy. Today, many are alarmed, outraged, in full panic because we are taking time once again to focus on ourselves, instead of the economy.
The billionaires are worried that we are not working enough, not buying enough, which tells me that we are the ones that created the billionaires. We are the ones who support the billionaires, and now the billionaires are worried for their survival.
Even our president, a willing tool of the billionaires, is more anxious about opening the economy and pleasing the billionaires then he is with our own well being and social networks.
I hope we come out of this on the other side with the knowledge that our economy is not more important that we are, at least when that economy is one that starves us, drives us to work each day, only to support the billionaires.
Maybe we ought to look again at those Blue Laws?
There’s a huge difference between a once-weekly sabbath and weeks of people being out of work. I hope you stay well.
Of course there is a difference. I think we also need to re-think “work”.
It’s good to hear from you.
You have reminded us for many years now that the baggers at the grocery store are important and too often ignored in our high-minded debates about the economy. I want to explicitly note how important that reality has become during this pandemic. Our grocery store workers are at the top of my list of courageous, heroic, and under appreciated linchpins of our survival during these times — in no small part because of your commentary here at BMG.
I’d like to ask you a simple question about the Blue Laws. What day or days would you designate as our collective day of rest? While it’s true that Sunday is the day of choice for Christians, it’s also true that Saturday is the choice for our Jews. Our most observant Jews (and some Christians) would choose sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.
I enthusiastically share your view that society will benefit from restoring a period of rest — I’d chose three days, rather than one, per week. This is another example where some foreign nations are ahead of us, in part by shifting to a 30-hour work work as well as significantly more mandated vacation days.
An absolute requirement for me is to separate this weekly period of rest from any sort of religious import. I think that to do otherwise is a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause. Atheists and agnostics need and benefit from a weekly period of rest, and that has nothing to do with any deity.
Finally, I think it’s important to look at least a little bit under the surface of this “day of rest” meme. When we contemplate these “birthday parties, reunions, social gatherings”, who cleans the house, gathers and prepares whatever refreshments or food is served, and cleans up afterwards? I ask because this is one of those things, like bagging groceries, where we have a tendency to emphasize the event and forget that SOMEBODY has to work hard — on this “day of rest” — to make that happen.
Anyway, it is good to see your byline again.
Hi Tom,
I don’t care what day. I’d be happy with two days. We can afford to do it. In addition, there are numerous studies that indicate than a 20 hour work week is all we really need.
I’m here in self quarantine so I have time to relay this story to you.
There was a very wealthy business woman in NYC who decided to help women in other countries by providing low interest or no interest loans. On one trip to Bolivia, she met a woman who made beautiful sweaters, one each week, and sold it at the village square each Saturday when the market was busiest.
The business woman showed the Bolivian woman how, with the addition of an electric loom, she could make one sweater per day, in effect, multiplying her income five fold by making five sweaters each week, selling them at the market on Saturday, and taking Sunday to spend with her friends, family, and neighbors.
The Bolivian women agreed to take the loan and repay as she could.
It took several months, longer than the businesswoman expected, but finally the loan was paid off. A few months later, she flew back to Bolivia to see how the woman was dong and maybe find another deserving woman to invest in.
She found the woman in the village on a Saturday, sitting at her usual spot, with two beautiful sweaters for sale.
She remarked, “My, you are doing well already. It’s only noon and you’ve sold three sweaters!”
The woman replied, “No, I just arrived. These are the two sweaters I made this week, one on Monday and one on Tuesday.”
The business woman was shocked, “Why only two sweaters? If you had more you could make more money to buy more things for your house, maybe buy another loom and hire women to make sweaters for you…..get on the Internet. Go global! Besides what are you doing with yourself on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday?”
The Bolivian women smiled and said, “I was living well selling one sweater, now I have twice as much money, and on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I am spending more time with my friends, family, and neighbors.”
Too many Americans are of the mindset of the business woman, not the woman who made the sweaters.
In answer to ” who cleans the house, gathers and prepares whatever refreshments or food is served, and cleans up afterwards”, I’d say those involved and for those hired, like maids, or cooks, or groundskeepers at golf courses…..pay them handsomely because without them, we’d have less leisure time. .
Nice story. Many professionals struggle with the inverse of that. Those who truly love to do the labor of their profession often require externally-imposed limits like the Shabbat in order to preserve some time for themselves and their loved ones. There are many motivations besides venal greed for working long hours.
Your answer to my question (in your last paragraph) gets at the changes I think would be needed to the old Blue Laws, as well as to the motivation for removing them.
For those maids, cooks, groundskeepers, and so on, those “days of rest” would be days of hard labor. There’s a risk that well-off middle class people like you and me turn them into “Shabbos Goy“.
When the Blue Laws forced everything to be closed on Sundays, it forced working-class people who were already working long hours to spend their Saturdays fighting crowds to do their necessary shopping.
I think taking one or two days a week (and one or two hours a day) of internally-imposed down time is really beneficial to emotional and spiritual well-being.
I’m not sure it works for the government to attempt to impose that.
Labor-wise the weekend is a thing because unions made it happen. My answer to the question of which day or days is that Saturday and Sunday are as good as any and while we are not officially Judeo-Christian sometimes it is most practical to concede to the prevailing norms of the overwhelming majority for which one of those days is their religious sabbath. (Likewise the US has no official language, but I think we would all agree that a lack of fluency in English would make it extremely challenging to live here.) I have held jobs where the five-day work week is shifted so that weekends can be staffed. For example someone might work Wednesday-Sunday and in those situations it is common to hear someone come into work on Wednesday and comment to a colleague, “Today is my Monday.”
True, the labor unions gave us the weekend, but the six day work week was given to us by the corporate industrialists
In his book, The mythology of Work, Peter Fleming points out that from a historical viewpoint, societies that insisted people work more than three days a week were usually slave societies. The maintenance of even sophisticated self subsistence does not require more than 20 hours a week,
From what I read of medieval times, the peasant’s gave the ruling landowners three day’s labor and had three days to labor for themselves, with one day of rest. Today, we give five days labor.
Back in 1930, Keynes predicted that the working week would be drastically cut, to perhaps 15 hours a week, with people choosing to have far more leisure as their material needs were satisfied.
I still have hope that this great crisis, once past, will have taught us a great deal.
The owner class is happy for this to go on just long enough for them to loot the economy, with the unlimited financing made available by our representatives (including so-called progressives).
Meanwhile, civilization continues on the backs of supermarket employees making poverty wages, while risking their lives with ineffective home-made face masks.
Just a real-life datapoint before we get too carried away with to-the-barricades rhetoric — my daughter and son-in-law are in the restaurant business. They are not members of the “owner class.” They have an 18-month old daughter whose day care has been shut down. They have the same serious financial obligations as nearly all of their peers.
My son-in-law lost his job when MA restaurants were closed, and immediately applied for unemployment. His application was processed immediately and he began receiving compensation well before the end of March. He has now started receiving an additional $600/week from the CARES act. That much-needed help is not just an empty promise from network talking-heads, it’s in the bank.
I’m not saying there won’t be abuses and I enthusiastically agree that Congress needs to be aggressively rigorous about discovering, investigating, prosecuting, and punishing those who abuse this crisis. I agree that supermarket employees are crucial workers who deserve and will hopefully receive generous compensation and benefits accordingly (as well as PPE).
I just think it needs to be said that my family is already benefiting from the CARES act. That compensation is allowing them to keep their heads above water — they would be drowning if it were not in place. My granddaughter is not, at least for now, in danger of losing her home.
I think it’s very important — especially as we head into the heat of the 2020 campaign — that we talk about the successes of the Democratic Party alongside the concerns that we all share.
Our government response is not ALL black.
Do you know how CARES works? My understanding is that it would go most immediately to those who filed federal returns in the last two years, which I have. I got my first state unemployment check in my account today, but haven’t seen anything from the feds. Is there something I’m supposed to do to apply?
My daughter says that her CARES supplement happened without any action on their part. I think it took one or two weeks though. I think you can likely expect it to begin in the next few weeks.
My father in law is still waiting for his to kick in, but IL might have a longer backlog than MA.
There will be little or nothing to prosecute because we gave Wall Street everything they could possibly hope for.
Supermarket employees get nothing from the legislation. My friend was being forced to work in unsafe conditions for an extra $2 an hour. She quit and now has no income.
I’m glad things are working out for your family. But please look at the bigger picture. We can’t continue to ignore Wall Street bailouts of this enormity and then act surprised when there is a huge wealth disparity. Progressive lawmakers in particular need to be called-out for this, because their support is giving cover for everyone else.
I think this is why they will hold out for more in the next bailout package(s) since the immediate emergency funding has been secured. This bailout for states is huge, and obviously even though Pelosi got an IG, Trump found a way to gut it. So the next one will need stronger oversight. Such is the give and take of legislation, unlike the Republicans, I’m glad we don’t play fire with the economy and people’s health and livelihoods. Obviously the package would have been far more generous with a Democratic White House and Senate Majority leader. I would focus on getting those two things if you want any progressive legislation to happen.
I’m not convinced Democratic control would have changed anything of consequence. Pelosi supported exactly what Republicans did — a one-time cash payment. Next month…. we’ll see. Meanwhile big corporations are coddled and the stock market is inflated with money that should be going to people.
I wholeheartedly agree that more aid should get to more people more directly. I think that’s becoming mainstream dogma even among center right economists now. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is even outflanking Pelosi from the left calling for government to prop up payrolls instead of overburden the unemployment system and for continuous 2k monthly payments without means testing and regardless of household size. So I suspect the next package will be easier and more generous. So long as wittle Donald gets to put his chicken scratch John Hancock on the checks….
Because she had to get something through a GOP Senate. She is the definition of politics as the art of the possible and I think you need to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good.
At what point did Pelosi oppose the corporate bailout or support extending support for actual people past one month? From what I have seen, she agrees with Republicans on the big picture, which will institutionalize inequality of wealth until the next crisis/bailout.