How Are We Doing?

When you look at the news of the day it gives you a sense of where we stand as a nation on a number of issues.

Clearly the cases and deaths from the virus are not good indicators.  If the pandemic was simply an unfortunate event that happened to originate in China, we were obviously woefully unprepared.

If on the other hand China is somehow to blame for spreading the virus, we were obviously woefully unprepared.

Placing blame doesn't provide an excuse it provides a diversion.

In the second case of course we might need to do something, but it doesn't change our vulnerability.

Similarly building a wall on the Southern Border is unlikely to do anything to halt illegal immigration.  It might divert them elsewhere but I'm not sure that's worth the billions of dollars.

Meanwhile we see a dam fail in Michigan because our national infrastructure is old and fragile.  Many other structures are at risk but we are diverting a lot of effort into a folly on the border.

The main point is actually that even if it worked, what would it accomplish.  This issue has very little actual impact on the vast majority of Americans and the ones impacted actually like the cheap labor.  Billions wasted to no end.

I don't like to harp on the weather because it is variable but over time weather equals climate and it seems we are starting to see the effects of climate change in daily weather.  In the last decade we have had once in a lifetime events or once in a century events fairly frequently.

We see unemployment that would have been unimaginable just a few months ago and an explosion of the national debt in response.  Still the stock market climbs because in all honesty, the current economy doesn't care about how many are working, just how much they can spend.  Of course it has hurt travel and entertainment companies but the fact that JC Penny or J. Crew is bankrupt is hardly relevant.  They just sold stuff made elsewhere.  Amazon can do that.

Online shopping, but for some reason on-line voting is a problem.  Well maybe for the current administration any voting is bad.