Middle aged white man in jail, using a nail file to saw the bars, while eating a choclate layer ... [+]
Let them eat cake? Apologies for the disappointment, but Marie-Antoinette never said that exactly, or perhaps even the French phrase "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche," as the Encyclopedia Britannica explains.
The translation is "Let them eat brioche," referring to the egg-enhanced bread. But that is little improvement when people, taking a moment from sharpening pitchforks and preparing torches, complain that they cannot afford a basic staple of life, let alone a luxury.
Apparently similar sayings have been attributed to the ignobility of nobility for centuries. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentioned the story in his writings, only attributing it to "a great princess" in a year when the then-future wife of Louis XVI was still a child. It was a rumor, no matter how likely the sentiment might have been, given the state of the Ancien Régime and those who ruled it.
Such rumors can start in modern times—Al Gore supposedly saying that he invented the Internet, although he referenced using legislation to create a commercially viable service as we know it. And yet, sometimes the actual damning language is captured for posterity, such as this clip of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Face the Nation, March 29, 2020:
To be fair, the headline that Mnuchin said people should be able to live for ten weeks on $1,200—$120 a week or, or $17 a day—is deceiving. Referring to the small business loans, enhanced unemployment, and the $1200 "bridge liquidity" payments, he said there should be enough altogether to help people through 10 weeks of a shutdown.
However, however, however—a repetitive triplet for these times. As Mnuchin noted, doing things quickly and accurately is key. If the money isn't available fast enough, a larger total doesn't matter. And as he didn’t note, what people get, or not get, will vary greatly.
Totals also matter. As the moderator in the video noted, "Twelve hundred dollars takes you a lot farther in Nebraska than it does in California." And unemployment will differ as well—if you've been able to get it as many have not.
Using the Economic Policy Institute's family budget calculator and choosing Omaha, Nebraska and Oakland, California, here are the monthly costs, daily totals, expanded unemployment income (using averages), and daily revenue for both a two-adult, two-child household and one with a single breadwinner and two kids.
The lockdown total and daily costs subtract out childcare (assuming kids are home) and transportation (as no one is going much of anywhere).
The administration is correct in a sense. If adults in a family are eligible for an average unemployment payment—likely meaning above median personal income given how top incomes weight averages upward—and if you assume the $1,200 payments come very soon, there's enough money to keep going.
Two ifs too many. Millions of adults are going to be significantly below these personal income levels, those who are self-employed or doing gig work are finding they must wait for states to rearrange their unemployment systems to accommodate them, and there is no conceivable way that everyone receives the one-time payments immediately, meaning they have to effectively finance that part.
With that in mind, daily revenue could easily fall by $100 or more, leaving families unable to pay their way and dependent on landlords, stores, and others to lower prices or even to forgive amounts. Some landlords are already doing that. Many others—probably most—aren't and won’t absent legal compulsion.
Much larger amounts of money are being directed to businesses of many sizes. But how many will maintain staff, even with loans that are for that very action? Will the federal government monitor which do keep people on and then punish those that didn't? Are there the resources, time, or even inclination to legally challenge all?
On a battlefield amid war's carnage—or, today, when fighting a pandemic in intensive care units—medical personnel sometimes must perform triage and deliver services to those they decide have a chance to recover.
Triage is practiced in the moment without prejudice, as no one knows before examination who might live or not. The administration, and both parties in both houses of Congress, did what they often do. They designed a package for what they know, which is a middle-class life. Which, to many elected officials, given their propensity to acquire wealth, might seem like relative poverty.
The poor don't exist. People of lower incomes don't exist. How could they possible survive if they aren't initially in sight? But they are, at the same time, essential. Still expected to grow and pick and deliver and sell the food, to man the registers for sales of other important goods. To clean hospital floors of the vomit and puss and sweat. And the tears. But if there are a few more or less, who's to notice? And so, we design our rescue systems and disguise our true attitudes.
