Policy analysts claim the American response to coronavirus faces a dilemma. Either we reopen businesses immediately, causing infection surges that will kill tens of thousands, or stay closed as we are now and ruin the economy.
That’s a false dichotomy. There are other alternatives, as Daniel Markovits, author of “The Meritocracy Trap,” argued in The New York Times recently.
When it’s safe to reopen, publicly traded corporations will need workers at the ready. Thus it’s in their medium- and long-term interest to support their workers now — not verbally, but with funding. The problem is that these same corporations for generations shunted profits to their boards of directors, executive suites and shareholders. It seems they have nothing to give.
Their leaders, and the ultra-rich investors who rode long-lasting bull markets with them, consistently argued that rewarding them supports society as a whole. It’s past time for them to return the favor — not by individual acts of charity, but tax-funded emergency aid to a process that gave them comfort beyond their wildest dreams. (Markovits suggests a one-time 5% wealth tax.)
It’s time for corporate leaders to put “their” money where their workers’ mouths are.
Eugene V. Torisky Jr.
Latrobe