The Growing Crisis

In a Washington Post op-ed yesterday, titled “The Storm We Can’t See,” Garrett M. Graff makes a strong case for his assertion that we haven’t begun to grasp how much damage the pandemic will do. Our survival as an ordered society is at stake. 

We need to keep job positions viable; not have them evaporate, or if they must evaporate, help workers find employment in new endeavors, including ones in the nature of public works programs such as kept the wolf from the door for tens of millions during the Great Depression. We need to support people impoverished by this catastrophe. Our first responsibility is to those who would lack adequate nourishment, shelter, and health care without public help. 

Graff suggests that, if we escape a crisis “only” on the scale of the Great Depression, we would be lucky. There’s a very good chance that he’s right.

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