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By C.J. Atkins
The Trump Labor Department has ordered individual states not to reveal their unemployment numbers, but when the national total comes out later this week, it is expected to be in the millions. With retailers, restaurants, hotels, airlines, theaters, factories, and more closed down, paychecks will soon stop for many workers, if they haven’t already.
The most dire prediction of what we’ll be facing came yesterday from James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, who said unemployment may hit 30%. That’s more people without jobs than even the worst days of the Great Depression when the previous highest record was set—24.9% in 1933. During the Great Recession a decade ago, 10% were out of work at the peak.
Bullard says we’re looking at a drop in U.S. GDP of as much as 50%, which would mean at least $2.5 trillion would be needed to cover all the income lost by U.S. workers. Without government action, things will get very bad, very fast.
Yet the president spent a considerable part of his Sunday press conference asking for your pity in this time of global crisis. Not for American workers facing unemployment or health care professionals struggling to keep people alive, but for him.
In response to a reporter’s “nasty question” about whether he had sold stocks or made any changes to his investments in advance of the virus (like many U.S. senators did), Trump launched into a monologue about how much he sacrifices:....
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