In Australia, they closed all the 'non-essential' industries. Which turns out to be about 30% of the workforce.
I keep thinking that big shift will be when people come out of this they won't allow themselves to be 'non-essential' ever again. They won't take back those jobs, they'll push for agreements that guarantee a safety net.
I wonder how many people feel they have the option to not take back a job?
I have such options, exercised them a few years ago when I was 'done' with a particular industry and I wanted to change (networking to web dev, I'm so much happier with my work now), but my ability to do so was largely because the job I had done was a pretty good job pay wise (so I could save) / I received a severance, etc. The jobs that are getting shutdown are different / the people I suspect have fewer options.... at least in the US.
> I wonder how many people feel they have the option to not take back a job?
This is exactly why social safety nets are limited in the US. A social safety net drives up wages. Workers no longer rely upon a job to the degree they did before.
So it raises wages and raises taxes, which raise cost for everyone else. It forces managers to actually pay a living wage and take care of employees, which hurts them because they can't treat people like shit to get good numbers to show their managers.
When I think about the people who won't take back their jobs, I think about the business owners mostly.
Australians love cafe culture and 6 months ago, if you opened a cafe in the Sydney CBD and if you could make good fast coffee, you'd have a great trade with good revenue to match. But now, those small business owners are going to lose business and homes.
And a lot of workers may come back, but they won't stay.
It's really really bad because we don't have a lot of industries that have openings that can just absorb new hires. Industry doesn't train up people any more, maybe that trend will revert but I really worry for a bubble of people in my community that may loose out and never get a strong footing back.
>This event forcing America to adopt more progressive policies
Most of the legislation is temporary heading into an election. I suspect the GOP would be happy to cut that net ASAP and sadly their own voters would support it.
Time will tell. In a year, we'll actually have much better evidence about how different systems fared. Right now, both the market-based US system and the public systems in Europe are being put to the test.
I suspect that they will both have failures and successes that will largely be localized and that we'll find out that those features that made a healthcare system robust don't correlate that much with being a public system or a market system. It will probably correlate more strongly with culture.
All systems have capacity limits. This is even a compsci problem: queues. Whether your system is public, private, or a combination of both, under extreme demand that exceeds your workload capacity, you'll either be overwhelmed (and drop work) or apply back pressure (both which will appear as rationing of healthcare; you have no choice but to ration when supply is limited). There are only so many doctors, nurses, ICU beds, and ventilators.
Note that in Italy and Spain, reverse triage is being done based on your at risk status, age, and other complications. If you're young and healthy, you take priority. I imagine the same will be done in the US, and those who are more likely to survive will be provided with ventilators and other medical equipment to survive, not those who can pay or with insurance; medical practitioners are making the call, not the chargemaster and CFO.
Public healthcare systems won't need a bailout, they're already government supported. We'll move money around on the nation state balance sheet and move on. Private systems though may not survive. That's culture though, so perhaps you're right.
Well, unless we libertarians were right all along and these progressive policies are unmaintainable over a longer period of time. At this point, I think we're about to find out one way or another.
