Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"We've talked a lot about the absolute failure of the Trump administration -- I do think it's [...] incredible that here we are so many weeks after the crisis and South Korea is testing people as they drive by and we've been held back by the federal government; states, localities are trying to step up and fill the gap -- but there are other failings that led to this, and I do think this is something a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters have pointed out, and I do think it is incumbent upon us to make a part of the story: I was thinking about just-in-time inventory [...] The basic idea is there have been these advances in logistics that make it possible to have these supply chains that are incredibly sophisticated, that make sure the right thing is in the right place exactly at the right moment when you need it. That's true whether it's for manufacturing a computer, and it's true for what Amazon does, to kind of move things in this incredibly sophisticated and efficient way across the country (with all the ancillary harm that that does). But I was thinking about that as it relates to America in a moment of crisis like this and [...] these are some of the problems that people are facing right now: that kids can't miss school because that's where they get lunch; workers who prepare food and clean floors don't have sick leave; mothers have to figure out what to do with kids, if those kids have to stay home from school when they have to work; seniors who work because Social Security is not enough, deciding whether it's safe to go to their security job, to go to their retail job, to go to their greeter job, go to whatever part-time work they do at the office they used to work in, just to pick up some extra hours and make ends meet; parents that need both incomes and don't have any buffer if one parent loses a job or has their hours cut; huge prison populations without the care or protections they need to protect themselves and all of us; an economy that runs on undocumented labour, often people that have absolutely no financial security and no access to health care; and millions and millions of people who know that walking into a hospital, with insurance or without insurance, means they come away with a bill they cannot pay [...]. As Katie Porter pointed out how many millions of people can't afford a $400 unexpected payment, and how dangerous that can be. We talk a lot about the health care system and how it's broken, and how many people are one accident or illness away from ruin, but I do think at this moment, it's worth reflecting on just how much we've built an economy -- and a society -- with no buffer, no room, no slack, nothing can go wrong, no room for life. [...] There's a lot of people who said this day would come, that we would build such an interconnected society, and that there would be another flu, there would be another pandemic, and we wouldn't be ready. And we're here now, and we're not ready. And America is uniquely unready for a moment like this, not only because we have a fucking incompetent teevee narcissist in the White House who is more concerned with the stock market and his reelection than doing the right thing even in the moment, but also because as a society we have not done enough to protect ourselves and each other, to build a stable system in which we acknowledge that everyone gets sick, and everyone is vulnerable, and that it comes for all of us. And whether it's Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, if we want to be a society that's ready for the next pandemic, and ready for the quotidian disasters that come for all of us, it's about pressing everyone -- whether they agree with us now or not -- to take steps after this crisis is over, so that the next time it comes we're not talking about whether a kid is going to get food at school, or food at home, whether a person who makes food for a living is going to have to go to work sick because they don't have an alternative. And I think facing that is going to be really hard, but it's what we have to do. [...] We're in a moment that requires people to be heroes, and that's a shame. A system that requires heroes to do basic things, to get basic functions of government done, is a system that's broken." -- Jon Lovett (jonlovett), on Lovett or Leave It, episode "Sick in a Box", released 2020-03-14 0:51:45 to 0:58:48. [Note that a couple of those elisions are more than a sentence long, that I'm pretty sure Mr. Lovett would break this up differently and punctuate it very differently if he were writing instead of speaking, and that the bold-emphasis was added by me. If you don't listen to the whole show, you might still want to download it and listen to this rant (from the "Rant Wheel" segment). -- Daphne]