Editor, Commonwealth:
Do writers who call for re-opening the economy “push profit over lives”? Beverly Stout said they do (“Listen to Dr. Miller, not the skeptics,” April 18-19). She pled with us to turn a deaf ear to Wyatt Emmerich and Clint Guenther because “Loss of profits is not worth the loss of precious life.” Her choice of words is pivotal.
In place of the word “profit,” let’s use the word livelihood. What we earn by our labor is how we keep from starving to death. Earning money is how we survive. Earning profits is how a man supports himself, a family, and saves up for the years when he will no longer be able to work.
Without an open, functioning market in which you and I can sell our labor for a price, more of us will become homeless or sickly. Working for hire or selling the products we grow or build is the lifeline that keeps us from dying.
Working in exchange for payment is how we sustain life — not only our own, but also the lives of those who don’t work but depend on public welfare. If I can’t earn more (a profit) than it takes to support myself, then I can’t marry a wife or properly raise children, nor can I offer jobs and employ others.
Likewise, instead of talking in terms of “the economy,” it is clearer to speak of a chef being allowed to operate his restaurant, and of hungry or hurried people being allowed to pay him to plan a menu and cook the food for them. I speak of barbers being allowed to serve customers, of physicians being allowed to treat patients at their clinic, and of ill or injured persons being allowed to buy medical advice. And so on.
It’s not worth their effort, their time and trouble, and their risks of opening a business if the chef, the physician, and the barber can’t earn a profit.
To say that Wyatt Emmerich, Kelley Williams, Tim Kalich, or Clint Guenther “tout money over lives” shows poor aim. It takes money to sustain life — if not cash, then the fruit of our labor, the harvest from our planting. If I don’t generate a profit from my work, I won’t be able to pay a doctor. If he doesn’t turn a profit, the doctor won’t be able to hire nurses and clerical staff. If a hospital fails to break even, it will soon stop repairing health and saving lives.
When you plant a seed, you reap more than you planted. Seed will multiply if you cultivate the ground, plant the seed, water it, pull weeds, kill pests and harvest the crop. That’s work. Profit is built into nature by the Creator. God is abundant. He invented multiplication.
Beverly Stout thanked Dr. Mary Carol Miller “for trying to keep ... citizens of Greenwood ... safe” from this insidious virus. I write to thank Kelley Williams, Wyatt Emmerich, Tim Kalich and Clint Guenther for trying to get the economy functioning again so citizens of Greenwood can buy detergent so we can launder our clothes and wash off any virus; so we can buy soap and pay for clean water to run through our faucets to wash the virus off our hands.
Mrs. Stout doesn’t want anyone to die from COVID-19. Wyatt Emmerich, Kelley Williams, Tim Kalich and Clint Guenther don’t want people to die of starvation, either. Each “skeptic” who has written for the Commonwealth is trying to restore the opportunity to earn incomes (profits) so we can try to keep ourselves fed, housed, healthy and pay for medical care if we fall ill with COVID-19 or any other disease. In other words, it is unfair to call any of these men a “skeptic.” They are just thinking several steps ahead.
But they also swim against the current. Large blocks of our population receive a steady income whether they work or not.
First: How many public school personnel continue to receive paychecks even though the school is closed? No janitorial cleaning, coaching, aiding of teachers, school nursing, library shelving or bus driving needs to be done. Yet they are being paid. How many state agency employees are on paid vacations while “working from home” maybe a few hours every other day?
Second block: Public assistance (such as food stamps and housing vouchers) continues to flow to welfare recipients.
Third block: Disability payments continue to flow into people’s bank accounts.
Fourth block: Retired persons (who earned more than it took to live on) continue to receive a monthly payment from their pension or retirement plan.
The smallest block I can think of: Investors — who have placed their capital in the hands of others who put it to work and make it produce a profit — survive on dividends and interest earned on their savings.
Five segments of our population are tempted to think they have it made in the shade during the shutdown. It’s no surprise, then, when The Associated Press finds only 12% of the people they sampled will tell a survey-taker that the stay-at-home restrictions where they live go too far (“Poll: Few Americans support easing virus protections,” April 23). Large blocks of people are able to keep on paying utility bills and subscribing to Netflix while beauticians are forbidden to trim and set hair, martial arts instructors are barred from teaching karate, and restaurants are prohibited from serving dine-in patrons at tables that need to be waited on and bused.
I’m thankful to read the compassion and reverence for human life expressed by Mrs. Stout and practiced by Dr. Miller and other medics who staff the hospital at their own peril. I would not charge Mrs. Stout or Lily with being callous toward busboys, waitresses, martial arts instructors and beauticians. I simply ask Lily in Atlanta to withdraw her accusation that Wyatt Emmerich, Kelley Williams and Clint Guenther are “callous” (post by Lily to “My Two Cents,” April 18).
We can’t pretend for much longer that we are faced with a choice between either a shut-down of the economy or deaths from COVID-19. Profiting from a trade, from commerce, from your business and from my labor are necessary to sustain precious life. If the economy remains shut down because most of us are afraid, then people on a government payroll, on welfare, on disability or on a pension will find out that profits from other people’s labor is essential for their government paychecks, welfare payments, disability payments and retirement payments to continue.
George Whitten Jr.
Greenwood
