Are You Essential?

Are You Essential?

Known for my gift for understatement let me just say that the coronavirus is really something. To say it is unprecedented would be a similarly redundant understatement. I mean the Spanish Flu in 1918-19 was an equally overwhelming event or so they say (I was pretty young then) but it is a different world and America now. It is impacting pretty much all aspects of human life and almost totally in a bad way. I say almost because one can always come up with something good about even the worst of human events – even if only half of us believe it. And it is safe to say that we are not going out the other end of this thing the same as we came in, especially those of us who are non-essential.

It’s an interesting term, non-essential. The kindest definition I could find was “not absolutely necessary.” I hope that makes all you folks whose non-essential businesses were closed feel better. Government workers, on the other hand, are very familiar with this term – and all the jokes that go along with it – when the government shut downs and most of them are furloughed. Who’s laughing now!? I’m sorry, it’s not funny but it is enlightening.

One of the things that we are learning is that our economy is a very fragile thing. In 1918, for example, 40% of people were farmers and 60% lived in rural areas, now it’s 1% and 20%. Life is always hard but it was definitely simpler then. I suppose we’ve all grasped this given that a simple thing like losing internet seems like mayhem and electricity going out for a day or two causes hysteria. In the modern world it’s sort of like the old knee bone connected to the thigh bone, connected to the hip bone, kind of thing – it just cascades down. Think nuclear plants, banks, utilities and airlines. Another thing we’ve learned that is also pretty interesting, apparently no one has enough money to last more than a week or two without a paycheck – and, not surprisingly, including most big corporations – and that makes times like this basically impossible. Thank god for big government, right?!

And now we also find out who is essential in our economy. In addition to doctors and nurses apparently what holds our whole economy together in desperate times are truckers, grocery store clerks, and the food delivery folks (and, praise the Lord, liquor stores!) I am very serious; they and a few others are actual heroes. Too bad they aren’t properly rewarded pay-wise. Then again perhaps being essential is reward enough.

As for us non-essentials, I guess we’re just faceless cogs in the big consumer wheel that is our economy. Well, everyone has a role. We just stay home and stare at each and occasionally order something from Amazon. We’re lucky though compared to the Golgafrinchans. Yeah, they . . . Wait, you don’t know who they are?

In Douglas Adams’ excellent book (and movie of the same name) “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” * he talks about these folks on a distant planet, Golgafrinch, that wanted to get rid of the “worthless third” (you could say, the non-essentials) of their population. In their case, that was the “population consisting of hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants and telephone sanitisers (sic).” (NOTE: don't take this list personally, if Adams were alive today I suspect he might change that a bit and also add hedge fund guys, investment bankers, advertising execs and most CEOs. Oh, and Apple store salesmen.) Anyway, to get rid of these hangers on the productive people told them that everyone on Golgafrinch had to escape because something horrible was going happen to their planet and so they put them all on a huge spaceship. They also told them that they were so important that they needed to go on the first rocket ship and everyone else would be right behind them.  Yup, you guessed it, nobody else left. Problem solved. Oh yeah, in the Adams book, the rest of Golgafrinchans "led full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone." I kid you not.

Is there a moral to this story? Probably not but at least many of us can come to appreciate our place in the scheme of things and maybe faceless cogs are lucky to be just that! 

*Really great trilogy, with some of best satire since Jonathan Swift - read it.