This period of catching up and becoming prepared (what emergencies have we been preparing for — and paying for — all along?) needs must be truncated at some near rather than far point.

---

Inspiration: Foer, Franklin. “The Coming Bailout Is a Moral Failure.” The Atlantic, March 17, 2020.

As fits BC’s normal operating routines, I posted Franklin Foer’s essay to the BackChannels page on Facebook but with this rant following the placement of the URL.

---

BackChannels believes America has only a short window — two to six weeks, best and worst case — to get back to business or watch (in horror) for lack of earning and spending in the complex ecology defining dining and event services in their totality. Eviction relief and a thousand-dollar payoff against normal business, family, and personal expenses: who’s kidding whom on that?

We generally understand basic checks against basic expenses, but we don’t always take in larger images where, when restaurants close, even the rats may starve — or start to hunt new food sources. I’ll post above this one an example of how complex our economy has become and dependent on the reliability of basic private business services. Suffice it to say that every small business we have — and some, as with the chains, quite large — serve a lot more “stakeholders” than their owners and customers. That little bit of financial productivity down on the corner pays for space and insurance, supports suppliers of every kind (even if just a little bit as they make their rounds) — and then all engaged, employed, and investing have their lives and spending _upward_ (money trickles up in healthy economies before it trickles back down in discretionary spending). This period of catching up and becoming prepared (what emergencies have we been preparing for — and paying for — all along?) needs must be truncated at some near rather than far point.

---

Posted on BC/FB above Foer’s piece: Paynter, Ben. “This App Delivers Leftover Food to The Hungry, Instead Of To The Trash.” Fast Company, May 3, 2018.

So far, the company claims to have diverted 900,000 pounds food—about 850,000 meals. In some cases, that’s pre-made sandwiches, but it’s also bulk ingredients, which community groups figure out how to use.

Imagine taking out that kind of carefully developed and efficient service for three months.

–33–