August 9, 2022
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Regarding Non-Essential Workers

Regarding Non-Essential Workers

Few people in history have seen more jobs up close than Mike Rowe, the longtime host of the Discovery Channelโ€™s hit TV show Dirty Jobs.

Now the blue-collar icon has a message for those who say โ€œnon-essentialโ€ employees have no business working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent TV appearance with Dana Perino on โ€œThe Daily Briefing,โ€ Rowe made it clear heโ€™s not a fan of the terms โ€œessentialโ€ and โ€œnon-essentialโ€ worker. The problem with such a view, Rowe said, is that such terms have little actual meaning and the economy makes no such distinction.

โ€œThereโ€™s something tricky with the language going on here, because with regard to an economy, I donโ€™t think there is any such thing as a nonessential worker,โ€ Rowe said. โ€œThis is basically a quilt…and if you start pulling on jobs and tugging on careers over here and over there, the whole thing will bunch up in a weird way.โ€

Roweโ€™s message is precisely what FEE president and economist Zilvinas Silenas was getting at in a recent article published at Townhall.

โ€œAllowing politicians to decide which businesses and products are โ€˜essentialโ€™ is an invitation for disaster,โ€ Silenas observed. โ€œIf we continue to deny these businesses the ability to do the one essential thing they are best atโ€”providing goods and services to millions of everyday Americansโ€”we risk more than unemployment or recession of stock price plunge. We deprive ourselves of the best resourceโ€”our peopleโ€”during the time of need.โ€

The truth is, all workers are essential.

Unfortunately, all too often what is deemed โ€œessentialโ€ is simply whatโ€™s convenient to state leaders making the decisions. Few would suggest that liquor store owners are inherently more essential than pizza parlor ownersโ€”except perhaps state revenue collectors. No doubt this is the same reason Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer concluded that lottery tickets are essential, but gardening seeds are not.

Liquor stores and lottery tickets arenโ€™t especially โ€œessentialโ€ to Americans, just state budgets. But as one Washington State sheriff noted in April, this seems to be the criteria state leaders often use to determine what is โ€œessentialโ€ and โ€œnon-essentialโ€: whether it helps the governmentโ€™s bottom line.

When the state picks winners and losers itโ€™s not only unfair, however. It’s also destructive.

As the great economist Leonard Read so artfully showed in the classic work “I, Pencil,” the economy is vast and interconnected. Individuals canโ€™t make anything themselves, not even a simple pencil. Entrepreneurs and corporations rely on millions of others to provide the goods and services they require. No single central planner could possibly know all the materials that go into the countless life-sustaining products that propel our economyโ€”and continue to propel us through the current pandemic.

The Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce politely pointed this out in March when they warned that many of the โ€œnon-life-sustaining businessesโ€ closed by Gov. Tom Wolfโ€™s orders were in fact crucial to the supply chain of other businesses.

Nearly two months later, the consequences of shutting down โ€œnon-essentialโ€ businesses is even more apparent. The US supply chain is creaking, putting many sectors, small businesses, and American families at risk.

Economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan recently explained why these food disruptions are happening.

โ€œWe cannot declare one business โ€˜unnecessaryโ€™ without, by extension, declaring unnecessary every other business that relies on it, and every business that relies on those businesses,โ€ Davies and Harrigan write. โ€œFood is necessary, and because of that delivery trucks are necessary, and because of that engine fuses and wiper blades are necessary, and because of that plastic packaging in which fuses and blades are sold is necessary, and on and on.โ€

Harrigan and Davies make a similar point as Rowe using a different metaphor.

โ€œOur economy is not a series of individual supply chains. It is a single, unified supply web. Cut the web in any place and the whole structure weakens,โ€ they write.

Quilt or unified supply web, the point is the same.

If state leaders wish to persist in these harmful lockdowns, they should consider using classifications that are at least more intellectually honest, such as โ€œpreferredโ€ workers and โ€œnon-preferredโ€ workers.

Because Mike Rowe is correct: all workers are essential.

Jon Miltimore
Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, and Fox News. 

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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