Stay home or reopen? There's at least one way to avoid Trump's false choice

Nevertheless, we're all confronted now with a binary choice: Either we "reopen" prematurely, risking an unacceptable resurgence of the virus, or we remain at home, risking worsening joblessness and damage to the overall economy.

1. Reopening too soon

Reward: Short term economic gain. Maybe.

Risk: Worsens the spread of the virus, increases the death toll, puts more strain on essential workers and forces the reauthorization of stay-at-home orders to stop the renewed spread. In that event, any short-term economic benefit will be totally negated when the economy has to shut down again as COVID-19 strikes more Americans. Ultimately, what Trump and his copycats are begging for here is an endless cycle of opening and closing.

2. Stay-at-home orders

Reward: Slows and eventually stops the spread, saving lives and allowing for an eventual safe reopening.

Risk: Businesses continue to close as workers and customers alike remain in lock-down. The economic impact already looks to be at least 16 percent unemployment and a 5.6 percent contraction of the economy by the end of 2020.

Now, for us "normals," option No. 2 is much more palatable in nearly every way. Not only is this the preferred solution among the experts, but it's also the easy-to-grasp common sense solution. Are there risks in continuing the stay-at-home orders until the epidemiologists and other public health experts give us the go-ahead? Sure, and those risks are calculable. But the risks for option No. 1 are unacceptable to anyone who's not a blood-oath member of Trump's ignoramus death cult, widely seen at protests over the past 10 days or so.

The irrational death cult aside, let's go with option No. 2 as the less risky solution that literally saves countless lives, while leading to a safer and more confident reopening of the economy — but a little later than is acceptable for Trump and his squirmy radicals.

Your response now might be: What about jobs and the economy as a result of No. 2? There's a third, perfectly valid solution here. You probably won't hear about this option from Republicans or Fox News analysts, because it involves icky things like math. But let's take a look anyway.

3. Stay-at-home, plus massive economic stimulus

Reward: Continues to slow the spread, saving lives while bending the curves in the proper direction. There's minimal risk to lives and hospitals, while creating jobs and mitigating a recession.

Risk: A massive budget deficit and subsequent increase in the national debt.

We could nickname this one the "Keynesian option." Unlike the other two options, the pain isn't absorbed by the economy or by the people, but instead absorbed by the federal government, which is one of the reasons why it exists in the first place: to do all the things enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Another big, dramatic stimulus could buy the economy more time while the stay-at-home orders continue to bend the curves downward — the best of both worlds in the midst of these impossible circumstances.

The $2 trillion CARES Act was a step in the right direction, but it clearly isn't large enough to continue blunting the sting of the shutdown. To anyone paying attention, it clearly needs to be followed by at least another $2 trillion, if not significantly more. That might take the form of a set of New Deal-style programs, including, for example, Andrew Yang's "minimum guaranteed income," at least temporarily; public works projects and the resurrection of the WPA (with distancing guidelines); a World War II-style jobs mobilization, especially given the "we're at war" metaphor, to create PPE, consumer items and other essential supplies; small business lease and debt relief; virtual retraining for green economy jobs; expansion of food stamps and unemployment benefits; expanded COBRA, ACA and Medicaid subsidies, and so on.

How will this spending translate to economic growth? During the previous recession, a macroeconomic model developed by Moody's Economy.com determined that for every dollar spent on, say, temporary increases in food stamps, $1.73 in economic stimulus is created. Likewise, every dollar spent on extending unemployment benefits generates $1.64 in stimulus. A dollar in infrastructure spending creates $1.59 in stimulus, while a dollar invested in state governments generates a $1.36 return to the economy. Conversely, Trump's idea for a payroll tax holiday that would damage Social Security and Medicare will only create $1.29 in stimulus — while every dollar spent on cutting the corporate tax rate will only generate 30 cents in stimulus — a 70 percent loss. All told, spending government money on the right things, in the near term, will generate a significant return on investment.

Trump lies all the time. But math doesn't.

From there, once the experts tell us the stay-at-home orders have done the trick and it's time to get back to some new version of normal, some of these programs can be phased out, while other programs could be integrated into the job landscape, benefiting American life and reinforcing the health of the economy. Meanwhile, deaths are held to a statistical minimum and the duration of the pandemic is significantly shortened, rather than facing an endless loop of premature opening and then closing again, accompanied by more death and more strain on PPE supplies and health care workers.

If you're more concerned about the budget deficit and the national debt than you are about saving the economy without killing people, then you need to think about reprioritizing your values. Being a fiscal hawk is fine — when tens of thousands of Americans aren't dying because of it. We can address government spending and all the problems it allegedly causes when both the economy and the safety of the American people permit it.

Speaking of which, it's wildly unlikely, of course, that Trump and Mitch McConnell will pass the kind of spending package we really need. Republicans will continue to do the absolute wrong thing by rushing to end stay-at-home orders, triggering all the accompanying downsides, killing more people while damaging the economy well beyond the damage that would have been created by simply staying at home. They have, however, already approved $2 trillion in stimulus, so perhaps that — along with poll numbers that suggest a GOP bloodbath in the fall — will change their minds. Despite what the protesters and Fox News are saying, I'm not sure the Republican leadership is all that willing to sacrifice their own voters for the sake of the deficit. Given that Trump's and McConnell's deficit before the pandemic had already topped $1 trillion, that doesn't appear to matter much to them anyway.

But today, right damn now, we're all being crushed inside a relentless trash compactor, stuck between human suffering and economic suffering — the choice between staying at home to save lives or returning to work to save the economy. Another massive economic stimulus, perhaps comparable in 2020 dollars to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, will stop the walls from closing in. By spending our way out of the crisis, Trump's false choice between the "cure" and the "problem" is resolved, by allowing the "cure" to mitigate both the health crisis and the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the downside — the cost of the cure — can be addressed once we're out of danger. If we do the right thing now, while we still can, we'll be out of danger sooner than later.

And problem solved.