Dear Politicians, why are you at war with your constituents? Are you not tired of seeing the waves of protestors demanding to return to work? Are you not seeing the humongous fiscal cliff you seem to be sprinting toward if you do not resume tax collection ASAP? You are in a desperate need of crisis management!
Welcome back to the JMS blog! Dear Readers, thank you very much for your continued support! As a consulting firm that advises organizations and businesses how to manage crises with efficiency and expediency, the JMS team is all too familiar with the panic you all feel. Thankfully, this blog can help you process any concerns you might have because JMS is in the business of designing recovery plans as robust as possible that avoid behavioral and financial paralysis. Consequently, the JMS team is continuing its special edition Rising From The Ashes The Economic Reboot After Coronavirus series to delineate the policy criteria most relevant as the country attempts to find its way back to economic stability.
Last year this blog published a short article introducing the concept of crisis management. Back then, the most pressing national concern revolved around the tensions between the U.S. and China trade disputes. Today, we are all preoccupied with COVID-19. Isn’t incredible how much has happened in one year?
Did you ever imagine a world in which you, a dutifully elected official, is forced to make decisions that in any other time in history would be considered a violation of the bedrock of the American values you are supposed to be shepherding: the belief that the individual has rights above that of the general society and the government.
Yet, the growing number of protests seen across the country is a sign that taxpayers are disapproving of the way you are handling the economy. How will you defend your actions when the time for re-election comes? Here is the most robust crisis management plan of attack you need to put in place now to successfully regain the public trust and finally set the local economy on the road to recovery.
General speaking, successful crisis management requires a two-part game plan.
In the face of COVID-19, Dear Politicians, your priority should have been to simultaneously stop the catastrophe dead in its track and set recovery parameters tailor-made to the local economy from the moment President Trump declare a national emergency on March 13th, 2020. Your recovery efforts matter just as much as the number of lives you have saved so far! Yet, so many of you are not convincing constituents that you are hard at work planning for a dynamic reopening of the local economy. That’s why so many citizens are protesting! They do not want handouts from the government. They want to work and take care of their families.
This blog understands that you are combating a dual crisis. Indeed, in the last public policy edition, the JMS team highlighted the difficulty of fighting a war on two fronts (public health versus fiscal concerns) on the national scale. To summarize quickly, such a war is extremely challenging to manage because it requires the coordination of policies that operate with divergent timelines. On the one hand, we have public health policies that focus on extending the quality of life for all citizens. On the other hand, we have fiscal policies that aim to stimulate the economy thanks to the allocation of revenue collection (that is our taxes) and expenditure (that is spending such as the big $2 trillion stimulus relief package at the end of March).
This logic is, of course, applicable at the state level as well! Presumably, at the time of the writing of this article, all 50 states have received some form of federal aid to combat the coronavirus and help ease the economic downturn that ensued the mandated drop of business activities. Technically speaking, Dear Politicians, you are not yet operating in the red. Thanks to the received federal aid, you have momentarily averted a budget deficit. But it is coming unless you exert a considerable amount of energy evaluating the most suitable economic scenarios to shore up your tax base!
For this reason, you must communicate with your constituents how you plan to alleviate both public health and economic fears moving forward.
Indeed, the American people have had enough with the imposed social restrictions that have dramatically affected daily living. As it turns out, patience is in short supply when it comes to the perceived infringement on personal liberties, wouldn’t you say Dear Politicians?!!! The protestors are fed up and will continue to rebel against what they judge to be an unconstitutional overreach the longer the lockdowns remain in effect unless you share concrete plans to reopen the local economy!
Consequently, the time has come to share with your constituents the strategic choices you are planning to make as you prepare to reopen your economy. Above all, you must win their trust back if you expect a certain level of compliance to continue through the different stages of your economic rollout. Dear Politicians, you cannot afford to keep them in the dark unless you are ready to see your tax base shrink drastically as significant economic drivers will be threatening to relocate operation out of state. Case in point, at the writing of this article, Elon Musk was considering moving Tesla’s main factory to Texas or Nevada.
So, Dear Politicians, your priorities should be to devise guidelines to reopen the economy per industry that would determine which age group of the population could return to work first. As we can all imagine, social distancing in a hair salon is likely to look vastly different than in a butcher shop or a retail store. Furthermore, it appears that the risk factors of contracting COVID-19 and dying vary vastly between the age groups. Thus, you should carefully consider the health risks for each target population since we are not all equally at risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Indeed, young people (say in their twenties and thirties) are not likely to die from the exposure to COVID-19 at the same alarming rate than say grand-parents in their seventies or even eighties. Dear Politicians, that’s why a rolling age release strategy for workforce reintegration deserves your attention!
If you miss the mark and miscalculate re-entry calibrations, Dear Politicians, you will not have a functioning and prosperous economy. You will continue to have demonstrations since the threat of interminable lockdowns has worn off as taxpayers are making it known that they are longing for a free America! And believe this blog when it warns you that your reelection is in serious jeopardy if you mismanage the economic recovery post coronavirus. Taxpayers will not forgive and certainly won’t forget. Is that a risk you are willing to take?
There you have it, Dear Readers! Thank you for stopping by our blog today. As always, we want to hear from you! Are you frustrated with your constituents? If you could speak directly to them, how would you defend your decisions to prolong lockdowns? How are you planning to inspire trust and compliance? And why should anyone vote for you again?
We also want to hear from taxpayers who are have had enough of the missteps public officials have made. After all, if Sweden managed to keep business as usual about its business throughout the pandemic, the U.S. should be able to reopen its economy today! If you have been protesting the lockdowns, lets us know why (in case we missed anything). If you are a business owner, share with us how trying the last eight weeks have been for you and your employees. What do you want public officials to know, and what are you expecting from them? Tell us all about it in the comment section below, by email at jms@branding24seven.com, or by mail at:
JMStrategy LLC
21 S. 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA, 19107.
We salute the first responders, health professionals, national guard service members, and everyone who has been on the frontline of this crisis. We salute essential personnel who have been working hard to deliver food and medicine for us all. Your courage and dedication are appreciated. Thank you for everything that you are doing.
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