Lately, the divided state of America has been rather self-evident. The Presidential election’s over, but roughly half the country is happy, the other half unhappy. Meanwhile, lots of pundit types are furiously analyzing and predicting, so I will offer my 2 cents, too. Five cents, actually.
When I say the election’s over, I am implying that I don’t give any weight to the various legal allegations of fraud and a “rigged” election the President and other Republicans have been tossing around in the week or so since voting ended. Take it from a lawyer, there’s a big difference between having enough information sufficient to allow you to Tweet or hold a press conference, where rumors or even speculation will do, and having enough information sufficient to prove, or even properly allege, a legal case to a judge. If I turn out to be wrong, I will admit it loudly in a future column, and as penance will tell embarrassing stories about myself, such as why I had to take my driver’s license test three times.
1. COVID STILL HERE: The pandemic is still here, and at press time was growing larger than it has ever been. President-elect Joe Biden has said he’d take aggressive action against it and has already named his own task force. There’s a lot of attention to its effects on businesses, in addition to effects on health.
Interestingly, although the COVID-19 pandemic shut down or damaged many businesses of various types and sizes, many contract packaging and manufacturing businesses have found their business increasing during recent months, probably due to upticks in stay-at-home activities and meals, online gifting, consumers stocking up in preparation for possible shortages, and other influences. Industry data has shown an increase in contract packaging and manufacturing of 11.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate over the last five years, including the pandemic era.
2. NEW LAWS? ONLY MAYBE: Biden has already emphasized that he will take a different approach to addressing various topics, including environmental, infrastructure, taxes, and COVID, but if any of his plans require new or different laws, that is, Congressional action, and thus he’s probably dreaming. I don’t expect the still-Republican-controlled U.S. Senate to become suddenly cooperative with Democrats. There’s some chance the two runoff elections in Georgia, set for early January, could shift control of the Senate to Democrats, and if that happens, new laws become more of a possibility.
3. NEW REGULATIONS? MORE LIKELY: If it’s changes to regulations that Biden wants, he’ll have more ability to make those than changes to laws. It’s always a good idea to eliminate or change regulatory programs that aren’t effective. My pet peeve with the often-touted Trump program to “reduce regulations” was that it spoke about regulations as if they were pests that are always bad for business and for people, so that simply cutting the number of them was a good idea, regardless of what they did or why they were made in the first place.
