State of some Nations in COVID-19 aftermath
Likely entertainment expenditure limits on gaming industry revenue
There is no other reason for most of us to look at the US on most issues, and no other than the old adage that says, “if the US sneezes the World catches a cold,” to check how matters develop worldwide.
However, as COVID-19 unfolds, the current US administration doesn’t help the nation by having a poor and late response to the pandemic threat, with seemingly bad information that is not best served in places with poor internet communications.
“Access to the internet is better in Bahrain and Brunei than it is in the US,” writes Mona Chalabi (The Guardian 06/04), and this great country doesn’t need anyone to play with information that will hurt the economy and health of its people. In his column in the same UK newspaper, the headliner, “Trump’s narcissism has taken a new twist. And now he has American blood on his hands,” is written by Jonathan Freedland, with the damning subtitle: “The US president has been exposed by the coronavirus crisis. The only small comfort for the rest of the world is that he’s not their leader”.
Freedland’s item was written on March 27, when Mr Trump was playing with information, as the world press reported, criticising the US President making disingenuous remarks instead of taking action on the advance of coronavirus. Freedland opened his US nightmare scenario article: “Pity the people of America. They do battle now with one of the greatest challenges in their history, led by a man who is not only among the worst ever occupants of the White House but whose character makes him the last person on the face of the Earth you would nominate to be in charge at this moment. On Thursday the US reached the top of the global league table for coronavirus infections, edging ahead of its closest rival for that honour, China. No law of nature dictated that outcome. Much of it is directly attributable to one dreadful fact: that Donald Trump is president of the United States.”
The rest, as it’s said, is history, as the death toll in the richest country in the world tops14,000 deaths with more than 400,000 cases of coronavirus (Apr 08), with African Americans faring worse in a country deemed to be a “developed economy.” CNN reported that, “Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday that, of the 512 coronavirus deaths so far, more than 70 percent were African American patients, who make up just 32 percent of the state’s population.”
Mona Chalabi adds: “The United States of America, we are told by everyone from the president to the United Nations, is a developed economy. That term, developed economy, sounds like an endpoint, like the man standing upright after a series of hunched and hairy iterations. It’s the contrast that makes the definition – developed economies can only really exist if they are compared to their poorer “developing” counterparts. Covid-19 has merely shown the cracks in a very successful marketing campaign about which category the US falls into.”
And this is where it is important for the gaming industry to check that all will not be hunky dory in the COVID-19 aftermath. Most economies agree that coronavirus will leave a sluggish world that will take time to fully recover.
The AGA big worry
American Gaming Association President and CEO Bill Miller has published worries for the US gaming industry, as Government interim regulatory guidelines issued by the Small Business Administration for the Paycheck Protection Program excluded “small gaming entities and their employees from receiving economic support under the newly-established Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).”
Similarly, in Argentina, the lottery vendors association in Buenos Aires, have asked to be granted small business status (PYME – Spanish for the language acronym) so that economic benefits afforded to PYMES also benefit more 6,000 agencies that support in excess of 20,000 families in the Argentine capital city.
Like the two above, there are many countries where the gaming industry is ignored and, as a consequence, the people who earn a living in that industry. As both countries, US and Argentina, represent developed and developing economies, it is assumed that on the matter of hospital beds per population, the upper hand should be on the former. However, World Health Organization (WHO) statistics show “There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States, with 5.0 in Argentina.” The US also lags behind Argentina on medical doctors with 2.6 per 1,000, and Argentina with 4.0 per 1,000.
The objective of the above data is to show that in post COVID-19, more people are likely to be more protective of their health than before. In the US the lack of medical insurance is evident, with the disproportionately high death toll in Louisiana affecting the poor. This, along with other economic safeguard measures, will greatly impact on the entertainment spend of people, thereby limiting expenditure on gaming and industry revenue.
Progressing developing country
A typical sampler of a progressive developing economy, Peru (16 hospital beds and 1.3 doctors per 1,000), is acting with better prospects for small companies in post COVID-19, with the Government officially publishing economic reactivation measures on April 06 with legislation for “Reactiva Peru”.
Aracelli Cáceres Monteza, Principal Partner and Tax Area Director at Estudio Vidal Caceres Gonzalez in Lima, states that the legislation to reactivate the Peruvian economy, “Is a program by which the Peruvian State guarantees finance to all companies, large and small through the Financial System for those requiring replacement of their working capital.” Caceres Monteza adds, “With credits guaranteed through the “Reactiva Peru” Program not exceeding S/. PEN$10 million (US$2.9M), companies will have up to a maximum 48 months to repay facilities.”
When asked whether the “Reactiva Peru” financial programme applied to gaming companies, Nicolas Samohod Rivarola, one of the country’s legal industry experts, said that the law applied to gaming companies in general also, adding: “We believe that during this period of definitions, businesses should advance with examinations and pronouncements on their financial statements. We are here to assist the industry in this, so that you know the best way to prove and demonstrate the economic and financial impact that this global pandemic has caused in the particular case of each company.”
There is no doubt that COVID-19 will expose poor government administration’s statistics and show the true nature of what we term a developed country, which is measured by the false nature of GDP metrics covering a multitude of economic sins.
Chalabi concludes that “GDP per capita is no reliable measure of wellbeing in a country like the US where the richest 5% of people own two-thirds of the national wealth,” and where states like Louisiana really show the true wounds of a country with salient points of a broken economy.
Needless to say, the World state of the nations post COVID-19 will have a very tilted playing field where developed countries will have to do a lot better for its people suffering developing economic disadvantages.
