By Martin H. Levinson

Everyone is thanking grocery store workers, truck drivers, first responders, health care workers, and others for providing essential services to the public during the Covid-19 coronavirus fight. And that makes sense, as these folks are helping to keep the country going. But where’s the love for our nation’s CEOs, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street bankers, who are working 24/7 to keep their fortunes intact? Without these supermen and superwomen, life as we know it will not be worth living once the virus is subdued.

Hey, imagine a world where the average worker isn’t being paid 361 times less than the average CEO; a world where the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2019 aren’t making more than the whole economies of countries like Cyprus, Nicaragua, and the Bahamas; a world where Wall Street bankers are not driving Bentleys and yachting and flying all over the place. Imagine a world where trickle-down economics is a thing of the past and the poor and middle-class have more money to spend on themselves. I can only imagine such a world in a deep-state, socialist, dystopia where health care is guaranteed to all, education is affordable, and climate change is considered real.

The fact is, the business of America is business and to make sure it stays that way America’s CEOs, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street bankers have repaired to their mansions in the Hamptons, palaces in Palm Springs, and luxury country houses to strategize how the economy can get back to the way it was before self-isolation and shelter-in-place directives flattened the Dow Jones curve. That maneuvering is just as, and arguably more, important as delivering food to the elderly and tending to the sick because if the stock market tanks and the economy crashes why bother going on? If you can’t go big game hunting, collect high-end art, and regularly dine out on beluga caviar, white truffles, and Château Mouton Rothschild you might as well be dead. But I digress.

The coronavirus crisis has presented our nation with a public health problem and an economic problem. The health problem is eminently manageable, as the virus in the United States kills mainly old people who don’t have much longer to live anyway. But the economic problem is killing everyone who can’t go to work and support themselves. The only way we can rescue the majority of Americans is to get the economy started again. And who better to do that than America’s CEOs, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street bankers, who know that a great nation’s well-being is measured in dough and dividend checks not hospital admissions and seeing a doctor?

It’s fashionable in some circles to knock the rich and deride the wealth disparity in the US between those who have money and those who don’t. But those who don’t have money can get jobs in grocery stores, driving trucks, and becoming first responders and when pandemics break out they collect lots of applause for making sacrifices and saving lives. Well, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street bankers may have money but in a pandemic no one applauds them for their sacrifices, such as leaving lavish city apartments and condos to escape to places that aren’t virus hotspots. And as to saving lives, our superlative captains of finance and industry are working as hard as they can to save themselves for the betterment of society.

It’s not fair and it’s classist to play favorites in doling out accolades to only those on the frontline wearing masks and gloves. As I have shown, there are folks in the rear equally deserving of our appreciation. So when the contagion ends, and everybody who is not dead or suffering from lasting physical damage goes back to work, I suggest when a limo drives by carrying a CEO, hedge fund manager, or a Wall Street banker that people on the street applaud that car and the eminent personage within. It’s the least we can do to recognize the unsung heroes of the good life.