Borrowing from buddy Dickens "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Though I think after 9? 10? Infinite weeks of quarantine it is difficult to pick out the little sugar cubes of happy in the oceans of castor oil. We've been taking our medicine, grudgingly but faithfully for the most part. Some have risen to heroic proportions and others have been whining about getting their hair cut. I think we can all just pony up the extra locks and man bun for a little while more.
Maybe I just want our complaints to be for something more substantial. Wait staff, bartenders, maintenance workers who normally live paycheck to paycheck while facing an overwhelmed unemployment system are acutely desperate. Then they must endure being browbeat by the comfortably ensconced millionaires in Washington complaining that "workers" will not want to go back to work because they are getting too much money on "welfare" (unemployment). I decree those DC fools should be the first to go forward into the front lines of commerce. Let the rest of us know when it's safe to go to work and NOT DIE!
"We can leave it to people doing the right thing; we don't need the "granny state" to over-protect us" is the rallying cry. Then ask the woman whose sleeve was used as a tissue or the dead security guard's family if being soiled or killed for asking people to follow the rules has proven just how well we do the right thing. That only works if we actually act like adults and give a flying bat crap about other human beings.
$15 for manual labor is too much. Too much for whom? When rent runs $2000 a month, car payments and utilities take another chunk and then we need food, clothes, child care, medical care, medicine; at what point is it too much? We do not all have the luxury or advantages or mental acuity to tackle higher education nor should we have to trying to survive in this country. Comparing a fast food worker $15 wage as being similar to wages paid a paramedic should only tell you one thing. Paramedics are grossly underpaid as well. But, no worries it's only your life.
The concept that all workers should had six months of wages tucked aside in case of an emergency is ludicrous when in reality most need every cent just to survive, forget luxury. Oddly enough, multiple sources have indicated that the top 1% made even more money since the beginning of the year. Funny how that works.
But we generalize and tell stories about a person or group of individuals we know who live off "welfare" paid for by the proverbial sweat of my brow. Anecdotal and extreme examples that somehow justify the "haves" that they are the "good guys" even though they hold all the wealth. They in turn have managed to convince the middle that they are paying for the poor and how much we should resent it.
Meanwhile the owners raise prices, stagnate wages, destroy unions, lay off workers and move their production and profits off shore. Yet it's the poor bum on "welfare" or "unemployment" who is to blame for the economic problems and woes of the middle class. Interesting. Medical and child care for all and a living wage does not sound so far-fetched after all, in my humble opinion.
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