Posted on 12/22/2020 6:46:21 AM PST by Kaslin
Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now?
Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, "The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color."
Politico reported that minorities and the poor have "been more vulnerable to job and income losses from the ensuing economic crisis, in large part because Black and Latino workers are over-represented in the service industries wiped out by shutdowns."
James Parrott, an economist at the New York City New School, said that what the United States is experiencing is "the most lopsided economic event imaginable."
The National Restaurant Association said that 40 to 50 percent of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead if their stores don't reopen immediately. Two of the U.S.'s most iconic restaurants, the 21 Club in Manhattan and the Cliff House in San Francisco, announced they had closed their doors permanently after nearly 100 years of business. As they die, so do hundreds of jobs in these cities. The workers out of work aren't rich. Overall, 15 million middle-income people work for bars and restaurants.
Even Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and arguably the planet's richest man, complained that the lockdowns exacerbate inequality. With tens of billions of dollars of added profits, Amazon has been the world's biggest beneficiary from locking down brick-and-mortar stores.
For once, liberals are spot on.
Lockdowns are crushing the little guy. Even so, it is the Democrats who are pushing this anti-freedom agenda. Here are the 10 states listed by The New York Times with the strictest lockdown orders: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. What do they have in common? Democratic governors.
Liberals love to talk about following the science, but all evidence of the last nine months points to the scientific conclusion that lockdowns do not work to reduce deaths. Contact-tracing studies show that about half of those infected with the coronavirus got it despite staying at home. Only 2 percent of the transmission comes from restaurants, and almost none comes from outdoor dining, which is now idiotically prohibited in California.
The states that have not locked down their economy have lower death rates than New York and New Jersey. The unemployment rate for service workers in these states has skyrocketed to as high as 10%. In contrast, the red states, such as Utah and Florida, that are still open for business have unemployment rates for service workers as low as 4 percent.
Yet lockdowns are supported by politicians, university professors, journalists, technology executives, government employees, preachers, teacher unions and wealthy suburbanites. Their incomes are not in jeopardy. They won't wait in lines for a meal. Would teachers support school closures if they weren't getting a paycheck? How many people get tenure like six-figure salaried university professors who have been inoculated from the lockdowns they cheered on?
I don't see Yentel or many other "low-income advocates" protesting the lockdowns; do you? They think a government stimulus program of $1 trillion will solve the problems of the poor and the unemployed. Handouts are no substitutes for jobs and paychecks. Millions will fall through the cracks in any case.
There is an old joke about a boy who kills his parents and then throws himself on the courts' mercy because he is an orphan. The modern-day version of that story is liberals who have helped burn down the house and then piously complain about rising homelessness.
Arthur Laffer, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman and so many other great economists have always warned us: The poor and minorities are the first victims of anti-growth and boneheaded public policies. Tragically, we are once again learning that lesson.
So, why is the left all in for lockdown policies? These policies are doing just the opposite of what they preach: "rewarding wealth, not work." Perhaps the answer is that the left cares a lot more about power than the poor.
DOH!!!
Everyone needs to ask themselves: Why is income equality a good thing? (Hint: It isn’t.)
The solution is to throw billions and trillions at congress supporters to help things out. Oh and toss 600 to those who have been slightly inconvenienced by being put out of jobs or lively hoods. /s
And that is precisely what every pronouncement, and every "mitigation measure" related to COVID has been, from day one. It amazes me how many people are too incredibly stupid to see this.
The lockdown, and all it's attendant evils, is THE ultimate end run on Democracy.
Insult to injury-everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) involved with the decision for the lockdown was totally avoidable.
The lockdown itself, and all subsequent decisions and events, intentionally and predictably compounds what was a malicious and illegitimate move to begin with. As an American, I have not decided yet if I am more angry than ashamed.
Stupid people continue to vilify the rich in this country but lose sight of the fact that it is the rich who invest in this country and create jobs for the rest of us. How many of you were hired by a poor person? The Democrats think that the only way to improve the standard of living for the poor is to take the money from the rich and give to the poor. That’s so self-defeating it’s not worth comment.
If you have 10% of the pie and I have 15% and the rich have 75%, is the goal to increase the poor’s standard of living or punish the rich? It should be the former. If so, if the rich increase the size of the pie through economic growth the poor and I BOTH experience a rising standard of living. People just don’t understand that a rising tide lifts all boats.
You’re right, of course.
Also, no ‘rich’ entrepreneur got what he did/does because he took someone else’s share.
He worked harder, longer and spent more time, expense and effort in training himself. Also, and this is something no Liberal ever grasps, the entrepreneur literally gambles his fortune and future every day of his life.
He may fail or fold or succeed.... it’s how Capitalism works and it’s the risk he takes with his business.
Much of what he gains, if he’s lucky enough TO gain, goes back into his ‘business’. He builds and grows all the while creating more and more jobs.
Which one of us would put our income and our future on the line daily? Not me!!
They were starting to get uppity. Asking questions like what have the dems really ever done for us. Some were even bold enough to vote for Trump and give them the finger.
This form of growing independence of thought had to be crushed before it could get out of control.
Minorities with jobs can't be really controlled so the only way to get them back on the reservation was to completely destroy those jobs and return them to their masters.
Power? call me shocked
“.... Americans Think Coronavirus Has Killed 30 Million People in the U.S., 225 Times Higher Than Actual Figure Results suggest media alarmism has fanned the flames of hysteria....”
But according to the CDC themselves, the actual death rate from covid is only 6% of the total reported number. The other 94% are from comorbidities or people who died from other causes besides covid and/or people who died with the corona virus but not from its related disease, covid-19.
There have also been significant financial incentives to code deaths from covid, when the the deaths could not be directly attributed to covid.
That would mean that the total reported deaths from covid year-to-date of 300,000, is more like 18,000 covid deaths, a much smaller number than the alarmists are trying to sell to the public.
The fact that the government is paying incentive dollars for every covid reported death undermines the integrity of the death statistics. The politicization of these numbers, along with the onerous over-the-top responses by bureaucrats to a virus that causes a disease that 99.8% of the population recover from or survive, is a real tragedy for the American public.
Our public officials should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve lied to us and tricked people into behavior that is not necessary and may even be more harmful than the virus itself.
CDC director agrees hospitals have monetary incentive to inflate COVID-19 data
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