Monday 27 April 2020

Social Justice COVID Classism

Regarding SJWs and coronavirus... Has anyone else noticed that we have created two classes of people here? Those whose health and lives we deem it acceptable to risk, and those who deserve total protection at the expense of the former? And that expense is not only in risk to health and life, mind you. It's also in the tax burden. Health workers (except in the US, and even that is complicated) are net tax consumers, not net tax contributors, so I'm sorry, they aren't the people who will inevitably foot the financial cost of this. White collar people who can work from home? They have the privilege of earning money while staying safe.

These groups are carrying their weight, but one is immune from the tax burden, the other immunized against the risks. But it is private sector workers who are deemed essential, many of them in low-wage jobs, who are bearing a double burden right now. My daughter is one of these, paying in both risk and taxes so that others can collect tax dollars and not face that risk. Every day she puts on her steel-toed boots, rides the bus to work, and unloads trucks at Walmart. And I'm sorry, but she'd rather have mandatory hazard pay, or her income taxes waived, or even a "coronavirus essential worker tax credit" than all the blathering and virtue signalling about how much everyone appreciates the courage and sacrifice of essential workers. Half our country is sitting on its asses (many of them involuntarily) being served by her labor and her tax dollars, all while the bill for this gets bigger and bigger. She's 23. She had inherited $30,000+ of government debt burden before she filled her first diaper. I shudder to think what that sum is now, or will be at the end of this.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not whining about it. I'm glad her work was deemed essential so she could remain employed, unlike my son. Honest work is good for the soul, and neither she nor I are particularly worried about her getting sick (she takes precautions, and is not in the demographics most at risk).

But I do think it's odd that every person on social media with preferred pronouns in their profiles appears to be supporting the lockdown and resisting lifting or easing it, despite the fact that it has created an arguably exploited underclass of high-risk, often low-paid workers who are essentially (pun intended) left carrying the entire bag for the rest of us.

To a great extent, the people in the US and Canada begging for restrictions to be eased are those who put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. They know there is risk, they're willing to shoulder it, and the government is telling them no.

It is the elites who are telling us it's too soon, despite the fact that they've already deemed my daughter's life expendable because her work is vital in maintaining the very measures that are killing her future with a massive government debt load combined with an intentionally annihilated economy that may take decades to recover.

It was mostly young, working age people who died during the Spanish flu pandemic.

With COVID, some 75% of the deaths are in people 65 and older, 50% in people 80 and older. The disastrous, long-lasting, perhaps permanent effects on the young, on our children and grandchildren, will not be inflicted by the virus.

They will be inflicted by us.