This is not your mother’s America. (See how non-sexist I
am?) It isn’t even really America anymore. The U.S. federal government has
approved trillions of dollars in stimulus money to be printed and released to
fight the devastating economic effects of the policies it put in place to fight
the spread of the coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-1984. Much of the money
from the massive relief bill was intended to go to small businesses so that
they could try to stay afloat long enough that they could reopen if and when
allowed to by the government that shut them down in the first place.
A good
chunk of the money was to be funneled through the Paycheck Protection Program,
which provides small businesses with forgivable loans to pay up to 8 weeks of
payroll costs, including benefits, so that they can avoid laying off their
employees. However, many business owners are finding that their employees don’t
want to come back to work, as they are being paid more for not working than
they were for working. For example,
Jamie Black-Lewis, a spa owner, told CNBC she obtained loans of $177,000 and
$43,800 so she could retain her 35 employees, naturally assuming they would be
thrilled that they wouldn’t be losing their jobs. Instead, she says, her
largess was met with a “firestorm of hatred.”
Black-Lewis
told the network that many of her hourly employees were angry
because they were preparing to obtain more money through unemployment than they
would get by staying employed. She said that, to their minds, she had taken
away “a windfall” they saw coming. She added, “I couldn’t believe it. On what
planet am I competing with unemployment?”
When
Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was asked about the issue of
employees preferring unemployment money to work, he replied that there was “an
easy solution,” adding that businesses should just pay them more. Everything is
easy when you’re spending other people’s money.
That
was by no means the extent of the lunacy recently exhibited by the economically
illiterate. The most ignorant person ever to serve in the United States
Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), actually called for unemployed
workers to essentially go on strike to protest attempts to get them to go back
to work. In an interview with Anand Giridharadas of the VICE News show “Seat at
the Table,” she stated: “Only in America does the president, when the president
tweets about liberation, does he mean ‘go back to work.’ We have this
discussion about ‘going back’ or ‘reopening’—I think a lot of people should
just say, ‘No, we’re
not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70-hour weeks just
so that we can put food on the table.’”
In a
tweet promoting the show, Giridharadas wrote, “If you’ve been advocating for a general strike amid the
pandemic, @AOC gives your cause a boost in our interview airing tonight.” And
who isn’t advocating for a general strike during an existential economic
crisis in which tens of millions of people have already lost their jobs?
We’ve
gone berserk-- stark raving mad-- due to the stupefying ignorance and unwisdom
of leftists in academia and the media wearing off on too many of us.
Employment
is when people get paid to perform jobs they otherwise wouldn’t do, also known
as “work.” No one has the right to demand more money for not working.
And, note to AOC: You don’t need to strike for the right not to
work. Just don’t work. And really, is it worth suffering the indignities of
work “just so that we can put food on the table?”
You can be idle 168 hours a week.
Just don’t expect to be paid for it.
In fairness, it would be far better
for the country if Gov. Wolf and AOC didn’t have their jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment