What if we didn’t have to panic?
I’m going to jump on the COVID-19 bandwagon, but from a different perspective, and I don’t care if people have an issue with me making this crisis political because it IS political.
Healthcare
One of the biggest concerns with this crisis is not how many people the virus actually kills, and clearly that is a concern, but it’s the impact on healthcare systems. The more people infected, the more people that will require in hospital care. That relates directly to the number of nurses, doctors, hospital beds, and supplies that are available for other things.
You are seeing too many people saying “it won’t hurt me, I will probably beat it because I’m young, healthy, whatever”. What happens to your young healthy ass if you’re in a car accident and all the hospital beds are taken by people with COVID-19?
So political point number one. Our healthcare systems are inadequate. Even in a country with sort of good healthcare like Canada we are not prepared for something like this.
Centre and right wing governments keep freezing, or reducing the money we put into healthcare. Yet somehow both invest more and more into tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Where are those people now that we are in a crisis? Where are the CEOs that are putting their lives on the line to ensure our grocery stores are stocked?
Wages and Income
Many of the people risking their lives working right now are minimum wage workers. Now to be fair, I am sure many of them wouldn’t be working if they didn’t absolutely have to, but that is sort of the point.
“Why should a burger flipper or shelf stocker make as much as someone ‘more important’ they’re just entry level jobs”.
They’re pretty important jobs right now aren’t they? And life threatening ones no less. This idea that human worth should be based on income, or skill set is vile. They are human beings and that is all that should matter. We should all be guaranteed health and happiness.
Why do we idolize the rich and vilify the poor? The rich don’t support or benefit the economy, quite the opposite actually. It’s time to ensure every working person receives a living wage. Every. Single. One. And not a base existence wage, a LIVING wage. Living includes food, rent or mortgage, utilities and yes entertainment.
While we’re at it
I want to correct my last statement and remove the “working person” qualification.
We are living in times where more and more jobs are being automated and there are fewer “entry level jobs” as a result. This should be a boon for humanity, a time to celebrate! We should be allowed to spend less time working and more time living!
But we don’t. That isn’t how our societies and governments work.
Right now automation is scary. It means more unemployed, more poverty, more fear. How have we gotten to this point? Where taking manual labour off of the backs of humans actually means a greater wealth disparity and more poverty?
The solution is simple. Basic Minimum Income. Take those profits, stop giving it back in tax cuts for people that don’t need it, and give it to people. Real people. ALL people. Hey if they don’t want to work (by the way that is a fallacy propagated by the wealthy that is proven to be false) who cares? If Bob down the street wants to just live off his BMI and budgets to be able to do that who cares? How does it hurt you? If Mary down the street wants to flip burgers to supplement that income and have a bit more cash, awesome! Maybe Sally really likes building furniture and starts a small business doing that because she can afford not to work for some shitty corporation at a low wage, well that contributes to the economy!
How does this relate to COVID-19? If we had this in place right now we wouldn’t need emergency measures, people wouldn’t be panicking about being homeless or being able to buy food or keep the lights on.
We would be able to focus on what is important, which is protecting ourselves and our loved ones (and everyone else too!).
Eat the Rich, I hear they taste like chicken!
But seriously, the wage gap is growing exponentially. We have people in the world that have more money than they could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes, while many millions are struggling to eat and pay rent at the same time. And this problem gets worse every year.
No millionaire or billionaire is “self made” that is another fallacy. Every one of them, in one way or another, has benefited from society and every one of them has benefited from the work of others. They didn’t “earn it”.
The one possible upside to this crisis is having people actually open their eyes to what has been going on for far too long. We should be looking at how much of a mess society is, how many people are absolutely terrified about their futures. We should be looking at how our governments are reacting, scrambling to find ways to make sure people can survive this.
The question we should be asking is why didn’t they care if we could survive before the crisis? Why are they scrambling now to find solutions, but literally didn’t care before? They’ve had the tools to ensure every human being can have what they need all along. They just didn’t care.
So open your eyes to what has been going on, ask the questions why the survival of so many people is on the line now and why our governments required a pandemic to do anything.
Ask yourself what happens when we finally get COVID-19 under control, and ask yourself if going back to the status quo will be good enough.
It won’t be for me.
