What’s wrong with this picture? Everything
Author: Gladwyn d'Souza | Category: Environment | Food | Health | Date: 05-30-2020
Really! We need to open the economy? It's the only thing that matters? The whole economic focus is very fascistic and the media has been silent. These trump fanatics are saying people must die without care because the deplorables need the poverty wages from the exploitive economy to pay their rent. They assume that the climate destroying worker decentralized toxic economy of the past is the best thing we can go back to. It's in critical need of being bailed out and saved.
That is wrong on many levels. Workers should have bargaining rights over their safety and the ability to sue for safety violations- the Loser Of The Popular Vote can’t just order sick workers back on the Mad Cow Disease slaughter line. In a zoonotic pandemic no less! Wages should be fair and livable. The huge corporate bailouts in the stimulus package, on a per capita basis, if repurposed, work out to $13,000 per person or $52,000/- for my family of four which goes a long way toward paying for rent, food, and health care bills. We need a different economy that is more resilient locally so that PPE and masks are not contraband, difficult to exchange, when guns and cars are easier to obtain. Clean air, water and nutritious food must be basic civil rights along with Medicare For All. Because it’s in our common social interest to not spread the virus among our parents and grandparents. How we get to that level of a social safety net is a critical aspect of the care crisis visible today and our challenge for tomorrow.
Worse, the politicians who never gave a damn about minimum wages or living wages are now suddenly arguing for preventing poverty! They’ve exploited these workers before and are not speaking up against the horrible conditions they are being forced to work in by being tagged as essential. And the media is giving them credence under the rubric that the virus has created special conditions which needs old fashioned business to solve. The same old business that hasn’t figured out how to supply masks and ppe? Give me a break.
The story should be the 36 million who stayed sheltered in place and flattened the curve. The question should be why we flattened the curve and didn’t Zero The Curve. The focus should be on what’s happening in S. Korea, Taiwan, and even Germany toward controlling the impact of the virus on society and their economies. The media needs to say how those societies have zeroed the curve to illustrate that it’s doable and on a third world budget and that competent leadership can do wonders. Otherwise we are absolving our leadership of the moral consequences for the inability to use science and simple technology effectively. Everything that's wrong socially, economically, and environmentally is summarized in that picture. The media have given a bullhorn to the fanatics- they are engaging in fringe amplification. Write a letter to the editor.
About: Gladwyn d'Souza
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