Who benefits from these widely-hated COVID lockdowns? A year after “15 days to flatten the curve” began our seemingly endless lockdowns, enough data exists to accurately answer this question, as reported on American Thinker.
The rich and professional have not been locked down but the small business owners and lower income Americans–the working class–have been.
Instead of protecting the people really at risk, the Ruling class — the “Zoom” people who can work completely remotely — protected itself, and over half a million people died. Lower-income people working as clerks, delivery people, and other service occupations have been exposing themselves to more COVID risk than the Zoom people could dream of enduring.
Now more of a direct answer to the opening question, Who benefits?
Jeff Bezos (as an individual)—His stock in Amazon, the single biggest beneficiary of lockdowns, is worth billions of dollars more than before the lockdown.
Educated professionals (as a group)—Those able to work from home via Zoom and other internet-based services who are able to afford home delivery.
Government workers (as a group)—The base of the democrat party has not missed any paychecks, for the most part.
Unionized teachers in public schools (as a group)—-Members of the lower-income tier of educated professionals, still have not gone to work in schools in many places, as their unions scheme to use taxpayer relief dollars to pay them bonuses for trips to Hawaii and other goodies.
And who in America have been on the losing end of the lockdown?
Small business owners and their employees (as a group)—The bedrock base of the GOP has been severely damaged and even bankrupted in mass numbers.
Lower income and hourly wage earners (as a group)—The people from throughout a number of skilled and semi-skilled specialties who have had their hours cut tremendously due business reductions.
Food and beverage service owners and employees (as a group)–Restaurants, bars, eat-in specialty shops have had to close and/or limit their clientele to smaller numbers or carry out only.
One study conducted on the economic impact of COVID by Oxfam International identified some sad yet revealing details. As a hint, Oxfam named COVID-19 the “The Inequality Virus.”
The report shows that COVID-19 has the potential to increase economic inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began over a century ago. Rising inequality means it could take at least 14 times longer for the number of people living in poverty to return to pre-pandemic levels than it took for the fortunes of the top 1,000, mostly white male, billionaires to bounce back.
The world’s ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began — more than enough to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone and to ensure no one is pushed into poverty by the pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic has ushered in the worst job crisis in over 90 years with hundreds of millions of people now underemployed or out of work.
Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, has a Twitter account full of interesting statistics.
In April last year, he advised that locking down the entire society made no sense, because most age groups are at little risk of mortality from COVID.
Final note, why is it that Republican governors like DeSantis (FL) do a better job of protecting the welfare of the working class than democrats like Cuomo (NY), Newsome (CA), and Whitmer (MI)?
America’s progressives, when forced to choose between strengthening arbitrary state power and protecting the lower-income working classes, seem to choose government power.
Also progressives are elitists who believe they are better, smarter, and more virtuous and should tell everyone else how to live.
Last question, where would you prefer to live, a Red state or a Blue state? Those of us living in Red states have not experienced the extent of lockdowns as severely as those living in Blue states. Also, Red states have performed better at avoiding the economically crippling lockdowns and have done at least as well as Blue states when it comes to COVID-related mortality rates.
