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> We can easily get through this is we want to. Skip a vacation, but a luxury item less... Wow that is pretty out of touch with reality. If you have a househol

> We can easily get through this is we want to. Skip a vacation, but a luxury item less... Wow that is pretty out of touch with reality. If you have a household where two people were all of a sudden out of a job at the same time with absolutely no warning or preparation, having to pay for two kids, a mortgage and no prospect to find a job in the next few months then I'm afraid skipping a vacation or not buying a luxury item will not cut it! And this shit doesn't just happen to the poor. If you are a restaurant manager on a high salary but all of a sudden the restaurants are forced by the government to be closed and before they are allowed to open again might have gone bankrupt, and the other person is in a high paying office job (fashion buyer for a big brand) and has been sacked because the entire fashion industry is having a fucking heart attack now then both people might be out of work for nearly a whole year before they can get back to anything like what happened before our governments decided to completely shred our livelihoods to the grounds for some yet known overall good. These people will be fucked for years and can be lucky if they are not going to loose their homes, get divorced and become alcoholics.

mcv 7y ago
Sure, but that's why we need to take care of each other. Poor countries may not be able to, but wealthy countries absolutely are. Of course choices need to be made, but the choice not to help out those who are hit hardest by this, is a political choice. It's not an inability to help. Of course there are countries, like the US, that seem eager to fuck this up, but again, that's a political choice. There's no doubt that the US has the economic capacity to get through this if it wants to. The problem is that its political class has other priorities. In Netherland, people who lose their job still get paid. Restaurants survive by switching to delivery. Some companies may go bankrupt, many people will have to take a step back in their lifestyle, but overall, life here has been pretty good, and we have that leeway to make that step back. That doesn't mean nothing will change once this is over; I think and hope a lot of people will reassess what's important. I hope we'll pay the people in these "essential jobs" better than we've done so far. And I hope people will learn to appreciate the essentials of life more and be less eager to get back into the rat race of status and useless crap. But we do have a lot of useless crap in our society that we can easily cut back on without letting anyone fall through the cracks. In western Europe at least. I'm well aware that some other countries love rugged individualism for the poor and care more about bailing out the rich. But again, that's a political choice.

mcv 7y ago

Sure, but that's why we need to take care of each other. Poor countries may not be able to, but wealthy countries absolutely are. Of course choices need to be made, but the choice not to help out those who are hit hardest by this, is a political choice. It's not an inability to help. Of course there are countries, like the US, that seem eager to fuck this up, but again, that's a political choice. There's no doubt that the US has the economic capacity to get through this if it wants to. The problem is that its political class has other priorities. In Netherland, people who lose their job still get paid. Restaurants survive by switching to delivery. Some companies may go bankrupt, many people will have to take a step back in their lifestyle, but overall, life here has been pretty good, and we have that leeway to make that step back. That doesn't mean nothing will change once this is over; I think and hope a lot of people will reassess what's important. I hope we'll pay the people in these "essential jobs" better than we've done so far. And I hope people will learn to appreciate the essentials of life more and be less eager to get back into the rat race of status and useless crap. But we do have a lot of useless crap in our society that we can easily cut back on without letting anyone fall through the cracks. In western Europe at least. I'm well aware that some other countries love rugged individualism for the poor and care more about bailing out the rich. But again, that's a political choice.