Posted on 06/18/2021 12:14:52 PM PDT by george76
The picture painted is one of working-class destruction..
Founding father and the second president of the United States John Adams once said that “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” What he meant was that objective, raw numbers don’t lie—and this remains true hundreds of years later.
We just got yet another example. A new data analysis from Harvard University, Brown University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation calculates how different employment levels have been impacted during the pandemic to date. The findings reveal that government lockdown orders devastated workers at the bottom of the financial food chain but left the upper-tier actually better off.
The analysis examined employment levels in January 2020, before the coronavirus spread widely and before lockdown orders and other restrictions on the economy were implemented. It compared them to employment figures from March 31, 2021.
The picture painted by this comparison is one of working-class destruction.
Employment for lower-wage workers, defined as earning less than $27,000 annually, declined by a whopping 23.6 percent over the time period. Employment for middle-wage workers, defined as earning from $27,000 to $60,000, declined by a modest 4.5 percent. However, employment for high-wage workers, defined as earning more than $60,000, actually increased 2.4 percent over the measured time period despite the country’s economic turmoil.
Image Credit: tracktherecovery.org The data are damning. They offer yet another reminder that government lockdowns hurt most those who could least afford it.
Some critics argue that the pandemic, not government lockdowns, are the true source of this economic duress. While there’s no doubt the virus itself played some role, government lockdowns were undoubtedly the single biggest factor. It’s pretty intuitive that ordering people not to patronize businesses and criminalizing peoples’ livelihoods would hurt the economy. This intuition is confirmed by data and studies showing as much. And don’t forget the fact that heavy lockdown states have consistently had much higher unemployment rates than states that took a more laissez-faire approach.
Others might insist that the mitigation of the spread of COVID-19 accomplished by lockdowns justifies this economic fallout. But this argument fails to account for the many peer-reviewed studies showing lockdown orders did not effectively slow the pandemic’s spread, or the painfully inconvenient fact that most COVID-19 spread occurred not in workplaces, restaurants, or gyms but at home. (Making “stay-at-home orders” seem like an astonishing mistake in hindsight.)
So, all lockdowns really seem to have accomplished is at best a mild delay in the pandemic’s trajectory in exchange for a host of lethal unintended consequences such as a mental health crisis and skyrocketing drug overdoses. And, as we now know, a highly regressive economic fallout for the working class.
Of course, Ivy League researchers almost certainly did not intend to expose the failings of big government pandemic policies when they set out to catalog employment data. But, as Adams said, facts are stubborn things.
Socialist are always at war with the middle class.
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Making wage slaves!
Damaging the working class was the only possible outcome of the enacted policies.
You force millions out of work and you allow financial institutions to operate business as usual. The only way to have leveled the playing field was to force the banks to take a 12 month holiday as well. No work, no money, no interest, no late payments. Act like it never happened. But that was never going to happen -
I’d wager you can find lots of FReepers predicting exactly that starting around March 21, 2020.
I didn’t need a study to tell me that.
All I have to do is look around.
Exactly the intended results.
Congress Critter Elites ?
bkmk
Amazon ex wife is giving away billions but the money keeps rolling in from bribing the democrats like Pelosi to shutdown 40% of the stores in this country.
From May of last year so they have many more billions.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/07/11/amazons-jeff-bezos-and-ex-wife-mackenzie-add-combined-22-billion-to-fortunes-in-one-week-walmart-walton/?sh=7f8e805630de
On the bright side we may see plummeting birth rates and more automation. A misanthropes dream!
“unintended consequences”
Unintended? What is the evidence for that?
Accidentally? Yeah, right!
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