The bosses won the pandemic

I'm still finding myself surprised at the speed at which the narrative has moved toward hostility. It's barely even the peak of the health crisis and we are already pivoting to the part where we blame unemployed people for being unemployed.

But in her Kentucky coffee shop, Marietta wasn't looking for someone to cover the cost of idling her employees. She wanted them to keep working. Unfortunately, she says, the $10 to $15 an hour they'd make serving coffee is no match for the new jobless benefits.

"We have these lovely baristas," Marietta said. "They're hardworking individuals. But literally this is the best possible pay of their lives they could possibly get, to be unemployed."

This story, in particular, is stupid because, for one thing, if you don't lay off your employees they aren't eligible for benefits. So, if these coffee shop employees chose to quit rather than keep their ten bucks an hour they would be screwed. It shouldn't work that way, of course. But it does so one wonders what the complaint actually is here.

Second, obviously, nobody should have to work for less than what actually sustains them.  It would be lovely to think that maybe that would be the lesson we could move forward from the crisis with.  But I think we all know the only conclusion we're allowed to draw, as ever, is that the poors are poors because they are lazy.  Always and forever, amen.