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| A chart showing "Weekly initial unemployment claims in 2020." Huge spike around March/April. Image source. |
On May 20, I published a post called If You Haven't Been Financially Affected By COVID-19, Donate Your Entire Check. Perhaps you read it and thought, "ah, I haven't been financially affected, but I don't know if I want to donate my whole check... like what if things get worse and then I am financially affected?"
Sure, that's fine. It's good to have money saved for emergencies, and the question of "how do you balance 'saving money for your own hypothetical potential emergencies' with 'donating to strangers who are literally having actual emergencies right now'?" can shake out differently for everyone.
Now it's 6 months later. So, in these 6 months, have you in fact had any COVID-19-related financial troubles? If not, then it's time to go ahead and donate that money.
#ShareMyCheck has some good links for where you can donate to help people with their COVID-19 problems. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog post with other ideas of where to donate.
And ... okay time to get political. I'm not in the US, so maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture correctly, but it seems to me that this is what happened: Before the pandemic, society was humming along, enjoying the entertainment and travel industries. People were happy that those industries existed, and felt it was well worth spending the money for the fun experiences that they provided. Then all the lockdowns happened, and it's not safe to go out and do anything non-essential. So for a lot of businesses whose entire existence depends on people going out and doing non-essential things, their income stream was just completely gone- and society just let that happen. They're on their own, and the people who were laid off as a result are also on their own. A lot of us didn't lose our jobs, and we're able to work from home, and so that's what we're doing, continuing to bring in paychecks, no financial problems at all, and meanwhile the people who had the bad luck of working in an industry that depends on people gathering in non-essential large groups are just screwed. And we just let that happen.
Don't we want there to be a travel industry, even though we can't use it this year? Don't we appreciate the people who made all our fun vacations happen in the past? Don't we want restaurants to continue to exist, even though it's not safe to visit them right now?
It's like a tornado, plowing through and demolishing entire industries, while the rest of us just happened to be standing in a spot that wasn't hit, and therefore we aren't financially affected at all. And we're just ... fine with that?
Doesn't it seem like, logically, society should come together and pool our resources to help those people who, economically and career-wise, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? They perform an important role in our society- it's just that we can't make use of them in 2020 because it's not safe to go out anywhere in crowds of people. But why should a small section of society suffer huge financial losses, lose their jobs, lose their homes, while the rest of us just plug along with our work-from-home jobs and our reliable paychecks?
Shouldn't we get together and pay the salaries of people whose job provides a service that's good and useful but not safe to use during a pandemic?
If only there was some kind of high-level governing body that could pool money from people whose jobs weren't affected and give it to those who were. Some kind of tax, perhaps. Ah but that won't happen in the US, because "that would be socialism", or something. So everyone's just on their own- that's the American way.
Anyway, if you weren't financially affected, donate your $1200 check, and actually, donate more than that.
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