But IMHO that is symptom of our class society, how separated the classes are.
Not in my case. I live in a rural community that has median family income in the low 30K range. Most employment is solidly blue collar.
I periodically check with the people I know who own the various local retail outlets (hardware store, Safeway, restaurants, banks, real estate, auto parts, Ag supply) and NONE of them claim to have been significantly hurt by the pandemic. Some of them are up sharply, a friend of my wife's has a little fast food joint, and she was running +60% vs 2019! Had to hire more cooks. The hardware store also says they are significantly up from last year. All the stay at home people did fix-it projects around home. My bank manager says biz is up more from last year than the normal growth trend has been. Housing/real estate is up as well.
So somewhere people are hurting, per all the reports, but not from what I can see, and then again, I'm in one of the worst Counties in Oregon, and the infected rate is about 3% in my town, which is significantly above the total US average still below 1%. That is total reported positives.
doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of very needy people out there.
What I'm getting at is that stimulus MUST be used sparing to target those actually poorly off. If I don't seem to know anyone who needs stimulus, than why is it being showered on everyone? Ask yourself that question. |
