The Pandemic As Economic Rape

“We are not all in this together”

I’m writing this blog as the MSM has cancelled, dismissed, and made invisible the majority of small business owners who were wiped out financially by government policy in regards to the Sars-Carona virus. I call the economics of the virus DIVOC-91 as the policies are all backwards. I strongly hope that all of those who were decimated by government policy find a way to get their stories out there and perhaps find a way to organize. At this point all the lawyers are on vacation or napping. Maybe it’s just me, but from a legal point of view, based on ethical concerns, people who suffer grievous damage by the action of others should have recourse to compensation via the court system. In my opinion, government policy should have been done on a case by case basis and the primary metric should have been losses. IOW’s, the government should have been held accountable for their actions when it comes to damages done to small business.

Many have understood that the pandemic was politicized and that that politicalization was an attack on small business. In my opinion, the corporate fascist machine views small independent business people as thieves. We steal what should be theirs. If I get a contract painting a house the large corporate painting companies view this as theft. And they can’t abide that and when combined with the fact that the corporate machine has bought government over the last 30 or so years…well, they then found a way or avenue to wipe out their competition–the pandemic.

I felt the effect of the pandemic immediately as work was steady up until March 15th, 2020 when things died immediately for my business. I noted that all the large construction projects all funded by big finance didn’t miss a beat and their job sites were fully staffed–at least from my inquiries to the workers I engaged with upon passing.

My circumstance was unique in that I suffered a nerve injury at work to my neck in December of 2016 and had to rework my business to my new reality. I could no longer do my bread and butter work which was exterior houses and over 2017 to the spring of 2018 I was able to retool my small painting business to where the majority of contracts were interior. This is a primary reason my business was hit so hard as few were willing to invite me into their homes to paint during a global pandemic. And this situation will likely last a decade so it wasn’t a one season decimation of my ability to earn a living on my terms. In short, my business of 12-years was wiped out.

And on to the government *dole. I don’t think the government is dealing with reality in Canada as the Liberal government decided that we can live on $2000.00 a month while they made it illegal to work. I was barely keeping my head above water making about $4000.00 a month on average. It hasn’t seemed to register with the government that if they make it illegal to work and decimate about 50% of someones income…well, small business might not be able to pay their bills–taxes included. In my case, my rent and work-van payments alone were $2000.00 a month and by July I saw the writing on the wall and decided to attempt to mitigate the damage of lost income through the winter of 2020/21 by giving up my apartment of 12-years and moving into my van. To a certain degree my reasoning worked as I didn’t go into debt as much as I could have. But the fact remains that from March 2020 to March 2021 I added about $15,000.00 to my debt liabilities. My income for those 12-months went from about $50,000 to about $10,000. There is an easy causal link here for these losses from a legal point of view so in this case correlation IS causation. This isn’t fuzzy and is clear black and white reasoning. Once again this situation points out who benefitted from this travesty.

By the spring of 2021 I was able to find work but it was in a town where I knew no one and where it turns out that I’ve woken up to a rental nightmare after 12-years. But that’s another blog about turning homes into speculative rent-seeking ventures at the behest and best interests of the moneylenders. But here’s the thing: the company I worked for was an exterior painting company! So I was forced and coerced back into work that I should not have been doing as an injured 61-year old. I also found out that there is a huge difference between living in a van and NOT working, which is some what enjoyable, and living in a van and attempting full time work: next to an impossibility and that any economic systems finds this acceptable is disgraceful. But the moneylenders sell van-life like it’s a reasonable solution to homelessness brought on by shite economics. The end result of this? For the first time in about 35-years I fell off a ladder in June and have suffered a serious injury to my heel and spine. I don’t know if I will recover from this one. So in people’s real lives, and not the one fantasied by governments and their ruling moneylenders, there are serious consequences to terrible economic policies.

In the beginning of the pandemic I did a series of blogs which dealt with the economics of this situation and I coughed up many ideas that could have been implemented to alleviate the economic carnage. All of it dismissed, of course, but I’ll add here that a tax amnesty or Jubilee should have been implemented for small businesses that could prove losses. I’m in the situation now where I have tax liabilities that couldn’t be paid and the government is demanding payment after making it illegal for me to run my business–and wiping it out! I’ve pointed out that there is another entity that does this kind of thing: the mafia! Of course, my new injury situation has made my financial liability situation much worse as WCB pays fixed income at a much lessor rate than normal working wages. This is not something I have a quarrel with, per se, but I’m just pointing out the obvious: one can’t pay bills on a fixed and limited income.

*In my opinion, the CERB should have gone for 12-months and covered the first Canadian winter of a worldwide pandemic. Again, putting people out of work, making them homeless, and then cutting them off from benefits in January was down right mean and unnecessary especially within the added context that the pandemic was also used to line the pockets of the corporate elite. It wasn’t just me that was cut off the newly implemented CRB in January on technicalities as it was obvious from the on-line chatter within comment sections that there were tens-of thousands of other people cut off. I encourage all those people to find a way to tell their stories in the coming years.

Just a note on elections: if they were a farce prior to the pandemic then they are now a total disgrace. Unelected bureaucrats have now taken over government policy. So voting is meaningless under this scenario. A fair warning to all of you voters out there that any majority governments put in power this fall will open the door to the worst and largest lockdowns to date. Although I’ve made the decision to never vote again I suggest thinking seriously about my prediction here.

And on a personal note: modern governments, at least on surface appearance, run on the foundation of materialist ideologies. And although I advocate for a healthy secular super-structure for any society I am not a materialist. The point is that the virus has also been a continued attack on the Christian view of life. I’ll be posting an upcoming blog where I offer evidence that the virus wasn’t random and is an ongoing assault on spiritual (in this case Christian) views on ‘how we should live’ especially when it comes to economics. And make no mistake about it: virus economics is neoliberal policy on crack with the added dose of disaster capitalism wherein the usual suspects used this disaster to once again line their pockets at the expense of the commons with the consent of national governments.

Liked it? Take a second to support 326061 on Patreon!