Stephen Moore writes at Real Clear Politics about an inconvenient fact for left-of-center supporters of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now?
Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, “The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color.”
Politico reported that minorities and the poor have “been more vulnerable to job and income losses from the ensuing economic crisis, in large part because Black and Latino workers are over-represented in the service industries wiped out by shutdowns.”
James Parrott, an economist at the New York City New School, said that what the United States is experiencing is “the most lopsided economic event imaginable.”
The National Restaurant Association said that 40% to 50% of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead if their stores don’t reopen immediately. Two of the U.S.’s most iconic restaurants, the 21 Club in Manhattan (pictured) and the Cliff House in San Francisco, announced they had closed their doors permanently after nearly 100 years of business. As they die, so do hundreds of jobs in these cities. The workers out of work aren’t rich. Overall, 15 million middle-income people work for bars and restaurants.
Even Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and arguably the planet’s richest man, complained that the lockdowns exacerbate inequality. With tens of billions of dollars of added profits, Amazon has been the world’s biggest beneficiary from locking down brick-and-mortar stores.
For once, liberals are spot on.
Lockdowns are crushing the little guy. Even so, it is the Democrats who are pushing this anti-freedom agenda.
