Remembering how people work

Or how they get paid, actually.

For a long time, this blog has had a Wednesday post called "Mid Week At Work".  In that post we usually take a look at a job from the past, although sometimes they're a current item.  This time, its very much a current item.

What I'm not commenting on is the comments the President made earlier this week expressing the view that sometime around Easter he hoped to have the country back to work.  That's been controversial (Wyoming Congressman Liz Cheney, who counters President Trump a fair amount, came out with a statement saying we should listen to the medical experts, no matter what they say).  I'm not going to chip in on that and that would be a long post indeed.

Rather, what I'm going to comment on is the ill informed snottiness that circulates in some circles on this topic.

Now, first of all let me note that I have a Twitter account.  I have it solely to link in stuff from here to there in the thought that some folks who read it there will come back here. That's about it.  But the fact that I have one and that I've followed a few people, mostly agriculturalist and historians, means that I get to read a lot of ill informed drivel that some people will post.

Likewise, the same is true on Facebook.

Indeed, on Facebook a very nice man I've known for decades now posts daily posts about how the COVID 19 epidemic isn't really real.  I've seen other posts claiming the whole thing is a hoax.  It isn't.  It's a real pandemic.  People are really going to die. And while I myself was skeptical about the need to shut the entire country down at first, I think that's now been well established for this period we are in, which is most a state matter and not a Federal matter.

Okay, now with that background I now see people debating the "quarantine in place" policies, some of which were ordered in some places and others which have been self imposed.  For reasons I'll detail, later, maybe, in another post, I've been reluctantly on one the past several days myself.

Anyhow, with the President's comments there are now quite a few comments around about the need for the country to get back to work.  I saw one in the local paper this morning in a letter to the editor.  These comments vary in type and nature, but basically what they state is that if this keeps on we're going to destroy the economy (assuming we haven't already) and that is a disaster of such magnitude that it'd be better to ramp the economy back up and hope for the best and accept the risk that entails.

Now that can be debated one way or another, and I don't intend to do that. Rather, I'm commenting on the Twitter type comments of the opposite nature which just fly off the handle, which typically take this tone:

OH MY GOSH, you stupid selfish bastard, I'm self quarantining if our forefathers were able to handle World War Two, we can handle this, you genocidal madman.

Again, take that type of comment for what you will, but I'm tending to note that they are often posted by people who have jobs that are highly secure and if they sit on their butts inside their homes for weeks, it isn't going to really matter to them, or they work in an occupation, like I do, where work can continue, at least for awhile, from your home.

And that's the point to be noted here.

Note everyone has these kinds of jobs.

Waiters, bartenders, and the like don't.  If they aren't on location and picking up tips, they're going broke, and they don't do very well to start with.  Their employers probably don't keep paying them as they can't afford to.  And even if they are, they aren't picking up their tip income, as they never did.  This would be true for taxi drivers as well.

Some members of our economy do piece work, like mechanics.  People tend not to know this, but most automobile mechanics are paid by the job they perform based upon the average amount of time it takes to do it, they aren't paid by the hour.  And they aren't the only members of the economy who do piece work.

Lots of people in the modern economy work in the gig sector of the economy.  Uber drivers are probably the classic example.  They only make money if they are driving.  If they take a day off, they aren't paid. . . at all.  Right now, they're making no money whatsoever.

Uber drivers are an example of independent contractors, and there are a actually a huge number of independent contractors in the modern world.  A guy may be wearing the XYZ Oil Company hard hat at work, but he may very well be an independent contractor for them.  If he's not working, he's not getting paid.  He's not even easily eligible for unemployment as his is, after all, self employed.

Indeed, if you look at the State of Wyoming's closure list, it's pretty much a laundry list of those who can least afford a disruption in their regular employment states. Those people are taking a pounding.

The point?

When people get on their high horses, safe in their university research assistant position which is paid for by the state, whose pay is the same marching or fighting, they ought to recall that many people don't work that way.  There really are people who will go from getting by, to not getting by, to out the door, to homeless.  Many thousands more will have months and months to make up for this disaster.

This doesn't mean that orders should be lifted or lengthened.  It means that if you are sitting in your apartment secure and sound with the next three months off from the University of Land Grant, you ought to look across the city and remember there are a lot of people sitting in apartments right now worried how they're going to pay for the rent on April 1.  It's all well and good to compare you sitting at home to service in World War Two, but remember that the comparison you are making is to occupying a position in the Bureau of Statistics during the war, while urging that others hit the beaches at Tarawa.  You aren't, they are.

Does that make Trump's point?  No. Sacrifices are uneven.  But we should at least be aware they exist.