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Is a sub gig worth the health of your family?
That main question that has been going through my head as of late, since school has started. I’ve been very lucky to be able to attend schools I know that also happen to have very stringent health protocols. But I won’t go somewhere new, where I don’t know the people or the lay of the land. Even with the familiarity and risk reduction, the chance to be infected isn’t zero.
The other side of the coin is, of course, I’m a big fan of eating and keeping up on the bills that, through some dark magic, continue to arrive and require my fiscal involvement even when deep into a world pandemic.
Being Canadian, I had access to the CERB, which while available provided income to keep the home-fires going and remain safely at home with minimal exposure. I haven’t been more proud of a Canadian Federal government for taking such bold steps to keep its population safe.
Yet, as the second wave comes, the fiscal reality of the government’s finances may dictate that there will be no relief available. It is very possible that the schools, and thus my employment, may become unavailable for an undetermined length of time.
So then given the uncertainty of future work should I take more risks and work now because no work may be the only option open in the future – but if I catch the virus now I may be out for months recuperating with added negative of possibly killing my vulnerable family members.
This sort of risk drenched future is hell on risk averse individuals such as myself.
I’ll do my best and hope that it is enough for whatever scenario we happen to fall into.
*sigh*
The Pandemic is debunking cherished capitalism mythos one weary chestnut at time.
Mark Blythe seems to have a very good grasp of the current political and economic situations we now face. If you want a no bullshit update to the state of the world, watch this.
When people talk about how capitalism raises the tide for all boats my skepticism level begins to slowly creep upward. One must be careful when it comes to describing capitalism as panacea for the world and the world’s poor. from Counterpunch takes aim at a few of the more atrocious lies that the ardent defender of Capital put forth.
“Neoliberals love to quote the World Bank’s rosy statistics about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, those statistics are skewed and manipulated to the point of outright prevarication, as Seth Donnelly demonstrates in his new book, “The Lie of Global Prosperity.” He quotes a breathless World Bank press release, “soon 90 percent of the world’s population will live on $1.90 a day or more.” No matter that translated into local currency at local prices, in many places that $1.90 per day purchases the equivalent of 30 cents a day or that $1.90 per day means the pauperization of billions – for as Donnelly shows, a truer metric of avoiding desperate poverty is over $5 per day. If that far more honest measure is applied, 80 percent of South Asians and sub-Saharan Africans are, Donnelly explains, horribly impoverished. Even more disturbing, achieving a 70-year life expectancy requires $7.40 a day, something the world’s cold and pampered capitalists will certainly not shell out or even allow for the billions of wretchedly poor.
Best exemplifying the World Bank’s ideologically biased poverty measures – biased to glorify capitalism – is how it uses statistics about China. “The free health care, education and food that people received in Mao’s China do not enter into the calculation. As a result, Chinese people, who achieved new levels of food security and saw their life expectancy double in this [Mao’s] period were found to be on the whole ‘extremely poor’…the Chinese only ceased to be ‘extremely poor’ once they lost their collective lands, food rations and medical care and began making iphones and other export goods under atrocious conditions.”
I wasn’t really a part of the economy in the 80’s, but I do seem to remember getting some kick ass savings rates for the filthy lucre stowed away in my junior savings account. Young me, didn’t realize at the time that to get those 15% returns on a savings account what the banks had to be charging on the loans they made.
With jobership and homeownership and adultship all having occurred – I’m more than a little concerned about an upward trend in the prime interest rate, because things that are affordable at 3%ish interest become much more untenable at 15 or 20% interest.
“The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, which means that the folks who borrow from the Fed (which is kind of like the Bank of Canada, and whose customers are other lenders) will now pay in a range from 0.75 per cent to 1 per cent.
Up until Wednesday, the range was as low as 0.5 per cent.
A quarter of a percentage point? Doesn’t sound like much, so no wonder the announcement got overwhelmed by everything else.
Consider this: the Fed’s rate is now double what it is in Canada. It’s very difficult to believe that the decision there will not have a ripple effect that will eventually hit Canadian mortgages and lending rates — and along with them, people who’ve never lived and owed when rates suddenly jack up.
Fed chair Janet Yellen raised interest rates this week, for only the third time since the financial crisis nine years ago. (Reuters)
But let’s think about the decision, which is only — believe it or not — the third time that the Fed has ever raised a rate since the financial crisis that engulfed the world in 2008. (It is, on the other hand, the second hike in three months.)
On the upside, the hike is generally perceived to be an indication of growing strength and optimism in the American marketplace.
“The simple message,” said Fed chair Janet Yellen, who is expected to step down within a year, “is the economy is doing well.”
But what many people in the finance world are expecting is more of the same; that is, more hikes. Another is expected in June, and the Washington Post used the words “more frequent” to describe what the Fed’s hikes will be like from now on.
The purpose of a rate hike, especially while rates have been (when you think about it) remarkably tiny is to keep inflation in check.
But the other side of that coin is what higher rates can do to ordinary consumers, including those on this side of the border.
Rates are a fraction of what they once were
This is where my head has been lately.
It seems to be we’ve had a full generation of consumers that don’t know the piercing agony that comes when interest rates are high, or who might be inclined to believe that what they’re paying now on, say, their credit card bill is high enough.
Moreover, these consumers may not appreciate to what extent that lending rates have, for almost a decade, have been artificially low. (I’m tempted to call them politically low, too, in light of the 2008 crisis.)
What would higher interest rates mean for homeowners, and small businesses? In a tight economy, they could be tricky. (Submitted by Kara O’Keefe)
Now, some history, both provincial and personal: In the early Eighties, interest rates were not just in the double digits, they were above 20 per cent. The recession that came with it was harsh, deep and sweeping in its destruction.
The local impact was crushing, perhaps because there was an ebullient feeling in the wake of the 1979 Hibernia discovery. In 1988, a few years before he died, St. John’s businessman Andrew Crosbie reflected on the wicked boom and bust of the early Eighties.
“We certainly got caught — but I don’t know if it was in the oil euphoria rather than the interest rate euphoria” that caused so much damage to businesses like his own.”
The idea of being ‘caught’ and forced to make unsavoury financial decisions isn’t particularly appealing – and having one’s future rest on the ‘market’ is distinctly unsettling. :/
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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