In a recent interview with Eater, San Francisco restaurant owner Pim Techamuanvivit articulated the bind she currently finds herself in: The pandemic has cratered her business at the same time that it’s made her staff’s continued employment—their salaries, their health insurance—that much more urgent. It’s an impossible situation. “I don’t understand why it’s up to me as a small-business owner to search my conscience every month to decide whether or not to support my employees,” she said. “Where is the conscience of this government, of this social system to support people? Where is the conscience of the country?”
Her point applies beyond just her industry. There is no way that business owners, or individual workers or consumers, can fix the crisis. We’ve been forced into this untenable situation by government incompetence and outright malice. And things are about to get much, much worse.
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