Items

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  2021-07-05

  Lockdowns Were a Gift to Big Business Designed to Kill Small Biz

  This is an opinion piece by Carol Roth for the New York Post. This news story is about ways in which the lockdowns in 2020/2021 hurt small businesses, but helped big businesses. Roth claims that during the pandemic, small businesses are hitting half or less than half of their pre-lockdown revenue. Some businesses, Roth claims, possibly won’t recover at all. This article says that in 2020, the Hamilton Project accounted for 400,000 closures. I find this article to be important, as I think the business side of the pandemic needs to be told more, as these effects on small businesses impact the local and state economies, in addition to what jobs are available for people looking to go back to work after lockdowns end.
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  2020-10-05

  Who Received Pandemic Money?

  This article shows how the economic bailouts of the pandemic helped large corporations much more than they helped impacted individuals. Since the beginning, we've seemingly been supporting and encouraging essential workers. The support can be identified as fraudulent because according to the Washington Post, big companies that employ essential workers didn't use their bailout funds to support their workers. Billions of dollars went out but aid is still running low where it matters the most, with hardworking citizens.
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  2021-04-03

  Big business, bigger crowds.

  This is a tweet from Toronto Ontario which depicts an absolutely massive group of people crowding outside of an Ikea in North York. Just this week, Ontario has seen a massive spike in coronavirus cases, which has prompted the province into another shock lockdown. However, it is apparent that these restrictions are somehow not applicable to big business. Rather, this Tweet touches upon another important feature of the pandemic and the Canadian ‘lockdown.’ Smaller businesses have been forced to pay out of pocket for the adequate infrastructure to remain open during a pandemic, and in many cases have been forced to shut down when ordered to by the province. However, with each passing lockdown it becomes more apparent that these rules, restrictions, and realities do not apply to the larger corporations and super-stores such as Ikea and Wal-Mart. Larger companies can afford to take the fines, they can afford the infrastructure, PPE and much more – smaller businesses simply cannot operate in these conditions, and there has been insufficient aid to make sure that these smaller businesses, their owners and employees are properly protected. And while cases continue to rise, and smaller businesses are forced to close; it makes little sense to give a free pass to these large transnational multi-million dollar companies.