Talks have reached an impasse on the stimulus package that was designed to provide relief in light of the coronavirus shutdowns, and if legacy media is to be trusted, millions of Americans are upset because they aren’t getting a few hundred extra dollars in their bank accounts.

Let’s do something educational today. The following is a mathematical sign:

This symbol means less-than. It is used instead of an equals sign in mathematical expressions where the left side of the expression is of lesser value than the right. When the opposite is true, and the right side of the equation is of lesser value, the symbol is flipped horizontally and is galled a greater-than symbol.

This symbol is called much less-than. The theory behind it is the same as the less-than symbol, but with a bit of a subjective element; it can be used when the difference in quantity is vast, to the point that it’s obvious that the two sides of the expression are nowhere close to equal.

Knowing that, let’s make a comparison. The next coronavirus relief package being considered would deposit $1200 into the bank accounts of Americans. If you, like myself, are accustomed to living marginally, you’re imagining all the macaroni and cheese you can buy with all that money.

Otherwise, that 72 inch TV that you’ve been eyeing has come into your crosshairs.

It would seems like $1200 is a lot of money, but there’s a reason I brought the less-than sign into this; we’re going to make a comparison. The poverty level for the 48 contiguous states in the United States is $12,760 (source). Living on that kind of money is not easy, but it’s certainly a lot more reasonable than attempting to live off of the stimulus checks alone. In this case, the less-than symbol is merited, because it’s obvious that the former quantity is lesser than the latter.

Let’s do another comparison. Let’s compare the $1200 number to what a person would make in a year employed at minimum wage, full-time. It varies state-to-state, but assuming the Pennsylvania minimum wage of $7.25 / hour, that comes to about $15,080 dollars per year. Another less-than case where the stimulus package is only of marginal realistic help.

Next, let’s compare the $1200 number to the median household income in the United States for the year 2019. That would be $68,703 (source). In this case, the much less-than sign is merited.

And for anyone curious, the average yearly income for an Electronic Technician is much less than that median household income. Are STEM majors FTW, after all?

It should be obvious at this point that the correct way to deal with the economic damage caused by the coronavirus shutdowns would be to allow businesses to conduct business, so that the people they employ can be compensated for their contributions. Compared to the yearly income of nearly all people gainfully employed in the United States, the coronavirus relief packages are a mere drop in the bucket.

One of the reasons why I tend not to vote Democrat is because I have an understanding of what the economy is, and know how to do simple math, including the direct comparison of quantities. It’s obvious that the left is attempting to court the short-sighted who overestimate their own abilities.

As vexing as it may be, it’s an approach that works, because there are enough dimwits out there to make a difference.

Above is a picture of a dinosaur panicking about the economy when seeing a meteor coming overhead. The joke is that, during a potential extinction-level crisis, the dinosaur is expressing concern for the economy, which is conveyed as though its priorities are misplaced. The joke circulated during the coronavirus epidemic as a jab towards those expressing concern about the state of the economy during an epidemic where people are getting sick, as though their priorities are similarly misplaced.

The fact of the matter that seems lost on many people is that the economy actually is something a person can have a valid concern for in the face of an epidemic. Or any other disaster, for that matter.

This is because “the economy” isn’t just some abstract concept that only smart people and investors in the stock market talk about. In fact, it’s relevant to anyone who manages finances. If you care whether a box of pasta costs $1 or $5, then the concept of an economy is something that’s relevant to you.

The etymology of the word “economy” has its origin in the Greek word “oikonomia”, which refers to the management of wealth and resources in a household. It wasn’t until the 1650s that it referred to the wealth and resources of society as a whole. The word used by English-speaking countries to refer to the concept came to be “economy”.

While it might seem like the concepts of wealth for households and societies are independent of one-another, the fact is, the two are connected. This is because the condition of income for a household is dependent on the state of society, especially considering that in the present-day world, very few people hunt, gather, or cultivate their own food. For that matter, they don’t build their own homes, or manufacture their own automobiles or electronics. Everyone’s prosperity is largely dependent on the rest of society functioning well. That seems truer today than it’s ever been.

When one considers this, they come to the realization that the economy is a valid thing to be concerned about during the outbreak of a contagious disease. Or in the aftermath of a meteor strike, for that matter. Natural disasters or any event that has a significant impact on society has the potential to influence the income of resources for any household that that society hosts. If supply lines are disrupted, homes are likely to notice when there are shortages for certain items deemed “essentials”. Even items not related to the disaster can be quickly cleared from the shelves due to a widespread consensus to value them, as was the case for toilet paper during the initial coronavirus outbreak.

A mere concern about a virus was enough to significantly impact the economy, and households (that went without toilet tissues) felt the impact.

After the initial outbreak, governors decided to enact widespread shutdowns, during which some businesses were closed, and many people lost their jobs. Those who were unable to provide for their families and those who became dependent on government assistance are in a great position to understand the consequences a damaged monetary ecosystem can have on their household!

Ironically, the shutdowns had a more devastating impact on the typical American household than the virus that they were intended to respond to. And because the prosperity of a civilization on one continent affects the prosperity of households on different continents in a way unprecedented in history, the stubborn irresponsibility of governors in the United States can have far-reaching impacts on families thousands of miles away.

Don’t believe me? The UN estimated that more than a quarter-of-a-Billion people face starvation as a consequence of the coronavirus lockdowns. Which is terrible news, unless you’re one of those population-control monsters.

One can easily find a video of a professional athlete having dinner in their large mansion, engaging in platitudes like “we’re in this together”. But in reality, for most people, the situation is far different. Most people don’t have millions of dollars saved up, sprawling estates, and enough food on hand to last for months. The general population has largely given up on saving up for retirement just to get by, only have enough food and money to last a week, and live in small apartments. People at large are dependent on a thriving economy to continue to survive, including those who receive Social Security payments, and missing one week’s pay is usually a disaster.

The dinosaur beholding the meteor would actually be right to be concerned for the state of its economy. After all, the meteor might damage the ecosystem’s capacity for sustaining it.

But if the dinosaur were a leftist, it might instead exclaim:

To have a better understanding of the conditions that sustain your life is to be more in-touch with reality.

In an unusual change of pace, left-wingers are on the victim’s end of a free-speech issue. This one is over a supposedly-offensive panel (pictured above) in a pro-BLM, pro-mask comic.

Running in it’s place was an apology over the offending strip:

Oh wow, they didn’t just censor the panel, they dropped the entire comic. That’s a strong reaction.

So, what was offensive about the panel? Having seen it for myself, it doesn’t seem terribly offensive. There’s multiple layers of humor to be had. For one thing, a woman is pointing out the irony behind a woman wearing a face mask also wearing a shirt that reads, “I can’t breathe”. What’s more, the poor woman wearing the shirt seems taken aback by the ignorance of the woman who didn’t seem to understand the significance of the phrase to the black community.

Of course, it’s apparent that what’s being focused on is the potential for interpretation against the ironic combination of face masks and the “I can’t breathe” slogan. Lately, those on the left have demonstrated themselves as having far thinner skin regarding anything that even has a slight potential for being interpreted as against them, to the point that they’ve called for the censorship of anything that they could determine to be upsetting to them. This has given rise to “cancel culture”, wherein people start digging into the past of content creators to find a pretext for getting them censored, perhaps even costing them their jobs. An early victim was James Gunn, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy.

On the surface, it would seem that cancel culture is driven by the desire to fight injustice. In reality, cancel culture is driven by the desire to destroy. When people are young, they have a lot of restless energy, but usually no direction or outlet for their energy. Therefore, many of them will seek to bring about a change, just to have seen it come about knowing that they were the ones who made it happen. The man who destroyed the temple of Diana did so for no other reason than to be remembered for doing so. Somewhere out there, there’s someone who knows that he was the one who got James Gunn fired, and all he had to do was find an old social media post that could be used to make him look bad.

That’s the kind of cheap sense of empowerment that cancel culture hungers for, as they enable under-employed content consumers to think to themselves, “I can ruin the life of someone more accomplished than myself, and I don’t even have to drag my distended paunch from beneath my Chromebook.”

Intersectional causes are a powerful weapon in the hands of cancel culture, as they take on left-wing causes to try to get content creators canceled, and media companies don’t seem to have the nerve to resist. Seeing that it’s playing into their hands, leftists aren’t doing very much to address cancel culture for the threat that it is, but instead feed into it, believing they stand to benefit from the efforts of armchair activists.

Now that cancel culture is turning on leftists themselves, it’s interesting to see the leftists that previously fed into it complaining on free speech issues. As sad as it may be, they manufactured the conditions of their own plight.

What goes around, comes around.