(Op-ed Article)
LAKELAND – Florida – With California facing many problems and their government using taxes on the rich as their solution (money they could in turn waste anyway) the rich are thinking of leaving. But what happens If they left the whole country altogether?
Many would say this is selfish and they should pay up, but they are successful for a reason, they don’t spend money on things that do not create value or wealth. They are also responsible for a lot of innovations, which may not have happened under restrictive regulations in certain places, but even if we disagree with all this, they are going to do what they are going to do, so we shouldn’t be completely reliant on tax money.
It is also not just the United States that is seeing rich people leave, as many governments have failed to fight Covid-19 and are now sending the bills to wealthy and successful people. So if they aren’t going to pay and your country’s government continues to fight things like the virus and homelessness with billions in tax money, who gets the bill? If you’re a middle-income earner, it could someday be you.
But what if able people were simply more self-sufficient and had prepared for a possible virus, Bill Gates warned of a global pandemic years ago. I remember in 2018 I was literally playing a board game with a friend that was named, ‘Pandemic®’! Strangely later that year without really thinking about it I bought a pack of masks I saw waiting in a queue to buy something in a shop, I simply thought they’d come in handy after playing a board game. I could have been a lot more prepared if I had thought deeply about threats to humanity.
So what’s holding us back now? We just experienced a threat first hand. Yet I still see people going to the store for all their food, often very unsustainable food in terms of climate change, and ordering anything else on Amazon.com. And in the U.S. this is probably where their previous and future stimulus-checks will go. They are at the mercy of big corporations, supply chains, and the government. Other countries are not different. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have left the democratic world in the hands of commercialism.
Now I am not writing today about the pros and cons of these things, or whether you could agree with them or not. What I am saying is why not be more independent? Why not get raspberry jam from the neighbours instead of ordering it on Instacart? Why not make your own bread if you have time, instead of buying it at a corporate chain wrapped in unsustainable packaging? Why not learn some carpentry when you have some spare time on the weekend?
I find myself guilty of not knowing anything about repairing a car, despite being heavily reliant on them whenever I am in the U.S., perhaps the most heavily car-oriented country on Earth. What if I needed to get somewhere while I’m there and repair shops were in lockdown from government orders? Even before the virus, I could never rely on U.S. public transportation, what would I do? Whatever your thoughts on the virus, government response, health, or climate change, it does not hurt to be more independent.
“But what about those who can’t rely on themselves?”. This is a valid point, as there are many without skillsets that allow them to have saved up money in the first place to go stock up on supplies, people with disabilities, and people who do not have time to learn how to grow food.
Firstly as far as growing food goes (the second most important thing for humans behind water) if you are in a family or community the time, effort, and knowledge of you all can be combined to grow food. Also, schools should be teaching organic growing to children, as some countries have started to implement.
As for everyone else, we should be creating a society where unless you are disabled and need tax or charity-money no matter what then you should have a path to self-reliance in the time of a crisis. We should at least create a path for poorer people to stock up on things like toilet paper, and we should create community gardens.
A simple step would be to legally require all apartments to have a balcony for people to grow food on et cetera. All of this would drastically reduce our reliance on tax money from the rich. We should also encourage rich people who are moving away to consider these sorts of initiatives when they make charity donations.
I am sure many would disagree with what I am saying and perhaps make some valid counter-arguments, but here is the thing, I do not believe we have a choice on these matters. The future holds more threats, yet many people think Covid-19 will just end and that will be that, back to the mall to buy clothes, back to relying on universities to teach skills, and back to relying on the bus to get to work in the morning or the airport to visit a family member during the holidays. Even with just the singled-out threat of climate change, someday in the future this simply will not work anymore.
In conclusion, I say that the best chance people can have against a threat is to stay prepared. The virus had people of adequate financial means out scrambling for toilet paper and meat. Why not store toilet paper in advance? Why not eat a more sustainable diet? Why not be at least more prepared than you are now because I can assure you, this virus is not the end of the tale, humanity will face more threats and it doesn’t harm to be a bit more ready for it than we were at the beginning of 2020.
Besides, the fallout from discovering Covid-19 isn’t even the worst time we could face this century, and if that wasn’t enough to make you more self-reliant and prepare, then I don’t know what more I could say.