In my history of living all over these United States, I had the pleasure of experiencing the process of banning smoking in bars/restaurants in Colorado, Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, and New York (and incidentally in the UK too).
In each case the naysayers warned how this would kill the restaurant and bar’s businesses and that nobody would go out any more. And yet in every case they were wrong and in fact the vast majority of businesses thrived after the ban as people who avoided smoky shitholes were now able to go out safely.
But there’s an industry of disinformation purveyors who find receptive ears among reactionary tools (many of whom own small businesses) and just roll out the same tired, lazy, provably incorrect arguments. And as others have mentioned upstream - they are the same people who peddle the laughably incorrect Laffer Curve bullshit, and all the rest of the woefully wrong chicago-school neoliberal hogwash
Wow. Who would have thought giving people more money would lead to them spending more money? I mean, sure, it doesn’t work when you give it to millionaires and billionaires, but that’s because they are greedy fuckers. And yet, the powers that be are more than happy to give it to those “job creators.” Because, cronyism? Something like that.
Seriously. Who is more likely to keep money flowing through the system? Someone barely making ends meet, or someone with millions already in the bank. Fucking hell, when will everyone wake up to the fact that the money hoarders are not the ones we can count on to fix things? They always make it worse.
Worse.
It is indeed awful. Which is why it’s REALLY awful that the minimum wage is still half that all across the country, with plans to drip out increases over the next 10 years, by which time $15/hr will still be poverty level income. It’s also why playing catch-up without actually catching up is barely a baby step toward fixing any damned thing. But at least it’s still forward progress. Of sorts.
