Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death

Tens of millions of Americans are terrified right now. They aren't necessarily scared of contracting a viral disease, they're scared they won't be able to pay the rent or buy groceries.

Here in Providence, up the hill on Thayer St., there is a stretch of several blocks consisting of businesses that survive on the custom of Brown students, faculty and visiting parents. Harvard Square in Cambridge is the same sort of enclave, and there's one or more associated with every university. The people who work there are store clerks, restaurant cooks and servers -- mostly low wage workers.

I've actually been to Anaheim, for a conference at a hotel that mostly exists to serve Disneyland visitors. Now the hotel restaurant workers and housekeepers and other low-wage personnel will lose hours and tips. The Disney theme parks all employ thousands of people, also low wage workers. They live in a residential village that Disney is at pains to hide from the tourists, because it's a typical low income neighborhood with cheap restaurants and auto repair shops and laundromats. Now the Disney workers won't have any money to spend so the businesses that depend on them will lose revenue as well. The part of the neighborhood the tourists do see has higher end restaurants and bars but the people who work there are still making minimum wage and dependent on tips.

Surrounding Boston Garden and Fenway Park, and the arenas and stadiums in every city, are restaurants and bars that survive on the big nights when the team is playing, where the servers and bartenders depend on those big tip nights to pay their rent.

The conference center in every big city -- same thing. Nearby hotels and restaurants and even the CVS depend on convention business. The convention center itself employs hundreds of low wage workers and hosts concessionaires who are now out of business. Airports -- same thing. Also Broadway, and concert venues. Nightclubs. Those scrambling touring musicians, actors, dancers -- all  out of work.

A payroll tax cut won't do you any good if you aren't getting a paycheck, and it won't do you very much good even if you are since it's only a few dollars a week.  Paid sick leave won't do you any good if you're out of work not because your sick, but because your employer doesn't have any business. Unemployment insurance won't do you any good if your restaurant is going broke, and it won't do you much good if you used to work in that restaurant because it will replace only a fraction of your already inadequate income.

Sure, the economic damage will be horrific. A recent survey found that nearly half the people can't come up with $400 for an unexpected expense. Those are the people whose already precarious lives will be smashed. But the social and cultural damage, will be incalculable but devastating. Our society may never be the same.