Bear with me; I'm riffing off Doug Ford here.
There's an interesting chart on page A10 of the Globe and Mail today, showing that the less you earn, the more likely you are to have lost your job. Half the folks making under $16/hr have lost their jobs. By the time you get to the $50/hr crowd (construction trades, Hydro One) job losses are negligible. The median hourly wage in Doug's province is $24. Needless to say, young workers and recent arrivals are far more likely to find themselves sidelined by the lockdown.
Had occasion to sit in the Zehrs parking lot for a spell this morning, while the Farm Manager scoped out what's on offer at their garden centre. Zehrs is your grocery of choice if you're looking for live lobster. My informal survey revealed that at least 9 of 10 shoppers were wearing masks.
I then went to the Canadian Tire store up the street, where the folks who do their own car repairs shop. I needed a fresh can of Quick-Start because I plan to tackle some of my haven't-had-it-running-for-five-years projects that I've got around the place. I used to do my own car repairs too, but it was always a little disconcerting to have a widget or two left over when you think you've finished that brake job.
At Canadian Tire, less than 1 in 10 shoppers were masked, along with maybe a third of the staff. There's a reason people do their own car repairs; the hourly labour rate at the repair shops is the equivalent of at least two cases of beer.
Based on my limited observations, it's the folks who do their own car repairs bearing the brunt of the lockdown, not those shopping for lobster at Zehrs. It stands to reason that the less affluent would be more likely to agitate for getting their jobs back.
If that makes them "Yahoos," I guess I'm with the Yahoos.
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