Now, more than ever, we must support our local businesses. Across the South (and U.S.), small businesses are being shuttered due to government “shelter-in-place” orders and various other quarantine measures, some more draconian than others. Many of our “non-essential” shops, restaurants, niche markets, and other elements of the local Southern economy are struggling since customer foot traffic has been significantly curtailed. As such, these businesses are very clearly, and dearly, on borrowed time.
If you can, we highly recommend you patronize your local businesses. Many restaurants are still allowed to provide curbside service (vary by locality). Help them, instead of using the McDonald’s or Hardee’s drive-thru. Those local restaurants and diners are staffed by your people. They sponsor your local tee ball teams and keep space for the Ruritan and Lions Club to meet. In addition to that, they employ your friends, neighbors and family.
As of this posting, many of our friends and members of our families have been laid off due to the throttling of our economy. Panic did this. The expectation of mass death and infection, peddled by online internet hysteria and the 24-hour news cycle, is impoverishing our people on a massive scale. Rabid ideologues typically don’t care about their people because abstractions and arguments are more fun than honest work. As we have published before, now is the time for true, genuine nationalists to come forth. You may not realize it, but ordering take-out from Bubba’s BBQ helps him put food on his family’s table.
If trends hold and barring a miracle recovery, the U.S. economy will be significantly damaged by the end of May. We’re not talking about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Walmart or Amazon. Your local economy, your commons, will be decimated sometime around next quarter. Closing down businesses for an extended period of time will shatter start-ups, entrepreneurs, certainly small businesses, but even medium-sized companies. When the cash flow dries up, the lights will go out. Grants and government-backed forgivable loans may not be enough to keep these local industries afloat. Many business owners may not be willing to take the risk of accruing more debt, even with the promise of loans being forgivable with keeping on staff and covering rent costs.
Recently, South Carolina saw a 1,600% increase in unemployment claims. Unemployment benefit claims in North Carolina have reached 166,000 since March 16th. A recent study predicts that Virginia’s unemployment will nearly double by the summer. In the coming weeks, the Georgia Department of Labor anticipates unemployment claims to top the 2008-2009 recession. As of January, Maryland’s unemployment rate was at about 3%, reports have it at 5% now and project it will hit between 11% – 14% next quarter. This is not a meme. This is a time to act.
Money easily made is money easily lost. Expecting Uncle Sam to bail out your neighbor’s landscaping business with “Trumpbux” is a delusional fantasy. That’s never going to happen. The big money movers will get the grift, while your town resembles the backdrop of a Walking Dead episode. That is, unless you act and work hard to support your people and your local economy. So, order curbside service, buy online from your local businesses, if you can, call up the handyman to work on that project you’ve been putting off, do anything to keep your local economy alive as we move forward in 2020.
Deo Vindice.
This is excellent advice. My family is doing this religiously. Support, go out of your way to keep these people afloat in this time.
Damn right! It makes me ill to my stomach to know some of our own people are, at this very moment, on the damn front lines stirring up the panic, or, keeping it stirred up/perpetuating this nonsense unto oblivion. The mental and spiritual weakness I read on a daily basis is enough to make me want to upchuck. Seriously! These pathetic little wimps make me want to grab them by the throats and jerk a goddamn knot in their collective asses. If one of my boys acted like some of these effiminate dipshits are acting, I’d (literally!) drag him out behind the ‘woodshed,’ and beat his ass like a man (as my eldest son says, “when the ‘man hand’ gets ahold of ya, you know you’ve been got”)! This ‘doom and gloom’ bullshit has just about run its course with yours truly. Not a one of my boys (I have four – I’m inclined to give the emotion-driven girls a pass, but even they don’t act like this) has remotely indicated to me he is scared out of his wits by this abject stupidity; of course they have a good incentive not to act that way (my ire), but they wouldn’t in any case. They’re manly, not womanly for goodness sakes!