There Is No PLANdemic
One conspiracy theory I’ve been hearing more and more often recently is that lockdowns are an attempt to destroy the livelihoods of small business owners and self-employed people to usher in an era of corporate dominance (as if that doesn’t already exist).
Like all COVID conspiracy theories, this one requires various incorrect assumptions and ignoring lots of evidence to the contrary. Let’s look at that evidence.
Small Business Owners Pay the Most Tax
If there’s one thing governments like, it’s tax revenue. So, why would governments deliberately set about demolishing small businesses when they pay the most tax in the UK and most other countries?
The chart below is taken from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (2017). It shows that Income Tax accounts for 25% of all taxes, National Insurance Contributions contribute 19%, and VAT accounts for 18%. Added together, these taxes account for a whopping 62% of all tax revenue.
These are the exact type of taxes that small business owners and their employees pay. Since small businesses also employ most people in the country, the destruction of small businesses would decimate the government’s ability to rake in tax revenue. It’s not in anybody’s interest, least of all the governments, to destroy small businesses. Once again, the conspiracy theorists are heavy on speculation and light on economic facts.
The Government’s Actions Do Not Match the Supposed “Agenda”
I recently saw a YouTube video where someone running for London Mayor claimed that the hospitality sector is only responsible for around 3.3% of all COVID cases, and that it was therefore unfair to shut it down. This stat may or may not be true. I’m willing to give it that it is because it doesn’t matter.
He then went on to explain that the hospitality sector accounts for 250,000 jobs and £120 billion in revenue. Can you see the logical problem in his thinking here?
Why would any government, least of all a neoliberal capitalist one, take unnecessary actions to shut down an industry that supports that many jobs and generates that much revenue (and therefore taxes), especially one that mostly consists of small businesses, who we have already determined above pay the most tax?
Then let’s take a look at the actual actions of the government so far.
- Chancellor Rishi Sunak launched the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, offering massive discounts on meals out. Does this sound like the actions of someone trying to destroy the hospitality sector?
- The government paid 80% of people’s wages during the last lockdown and backed massive loans to help small businesses stay afloat. Why would they do this if the objective is to destroy small businesses?
- The Chancellor vetoed a recommendation by SAGE to impose a 2-week lockdown in September because the country could not afford it. Now we have direct and irrefutable evidence that the person in charge of the country’s economic affairs is actively working to save what he can and is fighting to not shut it down even when public health experts advise him to do so.
The Glove Does Not Fit the Suspect
It’s no secret that I am no fan of the Tory Party. I actively despise every single one of them and think their politics are both misguided and vile, but if there’s one thing I have to give them, it’s that they do know how to balance the books batter than any other party, even at the cost of human lives.
They have shown us over the course of the past decade that they will literally kill people to keep the economy ticking over, yet here we have an army of conspiracy theorists trying to claim that this very same party is now deliberately wrecking what took them 12+ years to rebuild after the 2008 crisis.
Consider the following:
The Tories do not spend a single penny unnecessarily, yet they have provided massive debt-financed financial support during the first lockdown, undoing a decade of work to pay down debt.
They have also just lost most of the votes they gained in the North of England during the 2019 election by locking down Liverpool, Manchester, etc. No rational, self-interested political party would do this unless it felt there was an emergency greater than keeping these votes.
The Tory party can not agree on the colour of a turd among themselves, never mind agreeing with the opposition (Labour), and yet we are expected to believe that all of these political factions are working together to dismantle the economy, which is about the only thing they can agree on as a priority?
Never Ascribe to Conspiracy What Can Be Explained by Incompetence
There are lots of great articles out there explaining why people turn to conspiracy theories in the midst of uncertainty. In a nutshell, people would rather believe there’s a sinister plot being conducted by ultra-smart elites than face the chaos of random chance unleashed by an uncaring universe.
People are facing financial crisis, job losses, businesses destruction, and a curtailment of freedoms they’ve never experienced in their lifetimes. It’s natural to kick back, get a little bit irrational, and start looking for plots.
But there are none, or at least, there’s no evidence of one. It’s just chaotic incompetence by a government that has had 6+ months and a budget of £12 billion to create an effective track and trace system so that we could safely reopen like South Korea, Sweden, or many other examples.
Which brings me to my final point…do you really believe that a bunch of people who couldn’t effectively program an app in 6 months are capable of plotting the destruction of the economy to bring about some New World Order? They use Microsoft EXCEL 2003 to keep track of cases for Christ’s sake. They couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery let alone some massive multi-layered global plot.
I don’t agree with lockdowns any more than you do, but drop the conspiracy theories. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t help us get back to normal any faster when half of society is working against any plan to get this shitshow under control.
Thanks for reading. Again, I only write these to help organize my own thoughts and vent a bit. Let me know what you think.
