The time may be right for universal basic income

The biggest problem facing many people during this pandemic is the loss of employment. About 30 million people have lost their jobs and as I have discussed before and Hasan Minhaj highlighted so well on his show, this has knock-on effects that spread all through society. Not having any income means they cannot pay their rent or buy food or other things and that hurts businesses. Not paying rent means that their landlords cannot pay their mortgages or utilities or property taxes, which means that state and local governments lose revenue and can’t provide services. And so on. Congress has passed various stimulus packages but these require people to jump through all manner of hoops to get aid, is insufficient, and does not cover everyone who has been affected.
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Hasan Minhaj on the rent problem caused by the pandemic

Hasan Minhaj has come back with new episodes of his excellent show Patriot Act. He was supposed to return a couple of months ago but the pandemic hit just at that time so they had to revamp the process without an audience and the glitzy stage effects. But it was a very good show nonetheless and this episode dealt with the housing crisis caused by the pandemic. With people losing their jobs and not being able to pay rent, they face evictions. This has led to rent strikes and Minhaj points out something that I said earlier, that the non-payment of rent even for a short time does not really solve the problem for many people and creates a cascade or domino effect all the way up the chain. But he goes much further and deeper into the issue.
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The essence of Trump

Writer Nate White explains why British people dislike Trump but I think that the reasons he gives are more widespread and that many people all over the world share the same feeling.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
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Ugly behavior

Some of the people who are rejecting medical recommendations about safety practices during the pandemic are resorting to all manner of ugly behavior to make their point

A Michigan man wiped his nose and face on the shirt of a store employee who was trying to enforce a mask-wearing requirement. The 68-year-old man was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery and, if convicted, faces three months behind bars and a $500 fine.
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Another inspector general fired

Trump has fired yet another inspector general and replaced him with a partisan loyalist. Inspectors general are positions that are supposed to be non-partisan, that monitor the conduct of an institution to see that people are behaving ethically and acting according to the norms of the institution. So of course, they cannot survive in this highly corrupt administration.
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Thanks to Trump, the world now looks at the US with pity

When I talk to my friends and relatives all over the world, I find that every single country in which they live has a government that is dealing with the pandemic rationally and based on the best expert knowledge even though the strategies have differed in details during to the local context and the resources available. One common reaction is that they marvel at what an idiot Trump is and feel sorry for me that we have to live with someone as incompetent as him at the helm of combating a dangerous and difficult situation. That view of how the rest of the world views us is not purely anecdotal
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Conspiratorial obsessions in the US

America is a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories and Trump is a fervent promoter of many of them. It appears that medical conspiracy theories are more likely to be believed.

Professor Eric Oliver, author of a book about conspiracy theories and the spread of false information, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics, said those about medical issues are the most widely circulated and believed.

“When we’ve done surveys we’ve consistently asked a question: do you think the Food Drug Administration has been deliberately withholding natural cures for cancer because of secret pressure from the pharmaceutical industry? Typically we get about 40% of people in our surveys who agree with that, and that is by far and a way the most commonly held conspiracy theory,” he said.

“Medical and health conspiracy theories do well because oftentimes they’re not explicitly ideological in the way that other conspiracy theories are. They tend to cross ideological domains. The FDA conspiracy theory is endorsed as much by conservatives as it is by liberals.”
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A study of millions of Facebook users in the journal Nature released this week found that groups opposed to vaccinations were much more effective at penetrating discussion among those who were undecided than those who support the science. It said growing distrust in scientific expertise “could amplify outbreaks” of coronavirus.

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Breaking news! White guy runs on street carrying a TV – and nothing happens

In the wake of the killing of Armaud Arbery, who was black, as he was jogging through a suburban community in Georgia, Richard Demsick, who is white, decided to make a point about how being white makes all the difference in how running men are perceived, as he jogged for over two miles through the streets carrying a TV. Nobody mistook him for a thief. Nobody pulled a gun on him. Nobody even challenged him at all. Instead, they waved at him. Others have done similar runs as well.