Will, you can’t seriously compare your decision to simply go into arrears on your student loan payments-you could probably have negotiated something with the lender on that-with this woman, in tough economic times, being forced to work on terms she would never have freely chosen to work on if other opportunities existed for her.
Ms. Sakuma is TECHNICALLY guilty of the things you assert-but there are, as any court would say “mitigating factors” in her side of the deal.
If a person drives a getaway car for a group of bank robbers because the accomplices of the bank robbers are holding that person’s family at gunpoint in a basement, that person is not treated, by any court, as though she is just as culpable as the bank robber/kidnappers.
In this situation, Ms. Sakuma was the economic hostage of the boss in this situation-had it not been for this employer refusing to hire her-in a situation where she had no alternative but to take this job-she would never have worked “off the books”.
BTW, I never said anything about the government in my response-but when you come right down to it, given that the situation we are all in in the coronavirus lockdown is massively worse because the wealthy have used their political influence to force major cuts in healthcare spending, including repeated cuts in funding for the Centers for Disease Control, and done so mainly because of their obsession with getting as many tax cuts as possible-the proceeds of which they have almost never invested in the economy but mainly hoarded in unregulated offshore accounts-isn’t it time to expect the rich to return at least SOME of the undeserved bounty they’ve accrued over the last thirty-nine years so that it can be put in the service of the greater good? Wouldn’t this be the most absolutely just and right moment to impose a wealth tax and use the proceeds of that to fund a massive increase in funding for healthcare, rent subsidies, public housing and education funding for the large numbers of people who were dislocated first in the post-1981 transfer of wealth from the many to the few and now from the pandemic which is spreading throughout this country largely due to the dismissive incompetence of the Temporary Occupant of The White House?
Wouldn’t it simply be a decent thing for the tables to be turned and for those who’ve been treated as though they were gods who walk the earth to be reminded that they are ordinary mortals who are just as dispensable as the rest of us?
