The authoritative guide to government bailouts (satire)
If you are like me, you are probably sitting somewhere brooding and working out your finances while everybody else is happily collecting their bailout checks. As you are watching billions and quadrillions and gazillions of dollars being printed to bail out your hairdresser’s furloughed employees, your favorite airline, your least favorite airline, assorted banks, hedge funds and other casinos as well as the transport systems you are no longer allowed to use because your are deemed to be Inessential, you are probably wondering, somewhere in the back of your mind, who is ultimately going to pay for all of this. Well, I can reassure you on that point. It’s China, of course! Why? Because China invented The Virus, let it escape from its labs and conveniently forgot to tell the world about their little mishap. If China had been a little more considerate, you would have sold your business for ten million dollars by now and clinched a ten million dollar book deal for your entrepreneur biography to boot. Don’t worry about ever having to prove any of these allegations or contentions in court. That is not how lawsuits work. The idea is simply to put the defendants on the defensive and to get on their nerves until they are willing to pay you any amount of money just to make you go away.
Uncle Sam has kindly invited his citizens to sue China directly, and the rest of us can do the same. I wouldn’t wait for the government to make forms available for download. Just draft your own lawsuit. It’s simple. The two main sections are:
- A detailed calculation of the devastating economic effect the pandemic has had on your finances. You should compute and add up all of the following: lost revenue as a result of the lockdown, incremental costs you had to incur, the salary you were going to pay yourself but couldn’t because of the aforementioned issues, the cost associated with starting up your business again after the lockdown, the long-term damage from business that will never come back as a result of your customers’ economic pain, the decrease in the value of your business and the detrimental effect the pandemic has had on the value of your home, holiday home, boat, cars and stock portfolio. Be sure to submit at least 10,000 pages of evidence to support your claim, for example, by describing in detail the customers that would have walked in the door if it hadn’t been for the lockdown.
- A victim impact statement. Having already detailed your economic hardship, this should focus on the emotional trauma you experienced when you were standing in front of empty supermarket shelves. You can also describe the mental pain of being separated from your family, or the agony of being unable to escape them, as the case may be. If you describe the impact on your well-being convincingly, the defendant should get your subtle hint that you will require life-long counseling costing millions of dollars.
Congratulations! Your lawsuit is now ready to be filed. Where? Anywhere! Just choose your favorite court. Your case will need to be tried in absentia anyway because of travel restrictions. And besides, you didn’t really think that Xi Jinping would take time out of his busy schedule to listen to you moaning about supply shortages, now, did you? Nevermind — what you are after is money and I’m sure your check is already in the mail. It may take some time to get delivered, though, because the vote on the bailout package for the post office is still outstanding.
So, to pass the time and make some money to keep you afloat while you’re waiting, I suggest you come up with a great business idea. (This would also help in the unlikely event that the check from the Chinese government never makes it into your letterbox). How about finding a Covid cure? Zillions of scientists, biotech companies and bored housewives are already trying, so why aren’t you? If you do it in a sufficiently theatrical manner, you might even be able to schedule a reality TV show around it. And please, spare me your lame excuses that of all of the backyards and kitchens in the world, yours aren’t suitable to serve as a lab. You do have a blender, right? So let’s get started. Pour in some liquid disinfectant as a base, then add some ingredients that you can truly call your own, like your proudly poisonous home-made wood alcohol and a few tender leaves from your homegrown cannabis plants. Put the lid on, press the button, and see what happens. You can always fine-tune your elixir later. 3 -2 -1 — Go!
