Money is not important! Covid-19 / Privilege / Empathy

 "Money is not at all important to me"

A very interesting statement, isn't it? Yet full of layers of complexity. From a very early age, I've rarely seen things in terms of black and white. As far as I can remember, I've always approached life in a holistic way: everything is interconnected in some way. To truly understand something, if at all possible, one has to explore the many layers of complexity. 

Situation 1: if a billionaire were to say "money is not important", that would easily irritate quite a number of people. Billionaire is an exaggeration, but people who are financially secure can easily say this.

Situation 2: If someone who lived a simple and frugal but comfortable life were to say it, it's perfectly fine as well. Their bills are paid on time and they have shelter, food, and loved ones. They may live paycheck to paycheck, but it's always worked out! Great! 

Situation 3: A young teenager whose parents just died and now has to take care of their younger siblings, however, would probably care a lot about money. This last one is a rather extreme example, but pre-Covid-19, already quite a number of people were in very delicate situations.

When Covid-19 happened, the folks from situation 2 now found themselves in situation 3. 

Why am I talking abut this? It has been a tremendous struggle for most people around the world since the beginning of the pandemic.

Wealth disparity exists in every society, but I've always thought about the situation in Taiwan, and in Hong Kong when I visited the slums.

As I mentioned in previous posts, the wage gap is rather huge between those who live comfortably and those who were in situation 2. Wages in Taiwan are low for most industries, which is why there is a  brain drain problem where high skilled Taiwanese seek their fortune elsewhere. At the moment, minimum wage in Taiwan is 160$ TWD, roughly 5.70$ US.

People who had "regular" jobs weren't paid that much more. If I'm not mistaken, an airline mechanic in Taiwan was earning under 20,000$ US a year. He decided to seek his fortune elsewhere. Teachers in certain language schools are paid a wage starting at 200$ TWD / hour and barely going any higher than that.

People are overworked because unions are strongly discouraged. People are obedient and fearful of reprisal if they speak up, so for many who don't come from financially secure families, it's a tremendously difficult life. It's why many young adults choose to live in the family home. If for whatever reason, they cannot live in the family home, imagine how much difficult it would be.

This is the situation for many in Taiwan. Before Covid-19, it was OK, they got by. Now with Covid-19, many find themselves without work and many are in my "situation 3" example.

Then you have people in "situation 1". They're not necessarily the 1%, but these are people whose families have enough savings. Young adults who can live off their family savings.

Let's replace "money doesn't matter" with "we need this lockdown, it's for your own good". Now go back to my different scenarios and imagine the people from the 3 different categories making such a statement. During the pandemic, situation 2 has become situation 3, so we essentially only have 2 categories.

Let me be clear. I fully agree that the current lockdown is making a difference. I totally agree that, if at all possible, we must try to be patient and deal with this, but it is a tremendously ignorant and selfish thing to make such statements when you realize that so many in Taiwan are in situation 3. This is lack of awareness and empathy due to ignorance.

If you are one of the privileged, then I urge you to be considerate to those less fortunate. If you want to make such statements: I urge you to do what you can to support local struggling businesses when at all possible. Spend more than usual if you can! I urge you to treat those less fortunate with kindness: offer them help, buy them a meal, etc. 

The topic of privilege has been on my mind for so many years. Long before Covid-19. I own a music business that so far has been successful enough to allow me not to be too negatively affected by the pandemic. In the past year, I've been trying to employ local talents as sub-contractors and I try to pay them a fair wage. One sub-contractor told me I was paying him too much. I am only paying him what I can afford to pay which is Montreal wage, since my business is based in Montreal. Montreal wage is actually considered low compared to other Canadian cities such as Toronto. If I made Toronto money, I would pay Toronto wages. If I made New York City wages, I would page NYC wages. 

In future blog posts, I would like to address the problematic issue of wage disparity and privilege in Taiwan.