The idea that there's a "basic right to earn a living" is some of the most dangerous capitalist dogma that exists.

Basic rights are the right to bodily safety and access to food/water/shelter/clothing. It's the right to SURVIVE.

People need those necessities to live, not jobs.

People who say "you're taking away people's right to work!" even understand this. They know that working is how people keep a roof over their head and food on the table.

But they can't see that in a pandemic the roof and the food are what matters, not the job that provides them.

People work because they have to survive, not because they are exercising their "basic right to earn a living."

In the pandemic, survival means avoiding the virus, and people have a BASIC RIGHT TO SURVIVAL. That's what the government should be focusing on, that's what MATTERS.

All restaurant workers could be fine without their jobs for a while IF THE GOVERNMENT PROVIDES THEM WITH THE BASIC NECESSITIES OF SURVIVAL.

Congress has the power to do that, and a lot of other people would survive too bc we'd actually be doing something to control the virus.

A "basic right to earn a living" is the type of capitalist framing that calls wealth-hoarding plutocrats "job creators" like they're doing something for us by taking all the money for themselves.

We have a basic right to LIVE, not earn a living.

And the truth is, restaurant *owners* need government support too.

If they had some funding plus rent/bill suspension, they wouldn't feel like staying open and putting all their low-wage workers at risk of death to stay in business was their only way to survive.