Businesses on lockdown can’t pay government extortion. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
People who own small businesses put up with government edicts pre-Corona because on the whole it was worth it.
They complied with the onerous regulations.
They paid the taxes, including the taxes styled “business licenses” – i.e., the extortion called by a more benign-sounding euphemism, to make it go down easier.
But it amounts to the same thing. A worse thing, actually – because it is done by the entity that is supposed to protect honest people from being shaken down. Which means there’s no protection from being shaken down.
The owner of a gym or restaurant or hair salon is told they must pay out a large sum of money in order to avoid being shut down by goons with guns. How this differs from what Don Corleone does is a hard thing to discern. Except for the difference that the government’s shakedown is “legal” – and euphemized
