Both before and after the height of the current pandemic, my wife and I frequented area restaurants practically every night. Even when we all practiced social distancing to a tee, we had certain restaurants where we felt safe dining there because of how they positioned the tables and whether face coverings were required. We have certain criteria that guide us in deciding where to go on a given afternoon for lunch or evening for dinner, or even for an early dinner while abandoning lunch. The strongest barometer for how we judge a restaurant has always been one thing: consistency.
Picture this. You’re contemplating relocating to another country and have assembled brochures from each describing the economic, social, political, and living conditions offered to new residents by each.
The brochure from one country that intrigues you greatly offers the following insights into this choice:
The economy is suffering from increased inflation and the government is planning on spending trillions of additional funds on infrastructure projects and some pet projects of certain legislators.
There are lots of jobs available but few citizens who want to work because the government is paying them not to do so. So, the jobs go wanting and the employers are consequently forced out of business, resulting in increased costs for almost everything people want to buy.
It’s easy to enter the country because its borders are not secure and thousands of illegal immigrants enter the country annually, bringing little more than diseases with them.
The country has a tense relationship with China, which is seeking to take over as the #1 world power and is attacking this country economically and socially.
Violence has spread across the country so that many major cities support, or do nothing to suppress, anarchy causing residents to flee to cities in neighboring states.
Its infrastructure is a mess, with high-rise buildings and bridges collapsing and roads sporting more holes than asphalt.
The only thing worse than the violence and failing infrastructure is the pandemic that has engulfed the country first with one variant and then another, with the government being unable to determine how to fight or cope with it.
School children in several parts of the country are required to wear masks in school, making it difficult for them to breathe and, consequently, concentrate while illegal immigrants of similar ages are being bused to various cities across the country notwithstanding their having tested positive for diseases.
Some children are being taught in school that, because of their color, race, gender or sexual preference, they are the root causes of all that is wrong in the country.
Finally, the head of its government is not in good health, and the party in power is terrified that at some point their leader will be forced to cede power to an incompetent second-in-command.
Well, there you have it. This sounds like a country on the precipice of an implosion.
What would you do?
