Earlier this week, I saw this meme on Facebook, saying that our secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, made the claim that "only .02% of kids would die going back to school" - which comes to a total of 14,740 children. Sounds awful right? I was pretty pissed and went to share it, before facebook warned me that it was false information. I decided to look into it and as it turns out, there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claim. Now I don't really like DeVos, personally I think the secretary of education should be someone quite experienced with public education, but that's completely different discussion.

My point, is that I'm guilty of something that has become a prominent problem with social media and the internet; people want nothing more than to be able to quickly get the "point" in a bite sized fashion. We have become so used to being easily satisfied, and scrolling onto the next thing, that it now permeates how we read and interpret the news. Rather than read an article, we read a headline, or a meme, and form an opinions based on a tiny bite-sized piece of information rather than read an in depth article detailing and examine what's going on. We've become used to what's easiest, rather than actually thinking and trying to figure out what the truth actually is.

To demonstrate what this looks like, I am going to take a "meme" I recently saw on reddit and attempt to figure out the "truth" behind it. The "meme" was a screenshot of this tweet.

At first, glance, It angers me, reflecting the ever so prominent issue that those with money and power continue to amass more, while the rest are repeatedly shot down. The tweet comes from Robert Reich, who a quick google search shows is a "Former United States Secretary of Labor" having served under the Ford, Carter, and Clinton Administrations. Seems like a qualified source, but lets take a look at the claims he is making and where they are coming from.

I found a few articles, one very matter of fact, explaining the provisions in the bill, stating that "The CARES Act allows taxpayers to carry back losses incurred during 2018-2020 for five years. This is especially generous because it will allow corporations to amend returns and reduce taxable profits for pre-2018 tax years, when the corporate income tax rate was 35 percent, much higher than today's 21 percent." Another article drew off of conclusions from two democratic members of congress, stating that "four out of five of the tax filers who would benefit from the provision earn $1 million or more, and a wealthy few would receive an average tax break of $1.6 million, far more than the $1,200 economic impact payments that the Internal Revenue Service began sending last week to taxpayers."

Now I personally am nowhere close to being a tax expert, but it would appear that what Reich is saying in his first sentence has some merit; instead of the government receiving more money from the rich to fight this pandemic, they have instead, provided them with a way out of giving the government money, money that could be used to provide relief to those being hurt by this.

If I'm being honest, I've had a hard time finding a number on the emergency housing and food relief, so I can't speak for the finer details of those. I'm sure if I spent more time I could find something and form an opinion on it, however it would require a lot of sifting and goes beyond my skillset of a quick google search and article read. With that being said, I do (personally) believe that a global crises isn't the best time to give tax breaks to those already earning well over a million dollars, however I also admit that I am unaware of what that money is being used for, it very well could be going to those employed by them if it comes down to those millionaires using out of pocket expenses in a time of decreased revenue, but it's also entirely possible for the money to be used selfishly.

I'm not at all saying my method is perfect, just highlighting one possible way it might look to discover your opinion on a post you saw on social media, rather than to just be outraged at what you thought immediately upon first glance.