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Small business owners whose lives have been permanently upended are going to be a whole new political faction around the world. Doctors and nurses are at least getting tagged heroes and will likely still have jobs even if hospitals end up bankrupt. But this group will be...angry.
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Wuhan's 11 million people are free to dine out. But they aren't trib.al/YFE4ZfQ
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Restaurateur Spring like Arab Spring. Many will go from moderately wealthy to bankrupt and working min-wage jobs in warehouses or as uber drivers, waiting for robots to take those jobs. The restaurant belt today is like the rust belt in the 80s. A political time bomb being primed
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Crucial difference: restaurants aren't gone forever, so restauranteur skills will still be valuable in the future. Restaurants aren't (generally) going to be replaced by robots or shipped to China. A failed COVID-19 restauranteur could be one loan away from a new restaurant.
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This is going to be tough for them, but I'm a bit more optimistic. Restauranteurs are the bare-knuckle boxers of entrepreneurs; restaurants are stressful, high-failure-rate businesses even during good times. I have some faith in their resilience.
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