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Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

296 points by coronadisaster 6y ago

throwaway_USD 6y ago
From the time Congress passed the $6.2T Bill that gave $4T to the FED to prop up the stock market, $700B in PPP loans; and and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks, it should have put things in perspective. Ideally the stock market wouldn't have been propped up and the PPP loan program would have been more legitimate to save real small businesses (just wait until all the fraud comes out of this thing). If all that money instead went to the people/taxpayers they would all have received an $18,000 stimulus check instead of $1,200, I think this would have been the best move possible (and maybe some form of healthcare coverage for the uninsured, being in a pandemic and all instead of pretending providing coverage to the uninsured would be taking away their freedom to be uninsured).
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. Everyone qualified for that stimulus (depending on income thresholds, it was phased out for higher incomes), regardless of job loss. Unemployed people receive an additional $600/week from the late-March COVID relief bill through July 31. There are additional measures to extend the duration of regular state unemployment. The combined benefits given to unemployed people are over $10K/person additional, on top of regular state unemployment. Furthermore, many of the numbers you’re citing are in the form of loans or other non-spending activity. It’s not correct to suggest that we could have simply given that money to the people and arrived at the same budgetary outcome. I don’t agree with the way all of the funds have been allocated, but suggesting that we could all have received $18K is disingenuous. Proper response should be targeted where needed, such as the unemployment measures and loans for businesses that were forced to close, not just distributed to everyone who kept their jobs and businesses.
  - clansimus 6y ago
    > That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. No, it didn't.
    - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      Okay, to be pedantic because your comment didn’t provide full details: The $1200 went to adults who were not dependents of someone else and who earned less than a certain threshold, with the amount prorated depending on your AGI and your tax filing type (single, married, head of household). My point was that everyone qualified for it. It wasn’t dependent on losing your job first. You could keep your job and still receive the (up to) $1200 stimulus if your income met the thresholds.
      - Sodman 6y ago
        Part of the problem is that many people lost their jobs and were/are unemployed for months, but had a tax filing in a prior year above a threshold disqualified them from receiving the $1200.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        There are quite literally millions of people who qualified for the stimulus, but didn't receive it. I know several of such people.
  - sidewndr46 6y ago
    > That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. I did not get any notice as such, but my understanding as to why I got $0 was I made too much money to qualify. So I don't think your statement is in any way accurate. It did not go to "everyone"
  - milquetoastaf 6y ago
    >It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. No it didn't. It only went to people making less than 70k
  - 6y ago
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > If all that money instead went to the people/taxpayers they would all have received an $18,000 stimulus check instead of $1,200, I think this would have been the best move possible. Everyone I know would choose their entire retirement fund over a one time check of $18,000 . I understand your sentiment, and it does feel like we got less that we deserve, but stimulating the stock market was absolutely the right move. Another depression wouldn't help anyone, and a majority of Americans have a 401k. The idea that only the super rich benefit from a good stock market is plain wrong - most people depend on it.
  - repeek 6y ago
    > and a majority of Americans have a 401k Source? According to the 2017 US Census, only 32% are saving in a 401k. [1] [1] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/06/19/does-the-average-american-have-a-401k.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/06/19/does-the-average-...
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      Over 70% of workers have access to an employee retirement plan, and 56% of all workers participate in one[1]. So I did misremember the stats slightly. Its all workers instead of all Americans, and a generic "employer sponsored retirement plan" vs specifically a 401k, but my point still stands. If we exclude children and people who are already retired, only 26% are without retirement savings[2]. The ability of these people to retire is linked to stock performance. [1] https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2019/ownership/civilian/table02a.pdf https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2019/ownership/civilian... [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-retirement.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-we...
      - dlp211 6y ago
        Great, now how much does the median retiree have saved? Also, the vast majority of people shouldn't give two licks about keeping the market high today because the vast majority of people are more than a decade out from retirement. What should have been an event that allowed people to build wealth instead became one to preserve the wealth of those who already have it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- noelsusman 6y ago
  Congress didn't give the Federal Reserve $4 trillion. They gave the Treasury Department $500 billion, which the Federal Reserve leveraged to give out about $3 trillion in loans.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  This conflates LOANS with GRANTS. Your comparison lacks even the most basic understanding of finance. In 2008, when the banks were "bailed out" - the government used loans - which ultimately turned a profit. So all of the anger about "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains" was all baloney. Because the taxpayers literally made a profit on the loans they gave to Wall Street.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    The firms should have gone bankrupt. In that case, the government or any solvent entity could have benefited by purchasing the assets at market prices. That the firms did not go bankrupt, was a gift to shareholders from taxpayers.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      This is a very uneducated point of view, that ignores the facts in my prior comment. In a liquidity crunch, perfectly solvent and functional companies can go bankrupt. ...and indeed those that had balance sheets hopelessly underwater DID go bankrupt (ie Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, as well as dozens of other smaller banks). The fact that the government was able to extend LOANS to other banks is not a "gift" at all, because those loans were paid back with significant interest. Do you understand, the taxpayer profited from the Wall Street loans of 2008. Allowing solvent but illiquid companies to go bankrupt is needless economic destruction that serves zero purpose - and the fact that they survived despite having to pay back the gov't loans with interest is evidence of that.
      - rbrtl 6y ago
        http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.pdf http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.p...
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    Taxpayers should have owned the businesses they bailed out. We gave these banks low interest loans when their only alternative was insolvency. What a crappy bargain! Taxpayers should have owned the banks, helped them recover, and then sold them for huge profits. What’s JP Morgan worth today? That’s a start in calculating how much was stolen from taxpayers.
mchusma 6y ago
The fact that you could easily earn more on unemployment than not was a bizarre feature of the US COVID response. Most, if not all state unemployment schemes cover part of your wages if unemployed, not more than you made before. It creates a strong incentive to be considered partially or fully laid off. I'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive. This benefit ends this month (July), so that is good.
- gboss 6y ago
  I always thought the point was to keep people home during the pandemic instead of working odd jobs to compensate. Incentivizing people to not work by paying them more to stay at home was a public health policy choice. Of course, the bills were passed really rapidly and maybe weren’t that thought out.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    Incentivizing people to stay home was a bug, not a feature. There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose (and we might see a lot more people outside if the eviction protection measures aren't revisited by the end of the month). Quite the opposite - the message has constantly been that they want to get people out working as soon as possible in deference to "the economy", public health be damned. Your local government's response and motivations might be different, but I largely doubt it.
    - gboss 6y ago
      The federal government is made up of many different actors with different goals. The $600 unemployment pandemic bonus was only added to the relief package because of the house democrats insistence. I think it’s hard to believe that was not their goal.
    - danaris 6y ago
      > Incentivizing people to stay home was a bug, not a feature. > There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose These are two separate statements, that do not necessarily correlate. That the government may not have intended the benefit to incentivize people to stay home (thus improving public health) does not mean that people staying home and improving public health is not a feature for the vast majority of people.
afpx 6y ago
If there was an actual shortage of workers, wages would be rising for the essential workers.
- readingnews 6y ago
  I may not be an economist, but I think this does not make sense. If there is a worker shortage, do all of the workers go to work and say "give me more money"? I would also contend there would be no reason for say, walmart to suddenly offer more money just because everyone has been ordered to stay home. If there is an _actual_ shortage, increasing pay does not just fabricate workers. I have relatives who are essential (specialized nurses, and hospice nurses). Their pay has not changed, in fact, their actual wages have fallen through the floor as they are working 12-16 hour days instead of 10-12 hour days (when they are supposed to work 8 hours a day), so their hourly wage (they do not get paid for all that time they are charting, after hours, at home) has dropped significantly.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > If there is an _actual_ shortage, increasing pay does not just fabricate workers. Sure it does. For some people, it means switching from stay-at-home parenting to daycare financially sensible. For someone on social security, it might mean temporarily going back to work is more attractive than it was. People go from not seeking jobs to seeking jobs all the time.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Demand scaling doesn't happen instantly. For instance, how are you going to get new CNAs (even reupped certs) right now when the schools are closed?
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        Things like CNAs are a small (important, but small) portion of what we're deeming "essential workers" in this pandemic. The definition includes a vast set of un-credentialed workers; people at meat packing plants, grocery stores, cleaning staff, etc. (Again, there will be licensed CNAs not working due to the cost of things like daycare. Raising wages changes that calculus, too.)
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working. The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600/week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemployment measures than they did from their jobs. This is was a necessary compromise to get the relief enacted as quickly as possible. We didn’t have an easy way to implement a more complex unemployment system at a national level, so we compromised with a flat rate for everyone. Unfortunately, many people are misinterpreting this and assuming that unemployment is always this lucrative (it’s not, and the $600/week ends after July) or assuming that our government has enough money lying around to pay everyone this much all of the time (we don’t, this is actually very expensive for the taxpayers).
- hobs 6y ago
  Our Quantitative easing and corporate bailouts are in the trillions, why would we not pay out significantly less for people who are struggling to find jobs? Why does the till start counting when its normal people affected?
  - tkeAmarktinClss 6y ago
    The bailout have totally changed my mind on why you should work for a fortune 500 company Individuals will never have political power like a billion dollar corporation. If you can rise up the ranks, you get some of this power. Sure it's a moonshot, but how many self made people make billion dollar companies? You could count them. I think I'm going to pick a major fortune 500 and leach off it. Even if I hang around there for 30 years, I get profits and tax payers will subsidize the losses.
    - chasd00 6y ago
      i've sort of came to this conclusion too. I've spent most of my career in the small biz and startup world. I'm over worrying about the fate of the entire company every hour of the day. I have a family and these days I just want a paycheck that isn't late, a 401k, and PTO. Maybe i'm officially old... or maybe just more wise ha.
roenxi 6y ago
The incentives are so terrible that it might have been done on purpose to encourage people to stay home.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  I think you are giving politicians way too much credit.
monocasa 6y ago
I think it mainly highlighted an unfortunate part of our economy. The $600/wk thing looks like making sure everyone gets a living wage on unemployment until they thought we'd be able to reopen the economy fully and they'd be able to get a job as normal. But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place.
- throwaway_USD 6y ago
  >But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place. Exactly, we allegedly had the best economy the world has ever seen, record high stock prices/markets, and lowest rate of unemployment. But the reality the economy was revealed to be weak and not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownership). In the best economy ever and 40% of the population couldn't afford a $400 emergency. Our public companies with their record stock prices needed $4T for the FED to "stabilize the market" (political speak for taxpayers are buying these stocks at these overvalued prices). Customized taxpayer bailouts for entire industries that don't have any runway of capital to service their debts.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    > not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownership). Eh, I'd argue it's still capitalism. Nothing about capitalism says how concentrated capital can't be.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      With that allowance, feudalism would be considered capitalism though. The problem isn't just a skewed concentration of capital. It's that most people do not have any capital and their situation is denominated by debt.
      - ozzyman700 6y ago
wolco 6y ago
Canada did this but come tax time the double incoming earns will have to pay it back. Is this not possible in the US?
- amscanne 6y ago
  Are you talking about the CERB? Canada didn’t give it to everyone, you had to apply but the CRA essentially approved every application immediately. Then, surprise surprise, there was rampant fraud (8 million Canadians applied and received CERB). So they announced that they will be auditing many applications and asking for it back, potentially adding fines for egregious cases.
acomjean 6y ago
The amount you got in employment, over or under what you usually got was a matter of what state you were in. Each state has different unemployment benefits, and of course large differences in cost of living. and extra $600 doesn't go very far to help pay for housing in the expensive states. The NYTimes did a decent analysis of each state. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/economy/unemployment-benefits-stimulus-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ...
eanzenberg 6y ago
Incentivizing people to stay home when they can work does not make an economy necessary to allow people to stay home when they can work. As always, socialism / marxism / communism sounds great on paper and in ivory towers but never works as applied.
- greesil 6y ago
  Could you elaborate on how keeping people from starving is communism, or any other ideology?
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    How are they starving when they’re making more sitting home than they made going to work? Are you implying they were starving before? Are there any starving people in the USA?
    - thebooktocome 6y ago
      https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... About four percent of households have "very low food security", defined as: “Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Yes. Food insecurity is an issue. https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-insecurity/ https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-i... About 1 in 9 people -- in the wealthiest nation that ever existed on earth, which as of 2016 had 540 billionaires living in it with with a combined net worth of about 2.3 trillion (via Forbes from a quick google) -- face food insecurity. Relatedly, access to healthy food (that wont give you diabetes if you eat it all the time, to exaggerate a touch) is also an issue. http://thefoodtrust.org/uploads/media_items/access-to-healthy-food.original.pdf http://thefoodtrust.org/uploads/media_items/access-to-health...
Nightshaxx 6y ago
> "You feel like, you guys [the government] never have money for people that really need it, and all of a sudden you have money for everybody," The government doesn't have this money, they are borrowing it. Debt levels are increasing like we are in wartime [1] but there is a massive negative impact on jobs, not a positive one like in a war. I have seen more than one person echo this sentiment and I wish people acctually understood where this money is coming from before complaining. (Yes I know the quote also talks about essential workers not getting more, which I can agree the distribution is skewed incorrectly) [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/economy/coronavirus-debt-deficits/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/economy/coronavirus-debt-defi...
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > they are borrowing it People have been saying that deficit spending will catch up to us since I was a kid, 30+ years ago. Every time deficit spending starts "catching up to us", the government responds with more deficit spending. It seems unsustainable to me, but there are people like Krugman who assure us that this can go on forever.
  - gerbal 6y ago
    If the economy grows by ~3% per year on average, and the interest rate is ~1% on government debt, can the debt actually "catch up"?
    - contravariant 6y ago
      Depends how big a deficit you're running each year. But 'catch up' is a really vague term. As long as you can keep borrowing at low interest rates there's no problem, you can just borrow more to pay the interest, but eventually people will start to doubt your ability to pay it all back (yes this is irrelevant if a country exists forever, but infinity is weird like that).
- ixvvqktiwl 6y ago
  The cool thing about debt is that you can make it go away by printing more money (which is exactly what the government does). Ever wonder why homes cost so much? It's inflation caused by cheap debt and money printing.
deleted 6y ago
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eggy 6y ago
This is an example of how government trying to "work" the economy can upset the tenets of those who believe in a free market; you may choose to look at it with a different lens. The government does not create wealth, or anything for that matter, and in trying to do the apparent right thing to make things better (at least seek favor with their constituents) they wind up unbalancing the system, and IMHO, creating the opposite effect from the face value of the act. Why rush to return to work when you can make more staying at home? I'd be miffed if I were the person going back to work, while perfectly capable (not sick) coworkers sit at home.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Why rush to return to work when you can make more staying at home? Because unemployment doesn't work that way. When your boss calls and says "hey, we're ready for you to come back to work", you're no longer eligible for unemployment benefits.
  - eggy 6y ago
    Yes, but until then you're incentivizedized to stay home and collect the larger check. Not to mention the woman in the lead of the story took an unpaid leave of absence for her illness.
- bendergarcia 6y ago
  If you were paid to not work, would you do nothing?
  - eggy 6y ago
    No, but I would do something I wanted to do. Not sure I get your drift.
SmokeyHamster 6y ago
If you define it as someone getting something while not working vs others getting nothing while working, yes, thank you NPR. That's how unemployment benefits work. That's why government handouts are damaging, especially in the long term. They inherently incentivize not working and punish those who do work. More importantly, government rarely does anything efficiently. I'm gainfully employed and don't need any "help" from the government, yet I received a debit card from the IRS containing my "relief" money. As much as I appreciate the government giving me back my tax dollars, why did I receive this and not someone who's recently unemployed?
- gerbal 6y ago
  > They inherently incentivize not working and punish those who do work. Do you have any evidence of this claim?
  - iamstupidsimple 6y ago
    It's obvious. I can't speak for America, but in the UK, one of the biggest problems is the financial cliff people face when trying to get off benefits, as being unemployed will pay you more than any entry level job (you can get social housing too). It's kept people trapped within the system for decades and nobody likes to talk about it. There isn't enough money left to house the current homeless population too, so really, we need to get those people back into working life so that we can deal with the homeless crisis.
  - bendergarcia 6y ago
    If someone is not working for McDonald’s but is a productive member of society, does it matter that they are incentivized to not work? This idea that people who aren’t incentivized to work are lazy and don’t add any value to society highlights how you view people and humanity. What would you do if you were paid to not work?
    - ativzzz 6y ago
      > What would you do if you were paid to not work? I would probably play video games and read books all day and spend more time hanging out with friends. Would probably be drunk/high a lot more often.
goodside 6y ago
In more normal times, it makes sense that unemployment should not be lucrative, and workers should be encouraged to take any job at all rather than be unemployed. But the calculus changes in a pandemic, because you want people to stay home, even if they have nothing productive to do there. Low-wage work is almost never remote, so a person working a non-essential, low-wage job is likely not providing enough value to offset the harm they do by spreading COVID at their job site or on public transit. Of course, this is not the function that UI was meant to serve. If it were designed to “compete” with the low-wage job market, it would be paid out even to workers who resign voluntarily or refuse to seek any employment while receiving benefits. But given policy can’t turn on a dime, raising UI is a reasonable way to discourage non-essential work specifically — to the extent work is essential, workers are unlikely to be laid off and made eligible for benefits.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  That's a pretty absurd rationalization for paying people more to not work than to work. Also, the article specifically talks about "essential workers" who made more money not working. Wanting people to stay at home is different from paying people to be unemployed.
  - goodside 6y ago
    “Essential workers” is a nebulous term - formally there are only “essential businesses” that are allowed to operate, and their employees are informally “essential” too. But only a subset of such workers are necessary. E.g., cleaning staff at hotels might be called “essential workers”, but if the hotels are virtually empty most of those workers aren’t needed. Granting extra UI benefits allows the employer to determine which workers to keep, and compensates those actually laid off to avoid unexpected hardship. None of the essential workers mentioned in the article lost their jobs that I can see. One was just temporarily overpaid for taking an otherwise unpaid leave. They stayed home, and received more pay for doing so. The fact that the UI bonus encourages this behavior (within the bounds that employers tolerate) is exactly the social benefit I’m pointing out in my original comment — the UI benefit encourages people to stay home if they can. The workers in the article are complaining about the unfairness of not receiving extra pay, and justifiably so — it is unfair. The UI benefit helps slow the spread of a deadly pandemic (and mitigates foreseeable bankruptcies/evictions) while also making the world less fair for the people who are still employed. The article only discusses the latter, and I was pointing out the former.
duxup 6y ago
For companies without a ton of cash on hand... I get why the idea of paying folks more in the face of a huge economic question mark, economic slowdown (or worse), and increased unemployment looks like a bad choice...
Spooky23 6y ago
To me this issue should be more about the gross nature of US wage policy, that allows systematic abuse of “essential” low skill hourly workers with low wages, unpaid on call, health insurance tied to hours worked, etc. The resentment these workers feel illustrates why we have a problem — people as a whole are more focused on what the other guy gets than the nature how how they are exploited.
LatNax 6y ago
Essential workers may lose in comparison to a jobless person in the short-run. They may be the winners in the long-haul.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  they may or they may not... no one knows.
sevenfold_junky 6y ago
This story strikes home. I worked during the shutdown, my job in reality isn't that important compared to an EMS Tech, ER Nurse or someone along those lines. None the less I did work directly with the public... I never got a thank you from my company, never got paid a penny extra nothing. While my boss received an extra week of paid vacation. Four weeks ago people laid off started coming back to work. Two weeks ago my pay and hours both got cut, I will now get paid 25% less than I did last year. Now a person who choose to go on leave, so they could make more money from unemployment, got promoted... with a 10% pay increase. Oh, best of all the company will be charge more in a few weeks.
linuxftw 6y ago
Wages are too low across the board. Why are wages so low? Past administrations have been incentivizing businesses to move production capacity overseas. Combine this with large amounts of immigration, and our most vulnerable populations are underpaid or unemployed with no chance of moving up the economic ladder. A technical degree is the only remaining ticket to the middle class, and we've got over 600k H1B's and their dependents displacing domestic labor that could easily be trained to do the same jobs. So when I hear that "Essential Workers" are making less than the unemployed, I want to resolve the core issue: low wages.
anthony_romeo 6y ago
IMO the real problem is that wages have been stagnant for decades despite the average worker becoming more and more efficient at their jobs. Complaints about the moral hazard of giving people money rings hollow given how poorly we in the US have invested in our communities and social welfare. I feel we're just reaping what we've sown.
heavyset_go 6y ago
It is a disincentive for desperate people to return to work and risk their lives because they need a few extra bucks. This is a good thing.
iron0013 6y ago
It is so crazy to me that anyone could read this and think “those people should be receiving less unemployment pay!“ instead of “those workers should be receiving higher wages!”

From the time Congress passed the $6.2T Bill that gave $4T to the FED to prop up the stock market, $700B in PPP loans; and and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks, it should have put things in perspective. Ideally the stock market wouldn't have been propped up and the PPP loan program would have been more legitimate to save real small businesses (just wait until all the fraud comes out of this thing). If all that money instead went to the people/taxpayers they would all have received an $18,000 stimulus check instead of $1,200, I think this would have been the best move possible (and maybe some form of healthcare coverage for the uninsured, being in a pandemic and all instead of pretending providing coverage to the uninsured would be taking away their freedom to be uninsured).

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. Everyone qualified for that stimulus (depending on income thresholds, it was phased out for higher incomes), regardless of job loss. Unemployed people receive an additional $600/week from the late-March COVID relief bill through July 31. There are additional measures to extend the duration of regular state unemployment. The combined benefits given to unemployed people are over $10K/person additional, on top of regular state unemployment. Furthermore, many of the numbers you’re citing are in the form of loans or other non-spending activity. It’s not correct to suggest that we could have simply given that money to the people and arrived at the same budgetary outcome. I don’t agree with the way all of the funds have been allocated, but suggesting that we could all have received $18K is disingenuous. Proper response should be targeted where needed, such as the unemployment measures and loans for businesses that were forced to close, not just distributed to everyone who kept their jobs and businesses.
- clansimus 6y ago
  > That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. No, it didn't.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Okay, to be pedantic because your comment didn’t provide full details: The $1200 went to adults who were not dependents of someone else and who earned less than a certain threshold, with the amount prorated depending on your AGI and your tax filing type (single, married, head of household). My point was that everyone qualified for it. It wasn’t dependent on losing your job first. You could keep your job and still receive the (up to) $1200 stimulus if your income met the thresholds.
    - Sodman 6y ago
      Part of the problem is that many people lost their jobs and were/are unemployed for months, but had a tax filing in a prior year above a threshold disqualified them from receiving the $1200.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      There are quite literally millions of people who qualified for the stimulus, but didn't receive it. I know several of such people.
- sidewndr46 6y ago
  > That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. I did not get any notice as such, but my understanding as to why I got $0 was I made too much money to qualify. So I don't think your statement is in any way accurate. It did not go to "everyone"
- milquetoastaf 6y ago
  >It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. That amount went to everyone, regardless of job loss. No it didn't. It only went to people making less than 70k
- 6y ago
dahfizz 6y ago
> If all that money instead went to the people/taxpayers they would all have received an $18,000 stimulus check instead of $1,200, I think this would have been the best move possible. Everyone I know would choose their entire retirement fund over a one time check of $18,000 . I understand your sentiment, and it does feel like we got less that we deserve, but stimulating the stock market was absolutely the right move. Another depression wouldn't help anyone, and a majority of Americans have a 401k. The idea that only the super rich benefit from a good stock market is plain wrong - most people depend on it.
- repeek 6y ago
  > and a majority of Americans have a 401k Source? According to the 2017 US Census, only 32% are saving in a 401k. [1] [1] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/06/19/does-the-average-american-have-a-401k.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/06/19/does-the-average-...
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    Over 70% of workers have access to an employee retirement plan, and 56% of all workers participate in one[1]. So I did misremember the stats slightly. Its all workers instead of all Americans, and a generic "employer sponsored retirement plan" vs specifically a 401k, but my point still stands. If we exclude children and people who are already retired, only 26% are without retirement savings[2]. The ability of these people to retire is linked to stock performance. [1] https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2019/ownership/civilian/table02a.pdf https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2019/ownership/civilian... [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-retirement.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-we...
    - dlp211 6y ago
      Great, now how much does the median retiree have saved? Also, the vast majority of people shouldn't give two licks about keeping the market high today because the vast majority of people are more than a decade out from retirement. What should have been an event that allowed people to build wealth instead became one to preserve the wealth of those who already have it.
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noelsusman 6y ago
Congress didn't give the Federal Reserve $4 trillion. They gave the Treasury Department $500 billion, which the Federal Reserve leveraged to give out about $3 trillion in loans.
koheripbal 6y ago
This conflates LOANS with GRANTS. Your comparison lacks even the most basic understanding of finance. In 2008, when the banks were "bailed out" - the government used loans - which ultimately turned a profit. So all of the anger about "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains" was all baloney. Because the taxpayers literally made a profit on the loans they gave to Wall Street.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  The firms should have gone bankrupt. In that case, the government or any solvent entity could have benefited by purchasing the assets at market prices. That the firms did not go bankrupt, was a gift to shareholders from taxpayers.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    This is a very uneducated point of view, that ignores the facts in my prior comment. In a liquidity crunch, perfectly solvent and functional companies can go bankrupt. ...and indeed those that had balance sheets hopelessly underwater DID go bankrupt (ie Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, as well as dozens of other smaller banks). The fact that the government was able to extend LOANS to other banks is not a "gift" at all, because those loans were paid back with significant interest. Do you understand, the taxpayer profited from the Wall Street loans of 2008. Allowing solvent but illiquid companies to go bankrupt is needless economic destruction that serves zero purpose - and the fact that they survived despite having to pay back the gov't loans with interest is evidence of that.
    - rbrtl 6y ago
      http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.pdf http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.p...
- cwhiz 6y ago
  Taxpayers should have owned the businesses they bailed out. We gave these banks low interest loans when their only alternative was insolvency. What a crappy bargain! Taxpayers should have owned the banks, helped them recover, and then sold them for huge profits. What’s JP Morgan worth today? That’s a start in calculating how much was stolen from taxpayers.

mchusma 6y ago

The fact that you could easily earn more on unemployment than not was a bizarre feature of the US COVID response. Most, if not all state unemployment schemes cover part of your wages if unemployed, not more than you made before. It creates a strong incentive to be considered partially or fully laid off. I'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive. This benefit ends this month (July), so that is good.

gboss 6y ago
I always thought the point was to keep people home during the pandemic instead of working odd jobs to compensate. Incentivizing people to not work by paying them more to stay at home was a public health policy choice. Of course, the bills were passed really rapidly and maybe weren’t that thought out.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Incentivizing people to stay home was a bug, not a feature. There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose (and we might see a lot more people outside if the eviction protection measures aren't revisited by the end of the month). Quite the opposite - the message has constantly been that they want to get people out working as soon as possible in deference to "the economy", public health be damned. Your local government's response and motivations might be different, but I largely doubt it.
  - gboss 6y ago
    The federal government is made up of many different actors with different goals. The $600 unemployment pandemic bonus was only added to the relief package because of the house democrats insistence. I think it’s hard to believe that was not their goal.
  - danaris 6y ago
    > Incentivizing people to stay home was a bug, not a feature. > There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose These are two separate statements, that do not necessarily correlate. That the government may not have intended the benefit to incentivize people to stay home (thus improving public health) does not mean that people staying home and improving public health is not a feature for the vast majority of people.

afpx 6y ago

If there was an actual shortage of workers, wages would be rising for the essential workers.

readingnews 6y ago
I may not be an economist, but I think this does not make sense. If there is a worker shortage, do all of the workers go to work and say "give me more money"? I would also contend there would be no reason for say, walmart to suddenly offer more money just because everyone has been ordered to stay home. If there is an _actual_ shortage, increasing pay does not just fabricate workers. I have relatives who are essential (specialized nurses, and hospice nurses). Their pay has not changed, in fact, their actual wages have fallen through the floor as they are working 12-16 hour days instead of 10-12 hour days (when they are supposed to work 8 hours a day), so their hourly wage (they do not get paid for all that time they are charting, after hours, at home) has dropped significantly.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > If there is an _actual_ shortage, increasing pay does not just fabricate workers. Sure it does. For some people, it means switching from stay-at-home parenting to daycare financially sensible. For someone on social security, it might mean temporarily going back to work is more attractive than it was. People go from not seeking jobs to seeking jobs all the time.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Demand scaling doesn't happen instantly. For instance, how are you going to get new CNAs (even reupped certs) right now when the schools are closed?
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Things like CNAs are a small (important, but small) portion of what we're deeming "essential workers" in this pandemic. The definition includes a vast set of un-credentialed workers; people at meat packing plants, grocery stores, cleaning staff, etc. (Again, there will be licensed CNAs not working due to the cost of things like daycare. Raising wages changes that calculus, too.)

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working. The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600/week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemployment measures than they did from their jobs. This is was a necessary compromise to get the relief enacted as quickly as possible. We didn’t have an easy way to implement a more complex unemployment system at a national level, so we compromised with a flat rate for everyone. Unfortunately, many people are misinterpreting this and assuming that unemployment is always this lucrative (it’s not, and the $600/week ends after July) or assuming that our government has enough money lying around to pay everyone this much all of the time (we don’t, this is actually very expensive for the taxpayers).

hobs 6y ago
Our Quantitative easing and corporate bailouts are in the trillions, why would we not pay out significantly less for people who are struggling to find jobs? Why does the till start counting when its normal people affected?
- tkeAmarktinClss 6y ago
  The bailout have totally changed my mind on why you should work for a fortune 500 company Individuals will never have political power like a billion dollar corporation. If you can rise up the ranks, you get some of this power. Sure it's a moonshot, but how many self made people make billion dollar companies? You could count them. I think I'm going to pick a major fortune 500 and leach off it. Even if I hang around there for 30 years, I get profits and tax payers will subsidize the losses.
  - chasd00 6y ago
    i've sort of came to this conclusion too. I've spent most of my career in the small biz and startup world. I'm over worrying about the fate of the entire company every hour of the day. I have a family and these days I just want a paycheck that isn't late, a 401k, and PTO. Maybe i'm officially old... or maybe just more wise ha.

roenxi 6y ago

The incentives are so terrible that it might have been done on purpose to encourage people to stay home.

rootusrootus 6y ago
I think you are giving politicians way too much credit.

monocasa 6y ago

I think it mainly highlighted an unfortunate part of our economy. The $600/wk thing looks like making sure everyone gets a living wage on unemployment until they thought we'd be able to reopen the economy fully and they'd be able to get a job as normal. But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place.

throwaway_USD 6y ago
>But, it just highlighted how many people are working and not earning a living wage in the first place. Exactly, we allegedly had the best economy the world has ever seen, record high stock prices/markets, and lowest rate of unemployment. But the reality the economy was revealed to be weak and not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownership). In the best economy ever and 40% of the population couldn't afford a $400 emergency. Our public companies with their record stock prices needed $4T for the FED to "stabilize the market" (political speak for taxpayers are buying these stocks at these overvalued prices). Customized taxpayer bailouts for entire industries that don't have any runway of capital to service their debts.
- monocasa 6y ago
  > not even capitalism (capital based ownership) but some form of debtism (some form of financial servitude, in lieu of ownership). Eh, I'd argue it's still capitalism. Nothing about capitalism says how concentrated capital can't be.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    With that allowance, feudalism would be considered capitalism though. The problem isn't just a skewed concentration of capital. It's that most people do not have any capital and their situation is denominated by debt.
    - ozzyman700 6y ago

wolco 6y ago

Canada did this but come tax time the double incoming earns will have to pay it back. Is this not possible in the US?

amscanne 6y ago
Are you talking about the CERB? Canada didn’t give it to everyone, you had to apply but the CRA essentially approved every application immediately. Then, surprise surprise, there was rampant fraud (8 million Canadians applied and received CERB). So they announced that they will be auditing many applications and asking for it back, potentially adding fines for egregious cases.

acomjean 6y ago

The amount you got in employment, over or under what you usually got was a matter of what state you were in. Each state has different unemployment benefits, and of course large differences in cost of living. and extra $600 doesn't go very far to help pay for housing in the expensive states. The NYTimes did a decent analysis of each state. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/economy/unemployment-benefits-stimulus-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/econ...

eanzenberg 6y ago

Incentivizing people to stay home when they can work does not make an economy necessary to allow people to stay home when they can work. As always, socialism / marxism / communism sounds great on paper and in ivory towers but never works as applied.

greesil 6y ago
Could you elaborate on how keeping people from starving is communism, or any other ideology?
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  How are they starving when they’re making more sitting home than they made going to work? Are you implying they were starving before? Are there any starving people in the USA?
  - thebooktocome 6y ago
    https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... About four percent of households have "very low food security", defined as: “Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Yes. Food insecurity is an issue. https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-insecurity/ https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-i... About 1 in 9 people -- in the wealthiest nation that ever existed on earth, which as of 2016 had 540 billionaires living in it with with a combined net worth of about 2.3 trillion (via Forbes from a quick google) -- face food insecurity. Relatedly, access to healthy food (that wont give you diabetes if you eat it all the time, to exaggerate a touch) is also an issue. http://thefoodtrust.org/uploads/media_items/access-to-healthy-food.original.pdf http://thefoodtrust.org/uploads/media_items/access-to-health...

Nightshaxx 6y ago

> "You feel like, you guys [the government] never have money for people that really need it, and all of a sudden you have money for everybody," The government doesn't have this money, they are borrowing it. Debt levels are increasing like we are in wartime [1] but there is a massive negative impact on jobs, not a positive one like in a war. I have seen more than one person echo this sentiment and I wish people acctually understood where this money is coming from before complaining. (Yes I know the quote also talks about essential workers not getting more, which I can agree the distribution is skewed incorrectly) [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/economy/coronavirus-debt-deficits/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/economy/coronavirus-debt-defi...

commandlinefan 6y ago
> they are borrowing it People have been saying that deficit spending will catch up to us since I was a kid, 30+ years ago. Every time deficit spending starts "catching up to us", the government responds with more deficit spending. It seems unsustainable to me, but there are people like Krugman who assure us that this can go on forever.
- gerbal 6y ago
  If the economy grows by ~3% per year on average, and the interest rate is ~1% on government debt, can the debt actually "catch up"?
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Depends how big a deficit you're running each year. But 'catch up' is a really vague term. As long as you can keep borrowing at low interest rates there's no problem, you can just borrow more to pay the interest, but eventually people will start to doubt your ability to pay it all back (yes this is irrelevant if a country exists forever, but infinity is weird like that).
ixvvqktiwl 6y ago
The cool thing about debt is that you can make it go away by printing more money (which is exactly what the government does). Ever wonder why homes cost so much? It's inflation caused by cheap debt and money printing.

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eggy 6y ago

This is an example of how government trying to "work" the economy can upset the tenets of those who believe in a free market; you may choose to look at it with a different lens. The government does not create wealth, or anything for that matter, and in trying to do the apparent right thing to make things better (at least seek favor with their constituents) they wind up unbalancing the system, and IMHO, creating the opposite effect from the face value of the act. Why rush to return to work when you can make more staying at home? I'd be miffed if I were the person going back to work, while perfectly capable (not sick) coworkers sit at home.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> Why rush to return to work when you can make more staying at home? Because unemployment doesn't work that way. When your boss calls and says "hey, we're ready for you to come back to work", you're no longer eligible for unemployment benefits.
- eggy 6y ago
  Yes, but until then you're incentivizedized to stay home and collect the larger check. Not to mention the woman in the lead of the story took an unpaid leave of absence for her illness.
bendergarcia 6y ago
If you were paid to not work, would you do nothing?
- eggy 6y ago
  No, but I would do something I wanted to do. Not sure I get your drift.

SmokeyHamster 6y ago

If you define it as someone getting something while not working vs others getting nothing while working, yes, thank you NPR. That's how unemployment benefits work. That's why government handouts are damaging, especially in the long term. They inherently incentivize not working and punish those who do work. More importantly, government rarely does anything efficiently. I'm gainfully employed and don't need any "help" from the government, yet I received a debit card from the IRS containing my "relief" money. As much as I appreciate the government giving me back my tax dollars, why did I receive this and not someone who's recently unemployed?

gerbal 6y ago
> They inherently incentivize not working and punish those who do work. Do you have any evidence of this claim?
- iamstupidsimple 6y ago
  It's obvious. I can't speak for America, but in the UK, one of the biggest problems is the financial cliff people face when trying to get off benefits, as being unemployed will pay you more than any entry level job (you can get social housing too). It's kept people trapped within the system for decades and nobody likes to talk about it. There isn't enough money left to house the current homeless population too, so really, we need to get those people back into working life so that we can deal with the homeless crisis.
- bendergarcia 6y ago
  If someone is not working for McDonald’s but is a productive member of society, does it matter that they are incentivized to not work? This idea that people who aren’t incentivized to work are lazy and don’t add any value to society highlights how you view people and humanity. What would you do if you were paid to not work?
  - ativzzz 6y ago
    > What would you do if you were paid to not work? I would probably play video games and read books all day and spend more time hanging out with friends. Would probably be drunk/high a lot more often.

goodside 6y ago

In more normal times, it makes sense that unemployment should not be lucrative, and workers should be encouraged to take any job at all rather than be unemployed. But the calculus changes in a pandemic, because you want people to stay home, even if they have nothing productive to do there. Low-wage work is almost never remote, so a person working a non-essential, low-wage job is likely not providing enough value to offset the harm they do by spreading COVID at their job site or on public transit. Of course, this is not the function that UI was meant to serve. If it were designed to “compete” with the low-wage job market, it would be paid out even to workers who resign voluntarily or refuse to seek any employment while receiving benefits. But given policy can’t turn on a dime, raising UI is a reasonable way to discourage non-essential work specifically — to the extent work is essential, workers are unlikely to be laid off and made eligible for benefits.

JSavageOne 6y ago
That's a pretty absurd rationalization for paying people more to not work than to work. Also, the article specifically talks about "essential workers" who made more money not working. Wanting people to stay at home is different from paying people to be unemployed.
- goodside 6y ago
  “Essential workers” is a nebulous term - formally there are only “essential businesses” that are allowed to operate, and their employees are informally “essential” too. But only a subset of such workers are necessary. E.g., cleaning staff at hotels might be called “essential workers”, but if the hotels are virtually empty most of those workers aren’t needed. Granting extra UI benefits allows the employer to determine which workers to keep, and compensates those actually laid off to avoid unexpected hardship. None of the essential workers mentioned in the article lost their jobs that I can see. One was just temporarily overpaid for taking an otherwise unpaid leave. They stayed home, and received more pay for doing so. The fact that the UI bonus encourages this behavior (within the bounds that employers tolerate) is exactly the social benefit I’m pointing out in my original comment — the UI benefit encourages people to stay home if they can. The workers in the article are complaining about the unfairness of not receiving extra pay, and justifiably so — it is unfair. The UI benefit helps slow the spread of a deadly pandemic (and mitigates foreseeable bankruptcies/evictions) while also making the world less fair for the people who are still employed. The article only discusses the latter, and I was pointing out the former.

duxup 6y ago

For companies without a ton of cash on hand... I get why the idea of paying folks more in the face of a huge economic question mark, economic slowdown (or worse), and increased unemployment looks like a bad choice...

Spooky23 6y ago

To me this issue should be more about the gross nature of US wage policy, that allows systematic abuse of “essential” low skill hourly workers with low wages, unpaid on call, health insurance tied to hours worked, etc. The resentment these workers feel illustrates why we have a problem — people as a whole are more focused on what the other guy gets than the nature how how they are exploited.

LatNax 6y ago

Essential workers may lose in comparison to a jobless person in the short-run. They may be the winners in the long-haul.

coronadisaster 6y ago
they may or they may not... no one knows.

sevenfold_junky 6y ago

This story strikes home. I worked during the shutdown, my job in reality isn't that important compared to an EMS Tech, ER Nurse or someone along those lines. None the less I did work directly with the public... I never got a thank you from my company, never got paid a penny extra nothing. While my boss received an extra week of paid vacation. Four weeks ago people laid off started coming back to work. Two weeks ago my pay and hours both got cut, I will now get paid 25% less than I did last year. Now a person who choose to go on leave, so they could make more money from unemployment, got promoted... with a 10% pay increase. Oh, best of all the company will be charge more in a few weeks.

linuxftw 6y ago

Wages are too low across the board. Why are wages so low? Past administrations have been incentivizing businesses to move production capacity overseas. Combine this with large amounts of immigration, and our most vulnerable populations are underpaid or unemployed with no chance of moving up the economic ladder. A technical degree is the only remaining ticket to the middle class, and we've got over 600k H1B's and their dependents displacing domestic labor that could easily be trained to do the same jobs. So when I hear that "Essential Workers" are making less than the unemployed, I want to resolve the core issue: low wages.

anthony_romeo 6y ago

IMO the real problem is that wages have been stagnant for decades despite the average worker becoming more and more efficient at their jobs. Complaints about the moral hazard of giving people money rings hollow given how poorly we in the US have invested in our communities and social welfare. I feel we're just reaping what we've sown.

heavyset_go 6y ago

It is a disincentive for desperate people to return to work and risk their lives because they need a few extra bucks. This is a good thing.

iron0013 6y ago

It is so crazy to me that anyone could read this and think “those people should be receiving less unemployment pay!“ instead of “those workers should be receiving higher wages!”