7 ms·

Our government has failed in their response at local, state, and federal levels. The other thing we're going to be seeing soon is that these Unemployment progra

Our government has failed in their response at local, state, and federal levels. The other thing we're going to be seeing soon is that these Unemployment programs have failed to do what they're ordained to do. This is an anecdote, but my brother was furloughed and has been waiting on any money (including the first stimulus) for literally months

claudeganon 6y ago
Most unemployment systems in US states were designed with the intention to keep people from getting benefits or getting them off them as soon as possible. Unsurprisingly, such systems are minimally robust when they actually need to be used, en masse. Maybe we will learn a lesson from this, but the number one political priority right now seems to be indemnifying businesses from pandemic-related harm caused to their customers and employees, so I’m not optimistic.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Yes, this is working as ultimately intentioned, though of course not according to its ostensible purpose.
alexpetralia 6y ago
Do you have any sense of how people are managing? I sort of assumed that people _must_ be receiving money because there's no way Americans in the lower deciles of savings would be able to pay their bills consistently without work or stimulus. If there's no stimulus and no work, how are they paying bills? Is it on credit? Was there actually some savings?
- claudeganon 6y ago
  People are coasting on tiny savings, eviction freezes, not paying bills, and moving in with their friends or families. Or at least my friends anyway. The fall/winter is going to be an absolute disaster because you can’t fix anything about the economy without getting the pandemic under control, which a large percentage of our leaders in the US have decided they have no obligation to do.
  - option 6y ago
    Please remember to vote based on candidates’ record not FB/Youtube ads
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, but this failure extends across both parties in the United States. The refusal by politicians to take on Capital owners is pushing people into homelessness, loss of healthcare, or danger in low wage jobs, all of which further exacerbate the pandemic. The mainstream of the Democratic Party has advanced little that would address any of this, mostly quibbling over means testing income supports and lurching right. And we can just look at that state of the pandemic in the US to know what the other side thinks we should be doing.
      - Answerawake 6y ago
        This is what boggles my mind. We had progressive candidates running this cycle that were outright commiting to trying something different. Yet the majority of the voter base ran towards people promising the same strategy as previous administrations. Either this crisis is magnified on HN and the majority of the voter base is unaffected by the pandemic or something else is going on.
        claudeganon 6y ago
        The Democratic party made the correct bet that they could use their media apparatus to discredit progressive candidates, get away with cheating in Iowa, and use Obama to get the other moderates to concede with promises of internal advancement. It was corrupt and repugnant, but a strategically sound approach to make sure they're headed on the ticket by a center right leader (which their donor base demands).
        Answerawake 6y ago
        As someone who volunteered for multiple campaigns this cycle, I saw this clearly. But I also see most people that I have met on my travels just seem to be checked out, even if they vote. I think this is the bigger problem. The previous cycles have already just turned people off from thinking they can do massive change. Even with a record number of volunteers and supporters with a campaign like Bernie, it still wasn't enough numbers. I often wonder how painful things will have to get to enact some change with the checked out masses. What will happen if we reach that point?
- londons_explore 6y ago
  I have no data to back this up, but I would guess with interest rates at record lows and massive amounts of stimulus money with nowhere to go, getting a personal loan is rather easy right now...
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  I can really only give my personal viewpoint of it. But for me personally I just have not been paying my mortgage only because I was lucky enough to have a government backed mortgage loan where I could tell the bank "tough shit" until the end of the year. Also there have been temporary measures in place for things like utilities, ISPs, mobile phone plans etc. where people will keep accruing obligations on their bills without the services being cutoff. However it seems that those programs are about to come to an end. Locally where I live the utility service here said they will start doing cutoffs in August. So I think it's a mixture of some amount of savings, some access to credit, and then a kicking of the can down the road for a few months. So my guess overall is that basically we are simply delaying the problem in a bunch of different ways. But at the end of that delay is going to be a lot of economic hurt when those bills actually come due.
  - wronglebowski 6y ago
    In my experience access to credit besides credit cards has been extremely limited. My wife and I looked into several different personal or short term loan options for our upcoming IVF cycle(approx 30k$). Most banks have either stopped offering them completely or made the requirements much harder. The two of us with credit scores of 750+, combined 200k annual income and little existing debt couldn't get approved for a simple 5k$ loan. I fear for those that have a more dire need for the cash than we do.
    - causalmodels 6y ago
      This reminds me of a little trick I learned while working in finance. If you have bad credit but have over $1,000 in cash, go and get an unsecured loan for roughly 90% of your cash on hand. Ideally the terms should have a negligible or nonexistent prepayment penalty. Once you have the loan, repay it within 2-3 business days. Rinse and repeat until your credit score starts to improve.
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      Is there a reason why you can't get by on $170k?
- paulmd 6y ago
  Roughly 1 in 3 american households are behind on their housing payments. Most states (and all federally backed mortgages) have temporarily suspended evictions so the short answer is that people in financial distress dropped that expense, which is usually the single largest on most people's budgets (for low-income people this can often be 50% or more of take-home depending on the city - yes, the rule of thumb is that it shouldn't be higher than 25% but you simply can't find affordable housing in a lot of areas). However that one eventually is going to come due because the federal mortgage eviction moratorium doesn't prevent you from going in default on your mortgage, it only prevents evictions. The 3-month timer is still running and as soon as the moratorium on evictions is lifted, they can kick you out immediately. So as soon as that lets up in a month or two there's going to be a massive surge in evictions in states that do not go out of their way to keep evictions suspended. (and in fact this is probably a snowballing problem, the longer this crisis goes unchecked and the worse the economic pain gets, the more people that will be in default and the bigger the difficulty of getting "back to normal". Furthermore at some point that shit starts rolling back uphill economically, banks turned your mortgage into financial products and you not paying is cutting off the income of someone else, and in fact there is an eventual risk of a 2008-style crisis occurring on top of all the current problems if we get into a situation where people are defaulting en-masse.)
  - _wldu 6y ago
    Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nearly-40-of-homes-in-the-us-are-free-and-clear-of-a-mortgage/#1ff0b48947c2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nea...
    - dopamean 6y ago
      I wonder how many of those are occupied by renters.
      - _wldu 6y ago
        I'm not sure. I posted that to point out the danger of these statistics. We have to be careful. People can tell whatever kind of story they want to tell (at either extreme) and cite the same statistics. Mark Twain made this quip widely known, and it is relevant: "Lies. Damned Lies. And statistics"
- JohnTHaller 6y ago
  25% of folks in NYC, the largest rental market in the US, haven't made rent payments since March. NYC has put a hold on evictions, but their owed rent is still building up. The majority of Americans weren't able to cover an unexpected $500 expense before the pandemic hit. The full depth of how bad this is going to get hasn't hit most people nor has it hit the markets.
  - causalmodels 6y ago
    The blanket eviction moratorium has expired in NYC. You can now be brought to court for failure to pay, but if you can prove financial hardship they can't kick you out. This is a fairly substantial burden. I'm afraid what will happen since people can't afford rent let alone legal representation.
nickthegreek 6y ago
I know several people who had been furloughed, including my 69 yr old mother and the extra $600 has been a godsend to them. I dont even understand where we would be as a country if that legislation had not passed considering 1 in 3 homeowner/renters missed their payments last month.
- conception 6y ago
  Not discounting what you said but the 30% thing is bad but a bit of a poor statistic in that usually the number is about 20%. This is because it’s not 30% can’t pay rent but 30% didn’t pay on time. By the end of the month the number who had paid was like 92% vs 96% a year ago. So yes bad but less bad with context and certainly something that is a leading indicator of something very very bad.
koolba 6y ago
Most of this is run at the State level. What State is at fault?
codegeek 6y ago
Most of our "Govt" is busy playing politics and it is shameful that somehow COVID has become political as well. Trump calls masks requirement "political nonsense" which is causing many Americans to follow their President. I don't like masks too but I am happy to put one on when in public. Somehow it has become "but you are infringing on my rights". Our Govt sucks because we continue to let them get away with this. Where are all the Senators and Congress people ? Where are the Governors ? Some are trying but most of too busy politicizing it and still denying the reality that shit has hit the fan. It is only going to get worse. I am about to layoff a couple of employees too since they just cannot work remote and their performance has gone down significantly. As a small business owner, I don't have the margins to keep paying them anymore as we are considered a "non essential" business and cannot go to office yet.
dominotw 6y ago
> any money (including the first stimulus) for literally months I got mine almost immediately. What is the difference between me and your brother, I don't understand.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  This is the same question I have. Other family members and friends have all received theirs. He's much younger than me, working entry level jobs, filed all of his taxes, etc. I just looked up some news about it, apparently about 30-35 million(estimated) checks have not been sent out.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Do you live in the same state? That is probably the difference :)
  - dominotw 6y ago
    what do stimulus checks have to do with the state?
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      My mistake, I thought you were referring to the 600/week extra unemployment benefit.
- guenthert 6y ago
  A buddy of mine got his too within days, I wait since early May. The EDD (California) did process millions of applications (or so they claim), but more than a million are still outstanding. The problem seems to me to be in their mission objective: they view every applicant first and foremost as a potential "wellfare queen" and attempt to prove that as a fact (17 years ago, in the aftermath of the Internet bubble burst, I lost my job as well, applied for unemployment insurance benefit and the phone interview I went though was as bizarre as unpleasant -- I didn't get to the phone interview this time 'round). I wished they would rather operate like the IRS: after preliminary, automated checks using tax records (was the person employed by employer as claimed, is that person now employed?) hand out the money and perform selective, random in-depth audits asynchronously.
syspec 6y ago
The fact that this is not discussed more, or that congress and the president have already "moved on" is so frustrating. The president should be making distributing this aid, and fixing the unemployment benefits mess his priority for these people. Instead he's doing a photo op with cans of beans in the Oval Office, and another photo op down the street with a bible he holds like an alien artifact
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Trump messed up a ton in this crises, and has a lot to answer for. This is not one of them. Unemployment is almost all within the remit of the individual states. The government approved additional payments to each state, but the state government is responsible for dispersing and managing the unemployment system.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Fiscal and monetary policy are under the purview of the federal government. Individual states are stuck between a rock and a hard place - needing to ramp up spending to respond to the crisis, while receiving much less tax revenue. States can only respond by taking on more debt, further compounding the cause of this financial jam. Hence red states passing the pain downwards by turning the screws on workers. The current response just takes us further into the debt spiral, making the next crisis even worse - if we're lucky enough to have a next one!
    - taylodl 6y ago
      Most states are required to have a balanced budget, which makes sense seeing as how they don't have the monetary tools available to the federal government. The state budget has to be balanced at the end of the current budget cycle. States have different budget cycles - 1 year, 2 year and 3 year. Many states have dipped into their rainy day funds. For states whose budget cycle ends this year - this could get really ugly.
  - syspec 6y ago
    I'm saying he should be using the power of the bully pulpit, to help coordinate the fixing of this issue, not selling beans
ilamont 6y ago
Feds: Absolutely State: Depends on which state you are talking about Local: Depends on the municipality Let's also not forget the international leadership, particularly WHO, for its spectacular early failures such as ignoring warnings from Taiwan (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan/taiwan-who-spar-again-over-coronavirus-information-sharing-idUSKCN21T0BA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan...) and avoiding any action or statement that would offend China such as calling for a travel ban in January (“In fact, we oppose it,” https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china-coronavirus-is-officially-an-international-emergency/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china...) Regardless, the U.S. federal leadership's incompetence has made everyone's else's jobs exponentially harder. But I don't think it's fair to blame all states and municipalities for failing.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
This isn't some faceless government. The failure of these unemployment programs is by ideological design as ordained by the rightward lurch of the country after the Civil Rights Act.

claudeganon 6y ago

Most unemployment systems in US states were designed with the intention to keep people from getting benefits or getting them off them as soon as possible. Unsurprisingly, such systems are minimally robust when they actually need to be used, en masse. Maybe we will learn a lesson from this, but the number one political priority right now seems to be indemnifying businesses from pandemic-related harm caused to their customers and employees, so I’m not optimistic.

draw_down 6y ago
Yes, this is working as ultimately intentioned, though of course not according to its ostensible purpose.

alexpetralia 6y ago

Do you have any sense of how people are managing? I sort of assumed that people _must_ be receiving money because there's no way Americans in the lower deciles of savings would be able to pay their bills consistently without work or stimulus. If there's no stimulus and no work, how are they paying bills? Is it on credit? Was there actually some savings?

claudeganon 6y ago
People are coasting on tiny savings, eviction freezes, not paying bills, and moving in with their friends or families. Or at least my friends anyway. The fall/winter is going to be an absolute disaster because you can’t fix anything about the economy without getting the pandemic under control, which a large percentage of our leaders in the US have decided they have no obligation to do.
- option 6y ago
  Please remember to vote based on candidates’ record not FB/Youtube ads
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, but this failure extends across both parties in the United States. The refusal by politicians to take on Capital owners is pushing people into homelessness, loss of healthcare, or danger in low wage jobs, all of which further exacerbate the pandemic. The mainstream of the Democratic Party has advanced little that would address any of this, mostly quibbling over means testing income supports and lurching right. And we can just look at that state of the pandemic in the US to know what the other side thinks we should be doing.
    - Answerawake 6y ago
      This is what boggles my mind. We had progressive candidates running this cycle that were outright commiting to trying something different. Yet the majority of the voter base ran towards people promising the same strategy as previous administrations. Either this crisis is magnified on HN and the majority of the voter base is unaffected by the pandemic or something else is going on.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        The Democratic party made the correct bet that they could use their media apparatus to discredit progressive candidates, get away with cheating in Iowa, and use Obama to get the other moderates to concede with promises of internal advancement. It was corrupt and repugnant, but a strategically sound approach to make sure they're headed on the ticket by a center right leader (which their donor base demands).
        Answerawake 6y ago
        As someone who volunteered for multiple campaigns this cycle, I saw this clearly. But I also see most people that I have met on my travels just seem to be checked out, even if they vote. I think this is the bigger problem. The previous cycles have already just turned people off from thinking they can do massive change. Even with a record number of volunteers and supporters with a campaign like Bernie, it still wasn't enough numbers. I often wonder how painful things will have to get to enact some change with the checked out masses. What will happen if we reach that point?
londons_explore 6y ago
I have no data to back this up, but I would guess with interest rates at record lows and massive amounts of stimulus money with nowhere to go, getting a personal loan is rather easy right now...
ethanwillis 6y ago
I can really only give my personal viewpoint of it. But for me personally I just have not been paying my mortgage only because I was lucky enough to have a government backed mortgage loan where I could tell the bank "tough shit" until the end of the year. Also there have been temporary measures in place for things like utilities, ISPs, mobile phone plans etc. where people will keep accruing obligations on their bills without the services being cutoff. However it seems that those programs are about to come to an end. Locally where I live the utility service here said they will start doing cutoffs in August. So I think it's a mixture of some amount of savings, some access to credit, and then a kicking of the can down the road for a few months. So my guess overall is that basically we are simply delaying the problem in a bunch of different ways. But at the end of that delay is going to be a lot of economic hurt when those bills actually come due.
- wronglebowski 6y ago
  In my experience access to credit besides credit cards has been extremely limited. My wife and I looked into several different personal or short term loan options for our upcoming IVF cycle(approx 30k$). Most banks have either stopped offering them completely or made the requirements much harder. The two of us with credit scores of 750+, combined 200k annual income and little existing debt couldn't get approved for a simple 5k$ loan. I fear for those that have a more dire need for the cash than we do.
  - causalmodels 6y ago
    This reminds me of a little trick I learned while working in finance. If you have bad credit but have over $1,000 in cash, go and get an unsecured loan for roughly 90% of your cash on hand. Ideally the terms should have a negligible or nonexistent prepayment penalty. Once you have the loan, repay it within 2-3 business days. Rinse and repeat until your credit score starts to improve.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Is there a reason why you can't get by on $170k?
paulmd 6y ago
Roughly 1 in 3 american households are behind on their housing payments. Most states (and all federally backed mortgages) have temporarily suspended evictions so the short answer is that people in financial distress dropped that expense, which is usually the single largest on most people's budgets (for low-income people this can often be 50% or more of take-home depending on the city - yes, the rule of thumb is that it shouldn't be higher than 25% but you simply can't find affordable housing in a lot of areas). However that one eventually is going to come due because the federal mortgage eviction moratorium doesn't prevent you from going in default on your mortgage, it only prevents evictions. The 3-month timer is still running and as soon as the moratorium on evictions is lifted, they can kick you out immediately. So as soon as that lets up in a month or two there's going to be a massive surge in evictions in states that do not go out of their way to keep evictions suspended. (and in fact this is probably a snowballing problem, the longer this crisis goes unchecked and the worse the economic pain gets, the more people that will be in default and the bigger the difficulty of getting "back to normal". Furthermore at some point that shit starts rolling back uphill economically, banks turned your mortgage into financial products and you not paying is cutting off the income of someone else, and in fact there is an eventual risk of a 2008-style crisis occurring on top of all the current problems if we get into a situation where people are defaulting en-masse.)
- _wldu 6y ago
  Almost 40% of homes in America are owned free and clear (no mortgage). https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nearly-40-of-homes-in-the-us-are-free-and-clear-of-a-mortgage/#1ff0b48947c2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nea...
  - dopamean 6y ago
    I wonder how many of those are occupied by renters.
    - _wldu 6y ago
      I'm not sure. I posted that to point out the danger of these statistics. We have to be careful. People can tell whatever kind of story they want to tell (at either extreme) and cite the same statistics. Mark Twain made this quip widely known, and it is relevant: "Lies. Damned Lies. And statistics"
JohnTHaller 6y ago
25% of folks in NYC, the largest rental market in the US, haven't made rent payments since March. NYC has put a hold on evictions, but their owed rent is still building up. The majority of Americans weren't able to cover an unexpected $500 expense before the pandemic hit. The full depth of how bad this is going to get hasn't hit most people nor has it hit the markets.
- causalmodels 6y ago
  The blanket eviction moratorium has expired in NYC. You can now be brought to court for failure to pay, but if you can prove financial hardship they can't kick you out. This is a fairly substantial burden. I'm afraid what will happen since people can't afford rent let alone legal representation.

nickthegreek 6y ago

I know several people who had been furloughed, including my 69 yr old mother and the extra $600 has been a godsend to them. I dont even understand where we would be as a country if that legislation had not passed considering 1 in 3 homeowner/renters missed their payments last month.

conception 6y ago
Not discounting what you said but the 30% thing is bad but a bit of a poor statistic in that usually the number is about 20%. This is because it’s not 30% can’t pay rent but 30% didn’t pay on time. By the end of the month the number who had paid was like 92% vs 96% a year ago. So yes bad but less bad with context and certainly something that is a leading indicator of something very very bad.

koolba 6y ago

Most of this is run at the State level. What State is at fault?

codegeek 6y ago

Most of our "Govt" is busy playing politics and it is shameful that somehow COVID has become political as well. Trump calls masks requirement "political nonsense" which is causing many Americans to follow their President. I don't like masks too but I am happy to put one on when in public. Somehow it has become "but you are infringing on my rights". Our Govt sucks because we continue to let them get away with this. Where are all the Senators and Congress people ? Where are the Governors ? Some are trying but most of too busy politicizing it and still denying the reality that shit has hit the fan. It is only going to get worse. I am about to layoff a couple of employees too since they just cannot work remote and their performance has gone down significantly. As a small business owner, I don't have the margins to keep paying them anymore as we are considered a "non essential" business and cannot go to office yet.

dominotw 6y ago

> any money (including the first stimulus) for literally months I got mine almost immediately. What is the difference between me and your brother, I don't understand.

ethanwillis 6y ago
This is the same question I have. Other family members and friends have all received theirs. He's much younger than me, working entry level jobs, filed all of his taxes, etc. I just looked up some news about it, apparently about 30-35 million(estimated) checks have not been sent out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
salmon30salmon 6y ago
Do you live in the same state? That is probably the difference :)
- dominotw 6y ago
  what do stimulus checks have to do with the state?
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    My mistake, I thought you were referring to the 600/week extra unemployment benefit.
guenthert 6y ago
A buddy of mine got his too within days, I wait since early May. The EDD (California) did process millions of applications (or so they claim), but more than a million are still outstanding. The problem seems to me to be in their mission objective: they view every applicant first and foremost as a potential "wellfare queen" and attempt to prove that as a fact (17 years ago, in the aftermath of the Internet bubble burst, I lost my job as well, applied for unemployment insurance benefit and the phone interview I went though was as bizarre as unpleasant -- I didn't get to the phone interview this time 'round). I wished they would rather operate like the IRS: after preliminary, automated checks using tax records (was the person employed by employer as claimed, is that person now employed?) hand out the money and perform selective, random in-depth audits asynchronously.

syspec 6y ago

The fact that this is not discussed more, or that congress and the president have already "moved on" is so frustrating. The president should be making distributing this aid, and fixing the unemployment benefits mess his priority for these people. Instead he's doing a photo op with cans of beans in the Oval Office, and another photo op down the street with a bible he holds like an alien artifact

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Trump messed up a ton in this crises, and has a lot to answer for. This is not one of them. Unemployment is almost all within the remit of the individual states. The government approved additional payments to each state, but the state government is responsible for dispersing and managing the unemployment system.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Fiscal and monetary policy are under the purview of the federal government. Individual states are stuck between a rock and a hard place - needing to ramp up spending to respond to the crisis, while receiving much less tax revenue. States can only respond by taking on more debt, further compounding the cause of this financial jam. Hence red states passing the pain downwards by turning the screws on workers. The current response just takes us further into the debt spiral, making the next crisis even worse - if we're lucky enough to have a next one!
  - taylodl 6y ago
    Most states are required to have a balanced budget, which makes sense seeing as how they don't have the monetary tools available to the federal government. The state budget has to be balanced at the end of the current budget cycle. States have different budget cycles - 1 year, 2 year and 3 year. Many states have dipped into their rainy day funds. For states whose budget cycle ends this year - this could get really ugly.
- syspec 6y ago
  I'm saying he should be using the power of the bully pulpit, to help coordinate the fixing of this issue, not selling beans

ilamont 6y ago

Feds: Absolutely State: Depends on which state you are talking about Local: Depends on the municipality Let's also not forget the international leadership, particularly WHO, for its spectacular early failures such as ignoring warnings from Taiwan (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan/taiwan-who-spar-again-over-coronavirus-information-sharing-idUSKCN21T0BA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan...) and avoiding any action or statement that would offend China such as calling for a travel ban in January (“In fact, we oppose it,” https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china-coronavirus-is-officially-an-international-emergency/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china...) Regardless, the U.S. federal leadership's incompetence has made everyone's else's jobs exponentially harder. But I don't think it's fair to blame all states and municipalities for failing.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

This isn't some faceless government. The failure of these unemployment programs is by ideological design as ordained by the rightward lurch of the country after the Civil Rights Act.