The idea is to raise all the boats. . .while maybe just keep the top where it currently is. The Top has been outpacing the bottom for decades maybe it is time the bottom and middle catch up Rocket River
The employer gets a lot of say in this matter. He/she can keep staff on and they won't get the potential increased payments. Also, once ready to open, if the employer offers the furloughed or laid off worker their job back, that unemployment goes away. Anyone correct me, but if you're unemployed and you get your old job offered back at the same pay, then you have to take it or risk losing your benefits.
When you collect unemployment. . how does that affect the employer? I have always been curious about that Rocket River
I pay unemployment taxes to the federal government and separate unemployment taxes to Texas. You just pay pay pay. Then when a former employee claims unemployment, the impact is indirect. It's like if everyone gets in extra car accidents this year, your next year's auto insurance rates will be higher. But if you start a business, you're going to be paying the same unemployment tax rate per person as I do.
That's what UBI does... Moreso than giving the unemployed money. That is essential selective socialism. Once again, grocery store workers, hardware store workers, etc, are not upper class. Neither is probably 99% of essential workers.
Well, it seems like expanded unemployment did not physically turn us into a nation of Hutt-esque layabouts, as proposed by people like: @EddieWasSnubbed @Major Lindsay Graham, Rand Paul, Arthur Laffer and many other horribles. Rather than building a nation of idlers, it was a pretty useful prop to demand/spending keeping it from falling off the cliff that a lot of people feared to account for ......all of the money lost by massive unemployment and underemployment: Finding One: During the pandemic, While aggregate spending of the employed was down by 10 percent during the initial months of the pandemic, the spending of unemployment benefit recipients increased 10 percent, a pattern which is likely explained by the $600 federal weekly benefit supplement. https://institute.jpmorganchase.com...rkets/unemployment-insurance-covid19-pandemic And hey, wait, what's taht? The fact that it was more than the measly pathetic excuse for a minimum wage was.....good? at combatting poverty? Our initial evidence indicates that at the start of the pandemic government policy effectively countered its effects on incomes, leading poverty to fall and low percentiles of income to rise across a range of demographic groups and geographies. Our evidence suggests that income poverty fell shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. In particular, the poverty rate, calculated each month by comparing family incomes for the past twelve months to the official poverty thresholds, fell by 2.3 percentage points from 10.9 percent in the months leading up to the pandemic (January and February) to 8.6 percent in the two most recent months (April and May). This decline in poverty occurred despite that fact that employment rates fell by 14 percent in April—the largest one month decline on record https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202084.pdf But wait, what about all of those workers who are selfishly holding back our grand reopening by collecting all of that money: s for whether pandemic UI is discouraging people from going back to work, although this is reasonable in theory, evidence shows that it’s also not much of a concern at this point. If pandemic UI were causing a shortage of workers, we’d expect to see wages rising, as companies tried to lure workers back. But median wages are little changed. And data from human-resources management company Automatic Data Processing Inc. shows that workers were much more likely to face wage cuts or freezes this May than they were in May 2019. Job vacancies are also down relative to the number of unemployed workers, suggesting that companies aren’t being forced to work very hard to find employees. Most top economists now agree that a lack of labor demand, rather than unwillingness to work, is the reason unemployment is high: A Willing Workforce But Wary Employers Response to question: "Employment growth is currently constrained more by firms' lack of interest in hiring than people’s willingness to work at prevailing wages." Strongly Agree 19.0% Agree 53.0% Uncertain 16.0% Disagree 0.0% Strongly Disagree 0.0% https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...ers-and-economy-need-renewed-jobless-benefits But, what do I know, it looks like EddieWasSnubbed @Major Lindsay Graham Rand Paul Arthur Laffer and other opponents of the $600 benefit bump are going to get their wish. This is functionally expired as of close of business today, and since this is the Republican party we are dealing with here - there is no rush to bring it back, even though unemployment is rising and the pandemic is raging out of control in most states that tried to force people back to work most schools/childcare are indefinitely closed - it's not exactly a hot job market and GDP is falling off a cliff But the great news is with that support gone: Indeed, Congress slashing the benefit from $600 a week to zero could cost the economy 1.1 million jobs by the end of the year, depressing GDP growth by more than 1 percent and increasing the unemployment rate by 0.7 percent, Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics told me. “The economy has already gone sideways since early June, as the intensifying pandemic is doing serious damage,” he said. “Employment may decline in July, even with the current amount of fiscal support. If that support ends altogether, then the job losses will be large in coming months, and unemployment will remain in double-digits until well after the pandemic is over. But wait, that doesn't SOUND like great news. That actually sounds like terrible news - but what do I, @SamFisher know: Well, aside from the self-evident proposition of you lining up with Art Laffer alone rendering you ill-suited to make such a comparison, and the passages above, let me float a few clues for your perusal: 1) The fact that you took a couple of undergrad courses on Economics at UT in the 1990's, is kind of a ****ing joke? Most of the garbage that was taught to us back then with perfect little curves and pretty econometrics? A lot of that stuff has been thrown in the toilet since then, I don't feel like going into the details but lots of things about our modern world don't actually behave that way and many new things, (behavioralism, complexity, networks etc etc) have arisen to fill the gaps. 2) Economics itself has taken a bit of a fall in the last 10 years because it's very pretty theories like efficient Markets tend to be insanely wrong I mean Iimagine if people at CERN were looking for a Higgs Boson, and instead they found out that actually no, there is no higgs boson, there is not even a such a thing as an atom, so never mind - all of their predictiosn were wrong. It would actually be less scandalous because fewer people woudl be hurt by it. Economics, "mainstream" economics, does a ****ing awful job of predicting the future. but yet we go back to the same dipshits like Eugene Fama and Arthur Laffer again and again and allow them to advise and craft policies that affect the lives of billions of people - that is baseline criminal. There's also the small matter of our preferred mode of economics - late stage capitalism that uses an invisible hand to ever reshuffle benefits upward, mostly because of misconceptions about the way markets work and a belief in the mistaken premise that the most "efficient" outcome is the most stable one or actually means anything at all - is kind of an unmitigated disaster that is literally killing us? Like look at the last 6 months or 4 years ot whateer. Anyways, good luck with your various retail ventures in this economy. It sucks.
I was never for it, coming from a perspective of it was screwing over the essential workers. I know you and I disagree on that, and that's fine, but the essential workers should have been given money too, essentially a UBI - something I'm very much for and have stated here many times. Also, what I don't prefer is just printing money to hand to people because they're not working. All you're doing is blowing air into a bubble that is already on the verge of popping. And it's going to pop. And it'll be soon enough. Let's not make me out to be the boogey man because of a disagreement. My whole platform was that if we're going to revert to socialism in a time like this, let's do it right. Let's properly fund it, and let's get the money to everyone. That is something I haven't wavered on. It's essentially the argument that a lot of people make when they want to expand Medicare/Medicaid to universal healthcare. Something I'm sure you'd agree with me on.
You should speak to actual small business owners. Of my 15 employees, 7 declined to return so they could stay on unemployment benefits. Each of them was both willing and excited to return prior to seeing their benefits - all are making more than 60% more on unemployment, so why go to work and incur expenses (gas, etc) to make less? 3 returned to work to make less than they were, simply out of a loyalty to us (members of our leadership team), but they would rather be at home. 2 have us as a 2nd part time job, so it doesn't affect their benefits. 3 were already planning to leave this summer as they finished college, so they didn't return (and get to collect a huge unemployment check). The business environment is dead, so it doesn't really matter than they didn't come back, but had our traffic returned, we would be unable to actually run the business. And per the PPP loan terms, we had to invite them all back. This is true across my industry as well as several cafe owners and other small businesses that I am in contact with. The alternative is to report to the state that the employees are unwilling to return, and thus cut off their benefits - then, if they return, they will hate the business owners and be crappy employees. So basically any small business that doesn't have an ******* owner is dealing with this - pitting their employees' interests against the business owners. Unfortunately, this has played out *exactly* as predicted across the board for small businesses. This was never in doubt or in question. Of course this was excellent for combatting poverty in the short-term. This isn't true at all - those same businesses can't afford to pay their employees more since they have fewer customers - and certainly not the 50% more that would be required to entice people to return. Instead, those businesses will simply go out of business once PPP money is gone. As it turns out, that would likely be the case regardless since demand hasn't returned. In the end, it means there will be fewer jobs long-term. If demand doesn't return, everything is going to hell regardless because employees aren't needed - and that's where we are at right now. And because of PPP changes in June, businesses can extend the time they have to spend their PPP payroll money, so its less critical for businesses to try to re-hire. The issue was if these businesses *wanted* their employees back and had to spend PPP money in the original 8 week timeline. In that scenario, businesses were going to be screwed out of PPP forgiveness, and employees weren't returning because they preferred unemployment benefits. Your lack of understanding of what actual small businesses are dealing with remains. You're using data that encompasses a wide mismash of industries, including large businesses and industries that are actually raising pay due to demand. When some businesses are thriving and raising wages while other businesses being crushed, looking at averages is pointless when the entire goal was specifically to prevent long-term job losses by preventing the death of the failing businesses. This still seems like fairly basic common sense to anyone not simply trying to score political points.
Of course poverty rates declined. We're literally printing money and handing it to people who aren't working. If they'd increased, I'd be absolutely shocked. More shocked than I ever have in my life.
Yes, that's what I've been working towards the last couple of months. I would guess the largest escape rooms (with tons of resources) and smallest escape rooms (with few employees and low rent) survive, while many of the larger solo-owned ones eventually shut down, either through forced bankruptcy or voluntarily when their leases end.
LOL - I"m not going to ask you about PPP because I'm not talking about PPP - I wonder why you spent paragraphs talking about it (Phoebe Waller Bridges - no I don't) - PPP was well intentioned but a failure - I don't think this was obvious at the beginning, but the results seem clear. I'm talking about the title of this thread - this was a good idea. YOu admit as much in codas to your anectdata as demand is absolutely crushed due to the virus, having to raise salaries to entice workers for business that are failing anyway is not really a pertinent large scale concern (in economics, I believe they call it macro-level... unsure as I'm clueless about such matters..) Also: I know exactly what it is. SARS-CoV-2
LOL no we printed money and handed it to equity and bond markets. Like literally orders of magnitude greater than the cost. THe Fed's monetary intervention was humongous. $600 UI expansion was a prety cheap program, way cheaper than PPP But anyway - you're mad about this because...?
I'm not mad about poverty rates declining. I'm mad because it's a false metric. If you want to say I'm mad, which I'm really not. I'm just debating for a debate's sake. That's what we're here for, right. Nothing here is going to make me mad. It's a basketball forum. By printing money and running it through bond markets, aren't we screwing ourselves through inflation? In the end, someone loses, and we're just creating a bigger bubble that will burst. The more we, as taxpayers, lose out to the fed being artificially inflated, the more that eventual bubble bursting will hurt us. Also, I'd rather have a UBI than PPP. Let the market decide who gets their money. Obviously, this grows a bit convoluted without open businesses, though. I'm an imbecilic plebian when it comes to economics. I'll be the first to admit it. Maybe I'm totally out of line here. My guess is that we're simply operating under different economic theories, as we do in some things. That's okay. I respect your opinion, as well.
The poverty rate is a "false metric" because....you say it is. No response needed here. You're confusing monetary policy with fiscal policy. UI boost has really nothing to do with the Fed operations. Fiscally its pretty cheap, and it seems to pay for a lot of itself (so far) bc it seems like 100% of it is spent and goes right back into the economy arresting a bigger slide like i said, PPP was a good idea in spirit, badly executed in design and practice. The UI boost is a lot more like UBI. Unemployed ? Ok heres extra money. I wouldn't mind trading UI boost for simple UBI but looks like were doing UI which is the next best thing - so we need to do it, it needs to be generous, because our government has epically failed to stabilize the public health situation and people literally cannot earn a living without making it worse, and it will be paid for by the rich, who have spent decades designing a government in their preferred style, and this is the result. The social contract needs to be settled. Certain accounts are very much in arrears. This is quite literally the bare minimum to keep this flaming hulk afloat for another year of COVID19 hell.
It's false because it's not a lasting lift out of poverty. Yes, it's going back into the economy. A lot of it. Not nearly all of it. Several people I know have said they're saving money for the first time ever. Can we not agree, though, that this money isn't really backed by anything, so its, at the very least, going to create inflation? Whether that is a negligible inflation vs. something that only expands our economic bubble is up for debate, and quite honestly, I'm sure it's fairly negligible at this point. I agree with a lot of what you said here. My argument is not that we shouldn't have done anything. My argument is, and had always been, that we should be doing something to pay homage to those that are essential workers, as well. While some of the country sits at home, making more money than they would if they were working (I think we can all agree this is wrong), we should be doing something for the people working too. UBI, and a complete UBI, at that, is the way to fix this. In hindsight, it should have been what was done. Also, as I said before, at the very most, this UI should have been capped at 100% of your weekly earnings, based off of previous year's tax returns. I disagree with people that this would have been too hard to implement. The people working are still paying for gas to drive to and from work. They're still paying for childcare. They're putting themselves at risk each day. And they're not getting a dime extra. In fact, as I've argued in here, they're suffering a net loss, over their typical income, just because they're working. How is that not an agreeable point amongst everyone? I have no idea. The far left wants to argue that they should be lucky their life wasn't disrupted. Let me tell you, it has been. Hell, medical workers, at times, are being held without covid testing by their employers even when they have a fair risk. I can give you examples if you'd like. Personal examples. Once again I'll harken back to 20 year old kid making $15/hour at the grocery store. He's more at risk than my wife or I, two medical workers. But he's out there working every day to make the same amount as someone that is sitting at home, on unemployment. He's making less than someone who is working a day or two or three a week of their normal, full time job. These people also don't have to pay for childcare, gas, or those types of things. But I agree with a fair amount in this last part.
The companies who benefited the most from PPP needed it the least. See Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot
