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

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

#231

Post by sangnoir »

CydeWeys wrote: post #160
votepaunchy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is provably false. It only went to people who filed taxes in 2019 and who met the qualifications. The stimulus check will be part of your 2020 tax return, and you will claim the money as a refund then if you have not already received your money. Any money incorrectly paid out will likewise be reclaimed via that process.

Paying out next year upon filing taxes doesn't do a lot to keep people afloat who are unemployed now . That's long enough to end up on the street.

All you said is true, but this is the mechanism Congress decided to distribute the money (a universal, early tax refund for 2020), and that are its failure modes - some people will get it later than others if the government doesn't currently have their information on file, or only has paper returns.

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

#232

Post by anthony_romeo »

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.

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

#233

Post by drtillberg »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #129
packetlost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because bailouts (usually) make the government money in the long run. They're in the form of low-interest loans, they aren't just handing out money to corporations.

Bailouts usually make the government money in the long run if you ignore the costs. Let's say the market rate for a loan like this is 4% and the government is loaning at .5%. Sure, the government has "made" .5% (less any defaults), but by any realistic understanding of what's going on, they lost 3.5%.

Of course bailouts from the Fed "make" money. When the Fed increases its balance sheet by $2T, it "made" $2T. Indeed if it devoted the entire bailout to buying paperclips or Renaissance art, or S&P500 common stock, the prices of those things would go up (or go down less). However, the question is whether the Fed is buying things that are in the public interest.

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

#234

Post by monocasa »

ceejayoz wrote: post #150
monocasa wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's been a thing for decades doesn't mean it instantly fixes demand in this case. And the fact that a quick google search is showing new travel nurse jobs posted a week ago in new york, despite their curve dropping a couple months ago, is telling. It seems like they were unable to meet demand with that program.

There are always travel nurse jobs open in NYC. The nature of a short-term contract is that there's always churn. They are not always $10k/week.

All you've shown is high demand, not the market meeting that demand.

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

#235

Post by dahfizz »

bendergarcia wrote: post #175
dahfizz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am assuming you don't know a single person in the 40% that don't have $400 saved up for emergencies. This is an oft misunderstood stat[1][2]. The actual stats from the survey show that 61% of Americans would choose to pay a surprise $400 bill in cash. The remaining people would prefer to use a credit card or other ways of paying. Only around 12% of respondents said they would actually have a hard time paying the…

Can you speak to how propping up the stock market has benefits for all?

Well I already talked about how most Americans have money in the stock market, so there is that immediate benefit of seeing your savings increase. But there is also a line of logic that goes like this:

An economic depression is bad for everyone. Therefore avoiding an economic depression is good for everyone. Quantitative easing has been shown multiple times to alleviate / avoid massive economic downturns. Therefore QE is beneficial to all.

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

#236

Post by anon73044 »

frockington1 wrote: post #226
ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Im really excited for the next few years. If we get some real inflation rental properties are going to be a huge cash cow with the low interest mortgages being handed out now

Until the proles rise up and kill all the landlords. /sarcasm

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

#237

Post by dahfizz »

bendergarcia wrote: post #170
dahfizz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Then you don’t know poor people who don’t have any investment in the stock market. Who absolutely do benefit from the immediate cash. Who drive your Uber, driver your door dash, serve your meal at your restaurant, probably cleaner your house, do you yard work, sell you shoes at the store, check you out at groceries, stock your groceries, serve you drinks at the bar. Stimulating the stock market was not the right move…

> Putting the money in the stock market has only benefited those already in the stock market and those with the money to enter it.

Quantitative easing has been shown time and time again to alleviate and avoid economic downturn. Do grocery baggers and bar tenders benefit from an economic depression? Do you think Obama made the right choice to stimulate the economy in 2008? This is exactly the same thing.

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

#238

Post by SilasX »

Klinky wrote: post #227
SilasX wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mitigating a real problem requires real resources. Printing money does not give you infinite access to real resources. Thus, there is a bound to what real resources you can apply to a real problem by printing money. What's so controversial here?

It sounds like you're talking about inflation? I don't think we're near any limits on stimulus as far as inflation is concerned. It does not look like inflation is increasing at the moment, likely decreasing. We could likely continue to push out consumer stimulus until inflation percentage exceeded what we'd consider above normal year over year.

Yes, I am -- that's what happens when you try to use the money printer that currently works and scale it up to unbounded resources (eventually).

And again, it sounds like you're agreeing with the point that I'm making. We can disagree about when it will be a problem, but you can't just trivialize the very idea of any mitigation effort being unaffordable because "we just print the money anyway, so affordability is meaningless", as the original comment was effectively arguing.

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

#239

Post by ilyagr »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> 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 unemploy…

The humane solution would be to give additional money to underpaid essential workers, at least during the pandemic, rather than to give unemployed people less. That's the point of the article.

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

#240

Post by stallmanite »

dfxm12 wrote: post #85
packetlost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably would. But solving that problem is significantly harder than putting out loans to large companies that employ thousands of people. If the airline industry collapsed, many other things would've followed. Certain industries are absolutely essential infrastructure to the economy and cataclysmic events can have massive ripple effects.

Whatever happened to doing worthwhile things because they're hard ? Do you know how hard it is to have to quarantine yourself from your family because you've been deemed an essential worker, while getting seemingly nothing in return? Do you know how hard it is to live with the guilt of even possibly infecting others with COVID? Clearly, the current administration puts corporate profits over the lives of Americans. Cl…

I’d love to send that message but the other team seems dedicated to throwing the game. Biden is garbage
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