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

No, it was a deliberate choice to make total benefits bump up to approximately full earnings at a low-but-not-quite-bottom-barrel working income with common state formulas while providing (proportionate to income) less benefit to high income workers (presumed to, when working, have greater surplus income.)

That at the very low end this meant that benefits would be above usual working income was known, but considered by supporters to have limited moral hazard since it required involuntarily becoming unemployed to qualify and unemployment was (and remains) high so that most people with it wouldn't be able to get new jobs anyhow, because of propensity to spend at the low end, the extra income was also viewed as general stimulus as well as individual relief.

It was also controversial from the beginning, with the Right raising moral hazard arguments that it would encourage people to become and remain unemployed, as if that were an option for most recipients.

> or assuming that our government has enough money lying around to pay everyone this much all of the time

Federal spending doesn't come from money laying around, in the first place, it comes from money the government decides to have because it wants to spend it. Even if you buy into the mythology of the fisc, marginal spending comes out of borrowing at, typically, very low interest rates (currently, IIRC, at negative real interest rates), not

The CARES act is a good attempt at providing fair outcomes for everyone, but that is just one of the things the fed is funding. Take a look at their balance sheet from their own website: it went up over 2 trillion in the blink of an eye and they are not done yet: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

There are winners and losers in what is going on now, and corporate America is without doubt the biggest winner. By proxy, the wealthiest Americans that are the biggest owners of the financial assets the fed is supporting are also the biggest winners. Since we are accomplishing all this by printing money, those that don't win lose even more because their dollars are worth less. The long-term result on the current course will be even greater wealth disparity between the rich and the poor.

You might have noticed many people complaining about this wealth disparity during the recent economic recovery in which the fed has added almost 4 trillion dollars to their balance sheet (again see the fed's chart).

These wealth gaps historically lead to populism, which gets us our current president.

However, it gets a bit blurry when you're in a democratic society and you voted for politicians who implement taxes.

>> 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.

> This is false as related to the PPP loans

GP was comparing unemployment to QE and "corporate bailouts". Forgiveness of PPP loans is contingent on keeping staff on payroll and salary levels constant. So it's very much targeted at helping main street. In this sense, the intended use of PPP loans was closer to augmenting unemployment than a corporate bailout.

To the extent that PPP loans have actually gone to small businesses, my impression is that that's mostly worked out -- it's basically unemployment without the lack of employment. To the extent that they haven't, the federal government should find a way to retroactively claw back abuse and/or exclude abusers from future rounds of assistance.

BTW, worth noting that the PPP loans aren't really a handout if they're not paid back; their interest rate of 1%. Rates of return on fixed income are super low right now.