It's pretty sad that $600-$900 a week is a massive improvement for most people.
With state benefits and $1200 its nearly $45k a year, which is quite a bit more than $15 an hour. Its no wonder people have more money given around 30 million Americans make <$10 an hour.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/05/making-more...
(older source, but I am sure its in the ball park)
I am curious how long until US congress starts blaming anyone who is unemployed for "being lazy", and stop providing financial assistance, or only provides the bare minimum $7.25 an hour.
For those of us who live in high cost of living areas, its easy to forget just how cheap most of the US is: the median mortgage payment in the US is $1100.month (2017 data) [0]. That's 151 minimum wage hours, or about a month of ~40 hour weeks (before taxes, which are very low at that income level). So, a household with two minimum wage earners probably would struggle to afford the median mortgage, but remember half of mortgages are less than that.
This is not me attempting to justify the current minimum wage - I think it should come up. I just think many on this site live in areas where renting a small 1 bedroom apartment is more expensive than $1100/month, or even significantly more than that, much less owning a home.
> I am curious how long until US congress starts blaming anyone who is unemployed for "being lazy", and stop providing financial assistance, or only provides the bare minimum $7.25 an hour.
That sentiment was certainly there from the start, several were talking about how they need to de-rate the benefits based on income.
There's a time limit on the additional federal funds for unemployment insurance, it runs out at the end of July.
Anecdotally, I run a website for a specific hobby that's monetized by Amazon affiliate program. I saw holiday season-like traffic and revenues in April (before Amazon cut the commission rate).
Was thr strangest thing because I had already assumed that my revenue from Amazon this year would be drastically lower. But so far, I'm up nearly 100% YoY
My father runs a Woodcraft franchise, and the past few months have been significantly better than average for him. Since people aren't spending much time and money on activities and dining out, they are investing some of that in hobbies they can do at home instead.
>That’s because of government stimulus benefits, both the $1,200 checks that went out to most people and, even more importantly, the $600-a-week increase in unemployment insurance benefits ... But the message of this data is that, on the whole, it worked.
It sort of worked, but unfortunately the dialog has centered on the talking point that "people are making more not working than they could by working."
It's temporarily true for a lot of people suddenly out of work that weren't making a whole lot to begin with.
Now that it's ending soon things are about to get much worse for everyone.
Note this was reported on May 29, 2020 for data in the April calendar month.
It's likely that a good proportion of households got their one-time $1200 federal check in the April timeframe. I'm more interested to see how much of a cliff happened after April.
AFAIK House Democrats were delaying the bill not because of the stimulus payments, they were opposed to the lack of teeth to Congressional oversight in the CARES Act bailouts, along with the tax code change that cost $90 billion and benefits almost entirely millionaires+.
Just because people have money now doesn't mean they're unethical for wanting some security. When the stimulus goes away the unemployment will still be there.
Owning things isn't a contribution to society. When the thing owned a limited resource like housing, owning more than you need creates artificial scarcity--this is a blight, not a contribution. As a society we're going to have to address this issue.
[+] [-] bearjaws|5 years ago|reply
With state benefits and $1200 its nearly $45k a year, which is quite a bit more than $15 an hour. Its no wonder people have more money given around 30 million Americans make <$10 an hour. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/05/making-more... (older source, but I am sure its in the ball park)
I am curious how long until US congress starts blaming anyone who is unemployed for "being lazy", and stop providing financial assistance, or only provides the bare minimum $7.25 an hour.
[+] [-] ac29|5 years ago|reply
This is not me attempting to justify the current minimum wage - I think it should come up. I just think many on this site live in areas where renting a small 1 bedroom apartment is more expensive than $1100/month, or even significantly more than that, much less owning a home.
[0] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive...
[+] [-] handol|5 years ago|reply
That sentiment was certainly there from the start, several were talking about how they need to de-rate the benefits based on income.
There's a time limit on the additional federal funds for unemployment insurance, it runs out at the end of July.
[+] [-] BubRoss|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] puranjay|5 years ago|reply
Was thr strangest thing because I had already assumed that my revenue from Amazon this year would be drastically lower. But so far, I'm up nearly 100% YoY
[+] [-] munificent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strict9|5 years ago|reply
It sort of worked, but unfortunately the dialog has centered on the talking point that "people are making more not working than they could by working."
It's temporarily true for a lot of people suddenly out of work that weren't making a whole lot to begin with.
Now that it's ending soon things are about to get much worse for everyone.
[+] [-] thephyber|5 years ago|reply
It's likely that a good proportion of households got their one-time $1200 federal check in the April timeframe. I'm more interested to see how much of a cliff happened after April.
[+] [-] tathougies|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dashundchen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerkeslager|5 years ago|reply
Owning things isn't a contribution to society. When the thing owned a limited resource like housing, owning more than you need creates artificial scarcity--this is a blight, not a contribution. As a society we're going to have to address this issue.