Unemployment emergency benefits has killed jobs. Here is why that's a GOOD thing!

The unemployment benefits are set to expire in September. What have been the results. I think that all in all it has had a very positive impact. Obviously the intended result has been accomplished: to allow people who couldn't find a job to make it through the pandemic. Many businesses have closed. In no small part because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic.

But one of the results have been that some people make more money by staying at home than by going out to work. Here in Florida, for example, if you add Biden's $300 unemployment benefit and the regular unemployment, workers end up making about the equivalent to a $15/hour job. Why is that a good thing in a state with an $8.56 an hour minimum wage?

First of all, it keeps consumption up. These people keep consuming. So businesses that are not shut down, or have been struggling, can remain in business.

But the right insists that it kills jobs. What jobs does it kill? Obviously the jobs in which people make under $15 an hour. $15 is likely the proper living wage for most people (that varies from state to state). People who earned less than that most frequently had to work 2 or 3 jobs. So the jobs it kills are those second and third jobs. These are jobs that don't allow people to make a living wage. So good riddance!

I wrote about this before. And there seems to be the mistaken assumption on the right that small businesses can't survive if they have to pay $15 to their workers. I own a small business myself. All my employees make much more than $15 an hour. A business that can't afford that should not stay in business. They are exploiting their employees. I would argue that some of them could be akin to sweat shops. Most are probably not. They simply need to learn how to use their resources more effectively. Anybody who has to work more than one job to make $15 is not going to be as efficient in any of them.

Bottom line, the jobs that a $15 job (or benefits) that this kills are jobs that deserve to die. They are second or third jobs for people who barely ever get any sleep. Much better if these people make $15 by working ONE job. And this should be true for any developed nation. And most certainly ours.

Oh... and please spare us the idiotic Hannity/Carlson arguments like "why $15? why not $200?". As I said before, because $15 is the proper amount to make a living wage for most people. If you want to argue that it should be more or less... that makes no difference. Whatever is the proper living wage where you live is what should exist. And by that I mean a salary that allows a typical person with a family to not have to work more than one job to make ends meet.

 

There are very many people turning down $50,000 a year job offers (at least in my area) because they feel better off with all of the current government subsidies. Put you pencil, paper, and calculator down and check out the real world.

 

Very hard to believe people are turning down 25 dollars and hour to stay home and make 15. Do you have any thing to support this claim?

 

All part of the great reset. Soon 15 an hour won't be the minimum wage. It will be the only wage.

 

I don't know the specifics of each state but I would assume unemployment benefits alone (not including other welfare benefits) are much more than $15/hr. The federal overload by itself is $7.50/hr. Plus a person doesn't have to pocket the same amount: work 40 hrs for $1000 or loll around for $1000 is a no-brainer. My evidence is all anecdotal. For instance I have heard talk show caller after caller relate the same stuff. One recent example, the owner of a portable toilet service who pays his drivers $45,000 to $70,000 a year has made many job offers that have been turned down, many admitting they are better off not being employed but they have to apply to keep their unemployment. His hiring rate is about 10% of his normal hiring rate.

 

Everything I wrote on the OP is from real life conversations with other real life business owners.

But it looks like you have come across yet another unexpected benefit of subsidies: keeping stupid people out of higher paying jobs. Anybody who turns down a $50K job because they feel better off with government subsidies needs to pick up a calculator. On the other hand, they are likely too stupid to know how to operate it. So whoever offered them that job dodged a bullet.

 

I couldn't agree more. I mentioned this the other day.

April’s expected hiring boom goes bust as nonfarm payroll gain falls well short of estimates | Page 7 | PoliticalForum.com - Forum for US and Intl Politics

In other news:

In the race to attract service workers, Chipotle says it will pay a higher minimum wage (msn.com)

It's quite elementary, Mr. Cougarbear. "What's going on here" is obvious. Biden promised higher wages for workers. He didn't limit himself to the minimum wage strategy. Wages are going up, as promised. No unions, no minimum wage hike needed. Quite a stable genius, that Biden is.

That's what's going on here.

 

First of all, anybody who is offered a $50 K a year job (or any job, for that matter) is not entitled to ANY unemployment benefits. Every time they request an unemployment check they are asked if they have been offered a job. Making a false statement is a felony.

So this "friend" of yours who turned down that job, if they exist in the real world, should be in prison. Not in a $50K job. It would require somebody so uninformed that they don't know the benefits expire in September. They would have to be of such low moral standards that they would lie in a government form. So reckless that they would risk going to prison. And so lazy that they would do all this just so they don't have to work. And they have to do it week after week.

Truly, whoever offered them $50K dodged a bullet.

Oh well... that's different! A caller to a talk show, you say... I mean, why would anybody who calls into wingnut talk shows like Hannity or Alex Jones lie?

Listen... don't believe everything you hear on the radio. And when it's about right wingnut talk shows... don't believe ANYTHING... period!

 

In the real world, people don't sit on their asses for four months if there are $50k jobs available. They may extend their job search, because there might be a $60k job out there, but not four months.

Having a job seekers' market at this juncture is good for the economy. Worker satisfaction is key to performance.

 

Perhaps you actually need to experience the real world. Let me know how things work out for you if you should want to go grocery shopping, visit your favorite quick-serve restaurant, or grab a cold beverage from the convenience store, and you encounter a sign on the door 'temporarily closed, sorry for the inconvenience'. It's happening all over the place, and any place that is in season for tourists.

To think that providing $15 an hour for people who do not produce $15 of products or services, which will effectively STIll make them MW employees, STILL the bottom of the ladder, and STILL not able to afford to live on their own, your 'feel good' idea will provide nothing of value, and you will wonder why.

If $15 an hour is a base wage, it will never be a 'living wage'. They won't be able to afford any more than they do now, if they do not do something to improve their own position. I'm sad to think that some people who come across as intelligent, can't grasp that concept.

 

Yet people like him are willing to believe it. Bloody hell…

 

The inflation monster is about to crash your mathematically-idiotic party, and take a dump in the punch bowl.

 

The difference is not $15 versus $25. It is work versus not having to work. I can show you numerous people who would rather not work, even if they make less money.

 

What's puzzling is that people are staying home. There's no need to exaggerate with easily debunked nonsense. The OP is spot on, and I wasn't joking when I said Biden is a stable genius. This surely was by design.

It's a fascinating subject. I can't remember this ever occurring in my lifetime. Biden's genius lies not in some grand scheme from the onset, but in the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Everything that's playing out right now was initiated with covid. One candidate was incapable of adapting to the changing circumstance, and the other excelled at taking advantage of both the other candidate, and the virus. The science guy won.

Anyway, Biden has some smart economists working for him, and this current scenario was likely foreseen. It's so basic, and it could only have been achieved during a pandemic/economic collapse. Pay people to stay home, wages go up.

 

Since I neither said nor implied "friend" that must have come straight out of where your sun doesn't side. Secondly, the unemployment commission only asks that one verify that he applied for a job, not whether you turned down a job offer

I said nor implied nothing about Hannity or Jones (and I referenced neither) so you pulled that straight out of your ass, too

At one time you used to be halfway good at citing your facts straight.

 

I went out this morning to fill my tank (I was running empty) and into the convenience store for a quick snack. There was a huge "help wanted" sign. The lowest wage was $15. That's just for people who did cleaning. Everything went up from that. This is in Florida. In the Trump era nobody expected to make more than $8.50 an hour back then at entry level. Now I see more and more businesses offering double that!

How's that for real world?

If you hire a person who doesn't produce much more than $15 an hour, it's your business model that's at fault.

My advice: shut it down! And don't come back until you learn how to properly start a business!

Somebody who makes $15 an hour can't afford more than somebody who makes $7.50 an hour?

I'm guessing here is where you go into the so many times debunked nonsense about employees passing the cost to clients, so there is inflation and therefore they can't afford what they used to afford with $15 an hour. Am I right?

I can point you to no less than 10 threads in which that nonsense is rebutted. Assuming that's where you're going, I mean. I hope I'm wrong and instead it's something that actually makes sense.

 

Leftists are like if you handed a credit card to a 10-year-old and let them loose in a candy store.

It's all fun and games until the card is maxed out, and they're curled up on the floor puking their guts out.

 

Goodbye, small businesses! Goodbye, mom and pop shops! Kneel before your new corporate overlords.

Not once the inflation driven by artificially-boosted wages kicks in. They'll be lucky if the money from their steroid-bloated wages buys them only just slightly less than what their original, realistic wages would get them before inflation crushed the spending power of their money.

 

never mind the fact that with no one producing anything prices will follow the Weimar Germany model. And it will soon be cheaper to wipe your arse with dollar bills than to buy toilet paper.

 

Who is paying those people? You and I are. You have curious concept about how you should spend your money.

 

The short name for that is inflation.

 

Here is the relevant part of the unemployment benefits application in Florida. See question 2.


Lying is a third degree felony. BTW, question 4 also covers any of the other "welfare benefits" that you appeared to be referring to. To get what you claimed they would get, they would need to be almost Trump-level liars. Let me tell you: you don't want to hire somebody like that! You are much better off by them rejecting your offer.

Yeah... now I understand you heard it from a caller to some right-wingnut radio show. And you say that it wasn't Hannity or Alex Jones? There are literally hundreds of them. I'm just citing examples of that type of shows.

Don't believe them! That's the best advice I can give.

 

Unemployment emergency benefits has killed jobs. Here is why that's a GOOD thing!

No, they haven't killed any jobs. They have killed the appetite for people to take the available jobs. Not a good thing.

 

And that's what cyrptos for, to buy them cheap a$$ dollar bills.

 

Biden says he's gonna tax rich people. Give him a chance. If he fails, then we can talk.

I don't know how it's going to play out. Nobody does. Economists make guesses, but one thing they do is run many models. I'm giving the administration the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise.

Reagan's changes were seen as extreme at the time by many. Voodoo economics. I'm not too worried about Biden's trickle-up approach.