To: Twotone
If they can’t direct dollars to only those whose businesses have been shuttered due to the lockdown, they should just forget it. Even if you’ve lost your job, you’re still eligible for unemployment. The small business people are the ones who need it. But the dollars never seem to go to the right place. So forget it!
The problem is that many people who lost jobs in March, are about to be kicked off UI. 26 weeks (what most States have for max unemployment) from mid-March ended with September. Between States passing UI extensions, or the Federal extension (PEUC), most people could get another 13 weeks of UI, which ends with December. (And the Fed one ends in December no matter what, even if you've only gotten one week of it.) So unless Congress or your State passes something about this, a whole lot of people are no longer eligible for UI starting in January.
Also, UI doesn't pay very much at all. My job didn't cut everyone til July, and I've been working some freelance/Guard stuff, so I still have over half my UI available. BUT, it only pays out about 40% of what I was making, and I'm at max benefit. For most people, you can't even pay the basic bills based on 40% of your income, much less buy food or fuel or do much of anything.
Finding a new job is also difficult, especially for people making a decent wage. Sure, Amazon or Buccee's or Wally World will hire, but at barely $10, maybe $15/hr, which is hardly anything compared to prior employment for a lot of people. The places that do have mid-level positions paying $50, $60, $70M a year are not hiring at all. Assuming you can even find a position within your industry or close to your job/training experience. Crossing into a new industry is difficult for mid- to older-aged people, and generally means accepting a wage maybe half what you were making, and having to learn/certify a LOT of new stuff. And getting dropped to the bottom of the totem pole for seniority.
While I do agree that the best place to target funds is into small businesses that are hurting, what do you do about all the ones that have closed? Been closed for months, they can't just take the money and open back up for two or three months, if their employees are even still available. Would shuttered businesses that can't reopen be eligible for funding? Even though their owners put their life/retirement savings into staying open an extra two months, and now have nothing?
What about all the people that have had jobs eliminated (temp or permanent), that can't just go out and get another one comparable to their old one? I work in the corporate AV industry - conferences, yearly employee award shows, expositions, training/safety/research meetings, mostly stuff like that. I'm young-ish and flexible, but many in my industry are not. How does a 50-year-old video engineer find a job that pays $80M a year? The only place he can maybe go is broadcast media or film industry, but those are hurting really bad too. An audio engineer can't go to the concert or sports side of things, they're gone as well. And this stuff is long-term. Even IF every State removed 100% of lockdowns tomorrow, back to normal completely, our industry and many related ones are gonna be half-dead for years. We depend on companies being willing to have events with large groups of people in close contact for training or dinners or whatnot. It will be years, if ever, before enough companies are willing to do that, and that assumes no other new virus comes out and is grossly over-inflated and we do all this again.
And I won't argue much on this point as it's become irrelevant for everyone except one or two people, but what part of the Constitution allows FedGov the power to spend all this money? All they should do is pass a one-page bill that clarifies that any city/county/State/etc that issues any kind of lockdown, is responsible, under eminent domain, for all lost revenues/expenses/etc for each business or person affected by it. The entities responsible for killing business and firing people should be the ones paying for it. Plus, there's the added benefit of all these lockdowns being lifted overnight, or more likely, day of as soon as they can drive to the office!
To: Svartalfiar
$2,000 still won’t help anyone enough to make a difference. But if they started screaming at their elected officials to call off the lockdowns, they’d be closer to resuming a normal life. People don’t act until it hurts. We should all be out in the streets over this nonsense.
67 posted on
12/24/2020 9:06:30 AM PST by
Twotone
(While one may vote oneself into socialism one has to shoot oneself out of it.)
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