Posted on 07/25/2021 2:15:38 PM PDT by Kaslin
Last week, a bipartisan group of hundreds of business owners and employers in Colorado got together to send a letter to Governor Jared Polis. They were asking that he put an end to the $300 per week federal enhancements to unemployment benefits, as the governors of other states have already done. Their underlying message was, ‘we need our workforce back.’ There are help-wanted signs all over the state, but not enough workers to fill nearly all of the positions.
They didn’t have to wait long to get their response. The Governor said that while he wishes he could help, this is “free money” from the federal government and he just can’t turn it away. He also curiously claimed that the money was actually helping the business owners who can’t find enough workers to return to full operations. So with all of this “free money” floating around, they’ll just have to find some other way to get things done. (CBS Denver)
“I wish that we could use the money for something else, but this is $600 to $800 million that the federal government is pumping into Colorado,” Gov. Polis said.Polis said the weekly payments are temporary and helping businesses in Colorado.
“This current money is only here for another month, but if we cut it off, it would be less money for our retail businesses, for our stores,” Polis said Wednesday.
This was a tone-deaf answer at best, with several parts to it. First of all, Polis is saying that the money is “helping businesses” because the unemployed have more cash in their pockets to spend. That may be true, but they won’t be spending much of it at businesses that can’t fully reopen because they don’t have enough workers.
Polis is also telling the employers that it’s “only another six weeks” until the enhanced benefits expire. Six weeks may not seem like a long time to the governor, but it’s six weeks in the heart of the summer. That’s vacation season for a lot of people and many of these businesses rely on a summer surge in customers to keep them in the black for the year. They’ve already been shut down or severely limited for more than a year and they were told that the country was reopening. But you can’t reopen without workers.
The only other option that Polis and other Democrats are offering is to raise wages and expand benefits. That’s a path that many employers have been forced to follow, but they have to pass along those increased labor costs to their customers, raising the prices of everything and further exacerbating inflation at the same time. And it’s only a temporary remedy anyway. When the “free money” runs out and workers feel compelled to come back to work, the extra labor supply is just going to drive wages back to somewhere around pre-pandemic levels.
I eagerly await the next missive from Polis on this subject. I imagine it will include the phrase let them eat cake.
Yep, just went out to a diner that was turning people away from Sunday brunch because they didn’t have a cook working.
Democrats want socialism.
Gov Evers here in WI went to a large local industrial employer here in SE WI a little over a week ago where the owners pleaded that they were short so many workers that they may have to move work to plants outside of WI. The main concern being that the fed unemployment benefits were keeping people from going back to work.
Only thing Evers replied with was “well then you need to start paying more”
This is what happens when you put a long time corrupt educator in charge of something they never had to deal with before.
Economics.
He, and the othe {censored} like him up in Denver, Boulder, et al, are a big part of why I’m serious about moving out of this ever more screwed up state.
800m$ in “free money” from DC reduces output in Colorado by how much? Probably more than that
The people living high on unemployment may have a nasty shock when the benefits run out. Businesses, in order to survive, have invested in automation to allow them to keep running with fewer people.
The Marxists are with stimulus money balancing the books of the states mismanaged by their leftest shills .
Why does the term “employment dessert” keep running through my mind? Driving more jobs out of Blue states will not make things better everywhere.
Polis knows Biden will reactivate the program due to lockdowns to fight the next wave of the dreaded variant. They won’t let the dependence end.
***this is “free money” from the federal government and he just can’t turn it away.***
That is what my Brother-in-law said years ago when, on gov’t assistance, he was offered a job making twice as much. His kids were also drawing “Crazy Money”.
“Work” was not his thing. Kind of like Maynard G. Krebs.
We have the same problem one state west (Minnesota)
And in those Red states which have done away with the extended benefits. Are their restaurants and retail stores fully staffed?
What wages are they offering?
The governors of Ohio and Indiana ended the benefits only to have judges order the benefits reinstated.
CO ping
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
17.50-33/hr starting plus signing bonus
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