Guy has what looks like a luxury truck and is apparently having trouble deciding between food and his car payment.
Sell the car, get a cheap used beater, reduce expenses, keep looking for a job. Not sure what NPR wants me to take from this example.
Sell the car, get a cheap used beater, reduce expenses, keep looking for a job. Not sure what NPR wants me to take from this example.
NPR wants you to see that a lot of ordinary people who made ordinary life choices are going bankrupt.
What's a moderately priced car to you? 50K?
In fact, in my opinion, all secured loans should be this - you should be able to hand over the security to the lender, and walk away without penalty.
https://jalopnik.com/not-even-a-pandemic-will-stop-american-...
Now - they are drawn by 0% financing which is hard to get on a used truck.
How long this keeps up is hard to tell.
And that's not even addressing the fact that the entire country went into economic free fall, so "Just sell the X" isn't quite the advice it used to be.
It gives me a mixed feeling about the policy because it turns out I personally know the one example conservatives would like to point out. However, I’d like to read a deep study about the impact of the measures taken before I form an opinion on them. I want to believe that the policy had a positive effect unless data says otherwise.
Say that $1600/wk is perfectly livable for her. That means formerly, she was working at a job that did not pay her enough to live, but she was forced to because the alternative is worse. Arguably, for many people, they could live on even less than that.
Countless people who are forced to be in the job market, slaving away at crappy jobs at the threat of poverty and homelessness. They are forced to be at jobs they hate, propping up industries that survive only because of exploitation of human labor, and they don't even get a proper living wage from it. Human life is very limited. Time is the greatest asset we have and it goes away even when we do nothing. Yet we force so many people to trade their time for a pittance.
If these people were provided a base amount of money they could live on and do something else, then those jobs would either be unfilled (and the industries die off) or the businesses will be forced to raise the wage, thus providing more money to people who are willing to work for it.
How does it do that?
The CARES Act specifically pays money per week in addition to what unemployment pays.
So, whatever you made before, even if it was a sustainable wage, you make more by not working right now, even if you could be working.
It helps a lot of people who really needed it, especially hourly wage workers in the service industry who instantly took a hit from the shutdowns and these workers tend to not have healthcare insurance to begin with due to the low wages. It would be foolish for someone who had a well paying job with benefits to permanently stop working for "more" money on paper temporarily, especially considering you would also risk being unemployable afterward. Does +$600 to your weekly pay outweigh the health benefits that you got while being employed?
The explicit intention behind CARES was to provide some resemblance of financial security during a very uncertain time. If paying people a couple hundred more dollars per week than they'd earn while working is what achieves that... and it's temporary... ok fine.
But the CARES Act will continue to payout through December... which is a long time from now... and that's if it doesn't become a political wiffle ball and get extended.
None of that has to do with the value an employee brings, or can earn while in the service industry.
Into the weeds, but... With a growing anti-tipping movement, I don't see how we can argue service industry workers can be paid more than they already are. If the market had the appetite for $30 diner burgers, we'd already be paying those rates, no? Wouldn't the business owners raise prices and just pocket the difference if people were willing to pay more?
I think that results in fewer people eating out... which leads to fewer service industry workers, which leads to some other problems.
Way into the weeds - I've long thought the solution isn't just to command more money be paid to service workers. We should instead focus on trade school and education to empower people to seek skilled jobs that pay far better. I'd fully support free or low cost trade schools and community colleges, and would rather pay taxes into that versus a $30 mediocre burger.
We should have fewer people making careers at unskilled jobs. Nobody can provide for a family comfortably doing that.
Instead, it should be a starting position; an entry into the workforce as you learn a trade, skills or gain knowledge.
The loan company should be barred from repossessing for generating subprime auto loans or whatever these are called, but this was still directly caused by lack of financial awareness.