It creates a strong incentive to be considered partially or fully laid off.
I'm pro basic income, but definitely don't support paying more to be unproductive than productive.
This benefit ends this month (July), so that is good.
And if COVID has proven anything, its that the most productive workers are the ones who didn't even get a chance to earn the additional $600.
The essential employees, the ones that keep the country running, are forced to continue making a less-than-livable wage.
It's a very outdated notion that there is a linear correlation between "productivity" and pay.
This graph clearly shows how productivity and wages were decoupled in the US in the 1970s, even as productivity skyrocketed:
Your local government's response and motivations might be different, but I largely doubt it.
> There is absolutely nothing that suggests the federal government is interested in doing this on purpose
These are two separate statements, that do not necessarily correlate.
That the government may not have intended the benefit to incentivize people to stay home (thus improving public health) does not mean that people staying home and improving public health is not a feature for the vast majority of people.
This problem cuts both ways. The government capitulated largely because they knew pegging stimulus to the minimum wage wasn’t going to be enough and they didn’t want to risk the political fallout of that situation. I see this largely as an admission by our leaders that minimum wages aren’t high enough.
Wages in the US simply haven’t kept up with the cost of living for years now. Employers have been complaining for years that they can’t find qualified candidates for jobs while more and more people leave the workforce and don’t ever return, but the conversation is always framed as a shortage of labor as opposed to a market unwilling to raise wages to attract qualified candidates.
If we had ensured years ago that those working would make enough to meet their basic needs, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
I had sorta thought it was Microecon 101 that these two things are mathematically equivalent. If the labor market doesn't clear due to a "shortage", you're either in the immediate aftermath of a war, or you need to raise wages.
I never understand this perspective. Supporting UBI is a statement that all people deserve a bare-minimum existence, even if they don't or can't work. I would expect that UBI would create a less productive workforce in the same way that 40 hour work weeks and environmental protections make a less productive workforce.
If you think the only path to righteousness is through a lifetime of toil, then it /might/ make sense to judge poor people's merit as a function of their 'productivity' (i.e., ability to make someone else money), but that is a pretty old-school stance in my opinion.
That is a shitty situation to be in. Most people want to feel like they are contributing. And they absolutely do contribute through their roles, even if they are also "making someone else money". They should be rewarded on top of the "bare-minimum existence" for doing so.
I don't see at all how you can jump from "I don't support people getting paid more to not work than to work" to "the only path to righteousness is through a lifetime of toil".
I have seen friends who went on unemployment and made more than they were making employed. They were not unproductive, in fact they were more productive than when they just checked people in to a airline.
If you were, today, paid more to not have a job would you sit and do nothing? My guess is your answer is no, so why are you the exception but people who are actually in the position to be paid more to not work, expected to be lazy and unproductive?
Why does this imply that unproductive people should receive fewer benefits? Why shouldn't productive people be paid more? Wages have stagnated for 50 years and the meager COVID bailout meaningfully improved the lives of millions. Shouldn't that be a sign that we need an overhaul of wage laws?