I dont understand why everyone is obsessed with the 600 UE.
Does anyone actually think that was a good policy?
1 Like
I think the real issue is not letting the GOP cut off benefits during the lame duck session / immediately after Biden takes office.
1 Like
Yes.
3 Likes
Well it’s a lot better than nothing or less. Obv we should give everyone money but neither side would ever do that
Yes it’s good policy. It doesn’t go far enough and it should be for everyone, but much better than nothing.
It’s a terrible policy. It’s pins the working class against each other.
Anything short of 3K a month for every adult and a pause on mortgages and rent is terrible.
3 Likes
Dems are not on our side either. If there was ever a time to put politics aside it’s now. Dems could create stand alone bills with nothing else in it other than relief and bring it to a vote.
Maybe they have already and I missed it, in that case I’m wrong.
1 Like
I don’t know. I didn’t think there was going to be anything higher stakes than ripping healthcare away from ~5M kids or sending 800,000 Dreamers to countries where they might not even speak the language. But here we are.
I agree with this, but if this is true then I would suggest revisiting your question about whether there will be something higher stakes - because if this is true there will be.
I graduated in 2008 from the #1 broadcasting school in the country and never made more than $13,000 in a year off of broadcasting - my life was severely impacted by the financial crisis too. This crisis threatens my ability to make a living at poker, given that most people may not have disposable income.
This is basically what I’ve been saying, as NBZ laid out if the GOP wins in November then they’ll say they have the mandate and the American people want no more handouts. If the GOP loses, Trump may veto anything and everything that helps states that didn’t vote for him and try to use executive power to help red states. He’s going to be petty as fuck, and we know this about him.
Either extend it until like two weeks before the election when the Dems have all the leverage or extend it til January 27, a week past inauguration.
The translation here is that we must always cave to hostage takers and incentivize future hostage taking, even if the likelihood is that they get to take 80M hostages in the lame duck instead of 40M hostages now. You think what they want now is bad? What are they going to want when they are 23 months away from electoral consequences, about to lose their current jobs, about to be looking for lobbying jobs for the 1% and with daddy out for revenge?
This, too. Mitch has admitted he has at least 18 Republicans who are against ANY relief bill. That means they need at least 15 Democrats. Of course, to do something that gets 15 Dems on board they’ll lose more Republicans. This bill is going to be passed by Dems in the House and at best 50-50 in the Senate. Most likely more Dems vote yay than Republicans in the Senate. Why give them anything?
They passed the $600 bill in like May. Not sure how clean it was.
Dems should stipulate in the bill that if Trump signs the checks or sends out a letter to the American people congratulating them on their Trump Bucks that XYZ happens that the GOP would loathe. Then the Biden campaign should send out a letter congratulating people on their Biden Bucks.
And it was idiotic
To which way that it was idiotic are you referring?
Tying the payments to anything at all was dumb. Tying it to not working (thus fucking over those who had to put themselves at risk) was basically the dumbest thing you could tie it to. There should be zero interest on the D side for anything but 600/week to every adult in the US until infection rates fall below a certain point.
The ONLY reason we had to do the common people bailout primarily through unemployment was because it would get money to the people who needed the absolute most first. Now that we’ve sent the first round of Trump bucks and can presumably keep sending money to people’s accounts there’s zero reason to push it through unemployment. If anything we should probably pass a moratorium on unemployment insurance for a year or two (to be replaced with the weekly federal payments) to give the states some breathing room. The unemployment system is not designed for a shock of this size and it’s on the verge of collapse as a result.
State budgets are under an ungodly amount of pressure. The federal government needs to step in in a big way to prevent them from doing mass layoffs and reducing services in the middle of what could easily turn into the most disastrous economic collapse in American history. Taking over funding unemployment is an example of the kind of broad support the states need. That and a truly massive infrastructure bill lol.
4 Likes
Yeah as has been mentioned before working people are pissed about this, even dems. The fact they and their families are at risk of dying while they make way less than people at home. Sure they should obviously be getting paid more but that’s not what they’re mad about.
Obviously the play is to give everyone money as has been mentioned then tax it back from people making over like 100k
Totally agree, with the caveat that because Americans are so shockingly stupid they won’t understand. Remember that half of Americans are Avwal. If the government gives him 100 dollars and taxes him 50 dollars, he’ll have a grievance for the rest of his life about the 50 dollars the government stole from him.
3 Likes
I think I’d go 600/wk to every adult over 18 who’s not collecting social security. We don’t need to pay retirees, and maybe I’m just mad at that generation, but I’m probably more conscious of the deficit than just about anyone here…
600/wk to every adult in the US is over $530 billion a month. Assuming we did it through January, that’d be $3.2 trillion. That’s massive. Of course we could tax it back from everyone making over like $100K or something, but there aren’t that many people who fit that description.
If you gave it to all Americans 18-65, and taxed it back from the people making over 100K, you’d be making the payments to 175M people. That’s $465B/mo and 2.8 trillion through January. Maybe it’s not worth the savings to piss off the Boomers and make them opposite it. So I guess just give it to everyone.
But while we’re on the topic of taxing it back from everyone making $100K it’s a huge failure of the Democratic Party to do nothing about trying things to local cost of living. $100K in NYC is not $100K in the Philly suburbs is not $100K in bumblefuck Alabama. The GOP leverages this frequently to fuck over Democrats. We take it on the chin and do nothing in return.
We should be pushing to chain stuff to cost of living, which will have the added benefit of chaining it to inflation. That’s another reason we lose on tax policy. The brackets haven’t been updated enough for inflation.
In 1963 the top tax bracket was 91% on everything over 200K. In the 70’s the top tax bracket was like 70%. But of course taxing the fuck out of income at that level in 2020 would be extremely unpopular and bad policy. But 200K in 1963 is like 1.7M in 2020 dollars. 200K in 1970 is about 1.3M in 2020 dollars.
We should be calling for a massive tax increase on people making over $1M a year, and what I’d do to make it a little more palatable and protect people who get a one-time windfall is allow a one-time waiver on that tax for the first three years you make that amount. People raking in $1M a year annually over and over should be paying way more.
This is a great point.
1 Like
So the way I see the debt/deficit is a tale of two possibilities:
Door #1: Money isn’t real because inflation is what happens when there is more money than there is stuff… and we can create more stuff than any of us could ever want so it’s all just imaginary. (very dumbed down because I am not sober leave me alone econ people I know I’m dishonoring myself)
Door #2: Money is very real and at some point we tip over and start to face real deficit related problems and are forced to raise taxes to keep interest rates sustainably low. In this scenario it’s time for the rich to get got in a big way. Inheritance taxes in the 90%+ range above a certain point, wealth taxes, VAT taxes to fund UBI, taxes on high earners and financial transactions, and god knows what else. And it’s not like there’s anyone else who we could take it from either. They have all the money after winning the game the last 40 years straight. They spent 40 years turning themselves into a giant piggy bank labeled ‘break in case money is real’ IMO. If it’s real we bust them good.
Either way I’m kind of good with it. #1 is probably less painful for everyone so here’s to traditional economics breaking down entirely in the face of real abundance. Imagine how stupid the Conservatives of this era are going to look in the history books if our generation was the last generation to experience scarcity. There’s a very good chance they prevented hundreds of millions of people from experiencing their full potential (and much much worse) in life for absolutely no reason.
Has any posters on this board actually lived without pay and housing and had to fend for themselves for say 6 months before?
1 Like
I had some pretty close brushes with homelessness when I was much younger. Nobody is debating whether or not the hostages will get shot or not.
You mean homeless? My condo was foreclosed on when I was fired and my UE ran out, but my parents were great.