For tens of millions of Americans, hard times arrived this Friday.
The supplemental $600 a week income boost for the unemployed expired at midnight. In general, that cuts unemployment benefits by more than half, to a payout of a few hundred dollars a week.
Also expired as of last week is a moratorium on evictions, which has kept a roof over the heads of some 43 million cash-strapped people.
The hardest-hit Americans will be those who were poor to begin with. "Any cutback ... will hit the very segment of the population that spends virtually every penny of income," states Oxford Economics economist Bob Schwartz, who is quoted in a CBS article listed below.
"The United States is at war," wrote three business-school professors in TheHill.com. The war is with COVID-19, they say, but they urge the government to "....Reassess our strategy for fighting the economic war." Their ideas: Find a way to buy or back up failing consumer loans; provide direct assistance to people in need; and keep people in their jobs indirectly with a refundable corporate tax credit and wage subsidy of up to $2,500 per employee per month.
Unemployment has risen with startling speed, especially in states that rely on tourism. We don't know officially, but the rates have approached the Great Depression's, which peaked at 25 percent. That's where Nevada is today, according to US News & World Report.
Thanks to the Senate's delays in starting up a new COVID-19 relief bill, any further prospect of government assistance is in limbo.
The White House offered a late-night, too-little-too-late deal to extend the $600-a-week benefits for ONE (1) additional week, but Congressional leaders slapped it down. They thought that Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, would then ignore all further efforts to pass a new relief bill.
Still, even if a bill passed on Monday -- and it won't, because the Senate is in recess -- the country's unemployed will see a two- to four-week delay in any further benefit payouts.
It's historical deja vu. Remember how Republicans handled the Great Depression? After the stock market crashed in 1929, Herbert Hoover let Americans tough it out until he left office, while desperate people built tent camps in Central Park and elsewhere. Hoover was okay with spending his time playing golf. (Remind you of anyone?)
After four years of misery, Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal. The plan's point man, Harry Hopkins, famously told Congressional conservatives, "People don't eat in the long run. They eat every day."
This year, relief bills have kept the unemployed afloat -- until today. What will they eat tomorrow? How many will have to sleep under bridges with the long-term homeless?
Be glad it's only a couple of months till the election.
Is it worthwhile to go into further debt to combat this crisis? What do you think of the three professors' ideas in The Hill? What will the economy look like in November?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/
https://thehill.com/opinion/
 |
Here we go again? Depression Bread Line by George Segal, FDR Museum, Washington, DC. |
Also expired as of last week is a moratorium on evictions, which has kept a roof over the heads of some 43 million cash-strapped people.
The hardest-hit Americans will be those who were poor to begin with. "Any cutback ... will hit the very segment of the population that spends virtually every penny of income," states Oxford Economics economist Bob Schwartz, who is quoted in a CBS article listed below.
"The United States is at war," wrote three business-school professors in TheHill.com. The war is with COVID-19, they say, but they urge the government to "....Reassess our strategy for fighting the economic war." Their ideas: Find a way to buy or back up failing consumer loans; provide direct assistance to people in need; and keep people in their jobs indirectly with a refundable corporate tax credit and wage subsidy of up to $2,500 per employee per month.
Unemployment has risen with startling speed, especially in states that rely on tourism. We don't know officially, but the rates have approached the Great Depression's, which peaked at 25 percent. That's where Nevada is today, according to US News & World Report.
Thanks to the Senate's delays in starting up a new COVID-19 relief bill, any further prospect of government assistance is in limbo.
The White House offered a late-night, too-little-too-late deal to extend the $600-a-week benefits for ONE (1) additional week, but Congressional leaders slapped it down. They thought that Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, would then ignore all further efforts to pass a new relief bill.
Still, even if a bill passed on Monday -- and it won't, because the Senate is in recess -- the country's unemployed will see a two- to four-week delay in any further benefit payouts.
It's historical deja vu. Remember how Republicans handled the Great Depression? After the stock market crashed in 1929, Herbert Hoover let Americans tough it out until he left office, while desperate people built tent camps in Central Park and elsewhere. Hoover was okay with spending his time playing golf. (Remind you of anyone?)
After four years of misery, Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal. The plan's point man, Harry Hopkins, famously told Congressional conservatives, "People don't eat in the long run. They eat every day."
This year, relief bills have kept the unemployed afloat -- until today. What will they eat tomorrow? How many will have to sleep under bridges with the long-term homeless?
Be glad it's only a couple of months till the election.
Is it worthwhile to go into further debt to combat this crisis? What do you think of the three professors' ideas in The Hill? What will the economy look like in November?
Photo: Library of Congress
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/
https://thehill.com/opinion/
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