I retired from Ohio's unemployment bureau after 30 years. While I have no empirical evidence, my experience showed me that people would much rather work than collect benefits. As Sherrod Brown says, there is dignity in work. Our society shames those on unemployment when the cause is only sometimes the fault of the worker, especially during a pandemic. You correctly point out that perhaps the real problem is low wages. Once again, Republican governors are acting stupidly, cutting off "free" money which goes into their states, stimulating local economies.
They are also ignoring the fact that many of the people getting those checks have been badly hurt by the pandemic and will have difficulty catching up to where they were before this happened even with those checks.
I have checked and never found a major daily news paper that had a Labor Section, though oddly they all had Business Sections, and really that is all you need to know about the biases of the OWNERS of the press.
I understand that my observation is anecdotal (as is anything/everything Megan McArdle has ever written), and therefor just as valid.
Well said. The most recent made up story is ‘confusion over mask wearing.’ Report it first, hammer away at all the confusion out there, and leave that so called story hanging out there as fact and move on to the news of the day.
I just read that PA is ending the extended benefits in June "because unemployment has fallen below 5%". No specifics on why it is below 5%, but regardless it doesn't make sense to end it now. It's federal money!
Last week Paul Krugman posted strong evidence that contradicts these claims:
“ Notably, the expiration of the $600-a week-benefit introduced in March 2020 didn’t lead to any visible rise in overall employment; in particular, states with low wages, for whom the benefit should have created a big incentive to turn down job offers, didn’t see more employment than higher-wage states when it was removed.....
Also, if unemployment benefits were holding job growth back, you’d expect the worst performance in low-wage industries, where benefits are large relative to wages. The actual pattern was the reverse: big job gains in low-wage sectors like leisure and hospitality, job losses in high-wage sectors like professional services.“
Our lazy media can’t be bothered reporting these facts even though you know they are well aware of what economists like Krugman has been documenting. The media is doing the same with claims about the danger of inflation, ignoring the evidence that the price rises are in industries that have bottlenecks in their supply chains or excessive rebound demand that are pushing the prices up.
It is clear that Republicans have managed to influence the underlying economic assumptions of journalists with their decades of propaganda. Many journalists also cannot accept that there is no evidence that government debt causes inflation despite blatant counter examples. For instance Reagan nearly tripled our national debt without causes inflation problems. Bush also increased our debt with his tax cuts and unfounded war without causing inflation problems.
A lot of the issue is that the press and broadcasting rely on rank-and-file employees who aren't at the level of the big contracted names. It doesn't pay for the organization to rile up these lower wage people by pointing it out in print. They prefer a caste system of lowly workers and a few cloud minders far above them. In the middle are the gatekeeping managers.
I remember when Paul Krugman came out with The Great Unraveling, and Russell Baker reviewed it for The New York Review of Books. It is one of the best commentaries ever about coverage of Washington politics and includes this magical paragraph:
"The healthy income of top Washington-based political writers may also have an effect. For those with a foot or two in television, the income is very healthy indeed. Six-figure incomes are the rule, and those seen frequently as TV performers may be millionaires. We are talking of people who may well be in that top bracket so generously favored by the Bush tax cuts. Self-interest almost always begets a little prudence."
This led to a reporter calling Baker, who said that he grew up poor, as most reporters of his generation did, since they were Depression-era babies. He said something along these lines: They ended up covering politicians who were wealthier than they were, and appreciating programs that helped their families. Current reporters had grown up in a time of economic prosperity and were better-paid than their predecessors, and often were children of the 1960s and thus into social issues more than economic ones.
To put it another way, I worked for a couple of years as a reporter and editor. I started at minimum wage (it was the early 1980s). No one covering DC for a media outlet is working for minimum wage. So they have no conception of what it's really like.
Even I’m getting bored of my old fart cynicism regarding the establishment media’s disastrously awful “journalism” but I do want to note that the mainstream’s economic reporting over the years has be so detached from reality and facts as to be very, very little more than a complete serial fiction. More relevantly, there’s a number of reasons for difficulty in filling the worst paying jobs; the limited government monies is in all likelihood the most minor reason — fear of taking ill or dying is far more likely. As Eric notes (more or less), the failure — or refusal — to seek out a perspective from any worker is inexcusable.
As for the Richer item, the punchline was omitted. Pretty much as he was reading on one screen that the database had been destroyed, on the other screen he pulled up said database, intact and not at all destroyed.
The classics, of course, are that the Dow has anything to do with the economy and that the "official" unemployment, without context, have *any* significance or importance. And then there's the return of the classic shibboleth that government handouts discourage people from working. Personally, I feel that anyone who rather take the crumbs of handouts instead of low-paying, sub-living wage work probably are better off for us staying unemployed.
But, yeah, there's a lot of focus on companies. It's like the celebrity angle on "business".
For sure, today’s major victims of the economic mess vis a vis the pandemic are lower paid workers who are being depicted as dead beats by many in the press and msm is walking in lockstep w/that common Republican narrative. How about paying them a decent and livable wage? Eric, you’re right on the money (no pun intended 😋). It’s as though lower paid workers don’t count in the conversation by the Rs about quality of life and family issues; their disdain for the ‘lowly’ worker is palpable. Talk about biases. Thus, the cruel, cutting off of unemployment insurance by Rs in red states. Unforgivable. The press is reporting on the wrong side of this issue; their words inflame the topic and morph it into reality for the public. That’s the shame of their one side reporting. The former guys’ voters were interviewed to the extreme. What do the Biden voters think?
The same old play book the Republicans have been using for years. They used to rail against welfare sighting "why should people work if the government is giving them money and food-stamps?" We understand the code for what people the Republicans are talking about too. It's always divide and conquer. Now the Republicans are blaming Biden because his "handout" is why people don't want to work. Of course the lazy press doesn't bother to ask the question of why employers do not pay a fair wage? As you point out, people are now reassessing things, especially young people. Look at college enrollment. It's way down and it started before the pandemic. Young people have gotten wise to the fact that college presidents are getting paid millions while graduates are on the hook for decades paying back their student loans. How will these folks be able to build any wealth while in constant debt, especially when working for unfair wages. So it's not lazy people who simply want to sit on their couch eating chocolates. It's people who because of a pandemic, now realize just how bad they have been getting shafted for years by a system and media who reward the super wealthy.
To the GOP an all the so called journalists let's take away your paycheck and benefits for 1 month and you live on what these employers are paying the one's being interviewed. Let's see what you can do with that check, can the rent and utilities get paid, can you go to market and buy food for your family of 4, is their money to pay for wifi? Just a few everyday things people are concerned with while their employer is living the high life off these so called lazy people. Is the GOP only talking about Dems or are their followers headed back to work?
Since the days of Adam Smith, the debate has raged about the proper level of pay for labor. The lord and merchant classes were convinced that anything beyond subsistence wages would disincentivize work. But because a steady labor force was needed, workers needed enough money to be able to feed their children - the next wave of cheap labor. The dilemma was finding the level of pay that would allow workers to reproduce without making them lose their desperation to work. Seems there is still a market for that thinking.
also, the market doesn't work overnight. employers are scrambling to fill millions of post-pandemic jobs. there's no precedent for that kind of demand to be met in a matter of weeks. it will take many months. but GOP/press claiming there's immediate crisis
You can bet if the predicted dangers don’t happen the press will ignore that and go on to reporting about the next crisis Biden faces or has created. In fact a few days ago the WaPo had a headline about the current Israeli-Palestinian violence that framed it as a crisis for Biden and as causing division among Democrats as if that is the important takeaway. No mention of how Jared supposedly had already solved the problem.
That mentality is all over the Dickens' novel 'Hard Times'. You can't pay people who are literally losing limbs and being poisoned in factories or falling down abandoned mine shafts a decent wage or give them any rights because they'll somehow be spoiled goods who are unable or unwilling to work. See Mr. Potter in 'It's A Wonderful Life' as well.
Also, a local reporter from NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati interviewed Frank LaRose about this subject and when he was finished with his Rethuglican spiel she asked him if he had talked to any workers. I cheered!!
Mr. Boehlert. Quoting Meghan McCardle’s opinion piece as Washington Post authority is both unfair and unwise. Unfair as she is a well known part or RW Media & thus predictable in her opinion pieces. Unwise as it gives her a credibility she simply doesn’t deserve.
One part of me via not unhappy that Republicans are cutting benefits. First, because the Federal deficit is too high as it is. Second because the attack ads write themselves. Picture Republican Officeholder being shown literally snatching money out of people’s hands.
But the reason for this post is that you, the Republicans, and everyone else in this debate, miss the key point here.
Unemployment recipients are consumers.
Workers are consumers.
Hammer this home. It’s not about payments as much as the spending on goods & services those payments allow.
Megan McCardle is published by the Washington Post, not some right wing propaganda rag which gives her opinion weight. Also Post’s articles about economic issues, not just McCardle’s has been consistent with Republican claims in recent weeks. They have had several articles, including ones by the editorial staff, hyping the fears of Biden’s proposed spending causing inflation. Most of those articles used Larry Summers’s claims plus the options of unnamed economists to “prove” their point and completely ignore counter factual evidence.
Why aren't the opinion people and the so-called experts like Summers required to show evidence when they make these claims? To quote Christopher Hitchens, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". In other words, put up or shut up.
The school year will be over soon so why should students go back now only to be home again in a few weeks or so? Just let them start over in class in September, preferably after they've been vaccinated along with their parents and teachers.
My guess is more parents can return to work if kids are in school, students are given an opportunity to readjust to the school setting and be with their peers, and to meet their teacher in person after all those months on zoom.
I retired from Ohio's unemployment bureau after 30 years. While I have no empirical evidence, my experience showed me that people would much rather work than collect benefits. As Sherrod Brown says, there is dignity in work. Our society shames those on unemployment when the cause is only sometimes the fault of the worker, especially during a pandemic. You correctly point out that perhaps the real problem is low wages. Once again, Republican governors are acting stupidly, cutting off "free" money which goes into their states, stimulating local economies.
yep, they're cutting off checks months after it was confirmed that gov't pandemic checks boost local economies. just amazing
They are also ignoring the fact that many of the people getting those checks have been badly hurt by the pandemic and will have difficulty catching up to where they were before this happened even with those checks.
I have checked and never found a major daily news paper that had a Labor Section, though oddly they all had Business Sections, and really that is all you need to know about the biases of the OWNERS of the press.
I understand that my observation is anecdotal (as is anything/everything Megan McArdle has ever written), and therefor just as valid.
Well said. The most recent made up story is ‘confusion over mask wearing.’ Report it first, hammer away at all the confusion out there, and leave that so called story hanging out there as fact and move on to the news of the day.
This is the topic I imagined Eric was going to hit after a weekend of "blame Biden" coverage.
I just read that PA is ending the extended benefits in June "because unemployment has fallen below 5%". No specifics on why it is below 5%, but regardless it doesn't make sense to end it now. It's federal money!
the part abt federal money gets completely glossed over in the coverage; GOP gov's literally sending back free money
What's frustrating about PA is we have a Dem gov but a Rep legislature.
Yup. Ohio is doing the same just because it can.
Last week Paul Krugman posted strong evidence that contradicts these claims:
“ Notably, the expiration of the $600-a week-benefit introduced in March 2020 didn’t lead to any visible rise in overall employment; in particular, states with low wages, for whom the benefit should have created a big incentive to turn down job offers, didn’t see more employment than higher-wage states when it was removed.....
Also, if unemployment benefits were holding job growth back, you’d expect the worst performance in low-wage industries, where benefits are large relative to wages. The actual pattern was the reverse: big job gains in low-wage sectors like leisure and hospitality, job losses in high-wage sectors like professional services.“
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/opinion/jobs-unemployment-benefits-republicans.html
Our lazy media can’t be bothered reporting these facts even though you know they are well aware of what economists like Krugman has been documenting. The media is doing the same with claims about the danger of inflation, ignoring the evidence that the price rises are in industries that have bottlenecks in their supply chains or excessive rebound demand that are pushing the prices up.
It is clear that Republicans have managed to influence the underlying economic assumptions of journalists with their decades of propaganda. Many journalists also cannot accept that there is no evidence that government debt causes inflation despite blatant counter examples. For instance Reagan nearly tripled our national debt without causes inflation problems. Bush also increased our debt with his tax cuts and unfounded war without causing inflation problems.
A lot of the issue is that the press and broadcasting rely on rank-and-file employees who aren't at the level of the big contracted names. It doesn't pay for the organization to rile up these lower wage people by pointing it out in print. They prefer a caste system of lowly workers and a few cloud minders far above them. In the middle are the gatekeeping managers.
yep, good pt.
I remember when Paul Krugman came out with The Great Unraveling, and Russell Baker reviewed it for The New York Review of Books. It is one of the best commentaries ever about coverage of Washington politics and includes this magical paragraph:
"The healthy income of top Washington-based political writers may also have an effect. For those with a foot or two in television, the income is very healthy indeed. Six-figure incomes are the rule, and those seen frequently as TV performers may be millionaires. We are talking of people who may well be in that top bracket so generously favored by the Bush tax cuts. Self-interest almost always begets a little prudence."
This led to a reporter calling Baker, who said that he grew up poor, as most reporters of his generation did, since they were Depression-era babies. He said something along these lines: They ended up covering politicians who were wealthier than they were, and appreciating programs that helped their families. Current reporters had grown up in a time of economic prosperity and were better-paid than their predecessors, and often were children of the 1960s and thus into social issues more than economic ones.
To put it another way, I worked for a couple of years as a reporter and editor. I started at minimum wage (it was the early 1980s). No one covering DC for a media outlet is working for minimum wage. So they have no conception of what it's really like.
Even I’m getting bored of my old fart cynicism regarding the establishment media’s disastrously awful “journalism” but I do want to note that the mainstream’s economic reporting over the years has be so detached from reality and facts as to be very, very little more than a complete serial fiction. More relevantly, there’s a number of reasons for difficulty in filling the worst paying jobs; the limited government monies is in all likelihood the most minor reason — fear of taking ill or dying is far more likely. As Eric notes (more or less), the failure — or refusal — to seek out a perspective from any worker is inexcusable.
As for the Richer item, the punchline was omitted. Pretty much as he was reading on one screen that the database had been destroyed, on the other screen he pulled up said database, intact and not at all destroyed.
so much of economic coverage is just coverage of businesses, it seems. all the news viewed through their eyes
The classics, of course, are that the Dow has anything to do with the economy and that the "official" unemployment, without context, have *any* significance or importance. And then there's the return of the classic shibboleth that government handouts discourage people from working. Personally, I feel that anyone who rather take the crumbs of handouts instead of low-paying, sub-living wage work probably are better off for us staying unemployed.
But, yeah, there's a lot of focus on companies. It's like the celebrity angle on "business".
For sure, today’s major victims of the economic mess vis a vis the pandemic are lower paid workers who are being depicted as dead beats by many in the press and msm is walking in lockstep w/that common Republican narrative. How about paying them a decent and livable wage? Eric, you’re right on the money (no pun intended 😋). It’s as though lower paid workers don’t count in the conversation by the Rs about quality of life and family issues; their disdain for the ‘lowly’ worker is palpable. Talk about biases. Thus, the cruel, cutting off of unemployment insurance by Rs in red states. Unforgivable. The press is reporting on the wrong side of this issue; their words inflame the topic and morph it into reality for the public. That’s the shame of their one side reporting. The former guys’ voters were interviewed to the extreme. What do the Biden voters think?
yep, GOP hatched this "hunch" abt unemployment and press turned it into a legit theory
I think you mean a theory that has the ring of legitimacy but little to no evidence to support it.
The same old play book the Republicans have been using for years. They used to rail against welfare sighting "why should people work if the government is giving them money and food-stamps?" We understand the code for what people the Republicans are talking about too. It's always divide and conquer. Now the Republicans are blaming Biden because his "handout" is why people don't want to work. Of course the lazy press doesn't bother to ask the question of why employers do not pay a fair wage? As you point out, people are now reassessing things, especially young people. Look at college enrollment. It's way down and it started before the pandemic. Young people have gotten wise to the fact that college presidents are getting paid millions while graduates are on the hook for decades paying back their student loans. How will these folks be able to build any wealth while in constant debt, especially when working for unfair wages. So it's not lazy people who simply want to sit on their couch eating chocolates. It's people who because of a pandemic, now realize just how bad they have been getting shafted for years by a system and media who reward the super wealthy.
"Fair wages" is a phrase you simply won't see in coverage of this topic
It’s the wealthy who, from their couches and on high, pop chocolates in their mouths while criticizing the poor. Let them eat cake.
To the GOP an all the so called journalists let's take away your paycheck and benefits for 1 month and you live on what these employers are paying the one's being interviewed. Let's see what you can do with that check, can the rent and utilities get paid, can you go to market and buy food for your family of 4, is their money to pay for wifi? Just a few everyday things people are concerned with while their employer is living the high life off these so called lazy people. Is the GOP only talking about Dems or are their followers headed back to work?
i agree that there's def a class divide in terms of Beltway journalists writing about $300 weekly benefits
Since the days of Adam Smith, the debate has raged about the proper level of pay for labor. The lord and merchant classes were convinced that anything beyond subsistence wages would disincentivize work. But because a steady labor force was needed, workers needed enough money to be able to feed their children - the next wave of cheap labor. The dilemma was finding the level of pay that would allow workers to reproduce without making them lose their desperation to work. Seems there is still a market for that thinking.
also, the market doesn't work overnight. employers are scrambling to fill millions of post-pandemic jobs. there's no precedent for that kind of demand to be met in a matter of weeks. it will take many months. but GOP/press claiming there's immediate crisis
You can bet if the predicted dangers don’t happen the press will ignore that and go on to reporting about the next crisis Biden faces or has created. In fact a few days ago the WaPo had a headline about the current Israeli-Palestinian violence that framed it as a crisis for Biden and as causing division among Democrats as if that is the important takeaway. No mention of how Jared supposedly had already solved the problem.
That mentality is all over the Dickens' novel 'Hard Times'. You can't pay people who are literally losing limbs and being poisoned in factories or falling down abandoned mine shafts a decent wage or give them any rights because they'll somehow be spoiled goods who are unable or unwilling to work. See Mr. Potter in 'It's A Wonderful Life' as well.
Soledad O'Brien ran this story on Matter of Fact:
https://www.matteroffact.tv/whats-keeping-workers-at-home-unemployment-pay-or-low-wages
Also, a local reporter from NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati interviewed Frank LaRose about this subject and when he was finished with his Rethuglican spiel she asked him if he had talked to any workers. I cheered!!
By cutting off extended unemployment benefits theses revolting republican governors hope to force people back to taking low paying job.
it's gross, turning down free money that's supposed to go to poor people
Mr. Boehlert. Quoting Meghan McCardle’s opinion piece as Washington Post authority is both unfair and unwise. Unfair as she is a well known part or RW Media & thus predictable in her opinion pieces. Unwise as it gives her a credibility she simply doesn’t deserve.
One part of me via not unhappy that Republicans are cutting benefits. First, because the Federal deficit is too high as it is. Second because the attack ads write themselves. Picture Republican Officeholder being shown literally snatching money out of people’s hands.
But the reason for this post is that you, the Republicans, and everyone else in this debate, miss the key point here.
Unemployment recipients are consumers.
Workers are consumers.
Hammer this home. It’s not about payments as much as the spending on goods & services those payments allow.
Don’t allow the roles to be split.
Megan McCardle is published by the Washington Post, not some right wing propaganda rag which gives her opinion weight. Also Post’s articles about economic issues, not just McCardle’s has been consistent with Republican claims in recent weeks. They have had several articles, including ones by the editorial staff, hyping the fears of Biden’s proposed spending causing inflation. Most of those articles used Larry Summers’s claims plus the options of unnamed economists to “prove” their point and completely ignore counter factual evidence.
Why aren't the opinion people and the so-called experts like Summers required to show evidence when they make these claims? To quote Christopher Hitchens, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". In other words, put up or shut up.
The school year will be over soon so why should students go back now only to be home again in a few weeks or so? Just let them start over in class in September, preferably after they've been vaccinated along with their parents and teachers.
My guess is more parents can return to work if kids are in school, students are given an opportunity to readjust to the school setting and be with their peers, and to meet their teacher in person after all those months on zoom.