Glad to hear you're better! Definitely would take the side effects than covid. Fortunately, I had no side effects except a sore arm from both Pfizer shots.

misterID wrote:

Randall Flagg wrote:

Plenty of things about US labor law, I don’t like. H1Bs and outsourcing being #1. But if your argument is we need to pay people more to make an inflated unemployment compensation untenable, I’m going to disagree. In my state, combining federal and state unemployment equals about 55k a year. A waitress shouldn’t expect to make that for her labor.

My argument isn't about unemployment checks/stats, it's about wages in general. I don't think there should be a "working poor." If we don't want to raise minimum wage because it hampers job/business growth, then we should seriously consider subsidizing wages for the poor, low wage, or anyone making less than $12 an hour. I mean, we already kind of do with an earned income tax credit. Wisconsin was literally paying companies to come in and hire workers. If you instituted a robotics, AI, automation tax, closed the loop holes companies like Nike use to outsource, placed an internet sales tax on Amazon and Wal-Mart size companies, it could easily be paid for.

Automation is coming and there’s a very important discussion to have about that and preparing for it. But using unemployment to increase a person’s income to exceed prepandemic levels isn’t a discussion anyone has had or voted on. Let the market bare what it bares and then we can have a discussion.

Employers should always make themselves as attractive as they can to recruit the best talent. That’s why a waiter a Ruth’s Chris can go home with several hundred dollars a night, while the waiter at Denny’s leaves with $60 after an 8 hour shift.

I’m all about a federal jobs program that helps people develop a skill. I support Warren’s wealth tax. I just don’t think handing people middle class income to staty at home is something that should be encouraged, and find the separate argument that it somehow demonstrates poor pay for fair labor inaccurate. Every state is different, but at the height of the pandemic, PA was paying the unemployed $1100 a week. It’s closer to 900 now with the federal decrease, but that’s still  47k a year or $22.5 an hour. To stay at home. And so nothing. I don’t fault people for being people, but denying that it’s harmful to the jobs market is to be intellectually dishonest.