Covid-19 Relief Bill - What you need to know

[Loren Pechtel]

Plenty of them--they just have no chance of being elected.



And why are people having children so early? You shouldn't be staying at minimum wage!

Mr. Reich says nothing about having children early. Where are you getting this from?

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This will be the 20 something time the federal minimum wage is raised. Can someone explain why the economy is still alive and kicking after it was raised that many times? Because Loren got me thinking this is the end times.

It's not going to wreck the economy, it's going to leave a lot of the marginal workers permanently unemployed. We already see that happening--look at inner city unemployment rates.

 

[laughing dog]

Plenty of them--they just have no chance of being elected.



And why are people having children so early? You shouldn't be staying at minimum wage!

Mr. Reich says nothing about having children early. Where are you getting this from?

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

Your entire argument is premised on
1) an unrealistic assumption that the decision to have kids is necessarily rational,
2) the assumption that the minimum wage is a started wage, and
3) that everyone else agrees with your moral judgment about when people ought to have children.

Since the people arguing for a higher minimum wage clearly disagree with you on 2) and 3), it should not be surprising that your argument is unconvincing.

 

[laughing dog]

Why did I think Sen. Johnson was a moderate Republican at some point? Was I mistaken, because he is a full-on right-wing troll.

To delay the vote on the bill, instead of showing some integrity and reading the entire bill to the Senate chamber himself, he had the plebes read it.

 

[lpetrich]

Why did I think Sen. Johnson was a moderate Republican at some point? Was I mistaken, because he is a full-on right-wing troll.

To delay the vote on the bill, instead of showing some integrity and reading the entire bill to the Senate chamber himself, he had the plebes read it.

He won't even do his own filibustering, it seems.


A couple days back: Biden agrees to narrow eligibility for stimulus checks under pressure from moderate Senate Democrats - The Washington Post - "Change comes as Senate prepares to move forward on Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill "

Jeff Stein on Twitter: "NEW: Biden-Senate compromise on curtailing stimulus payments results in ~12 million fewer adults & ~5 million fewer children receiving benefit, per @iteptweets analysis

~280 million overall still eligible for payments, ITEP says (link)" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Conservative Dems have fought ..." / Twitter

Conservative Dems have fought so the Biden admin sends fewer & less generous relief checks than the Trump admin did.

It’s a move that makes little-to-no political or economic sense, and targets an element of relief that is most tangibly felt by everyday people. An own-goal.

We have a responsibility to show people in this country what a Democratic majority can do for working people.

That means more generous relief checks, $15 min wage, ending the filibuster to protect our democracy. It’s a once-in-generation shot, and we need to legislate like it.

I agree. What's going on with these conservative Dems?

 

[ZiprHead]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Wednesday that he opposes extending unemployment and providing $1,400 COVID relief checks for Americans because people may decide not to go back to work.

During an appearance on Fox News, host Martha MacCallum posed the question to McConnell.

"Do you think the checks that are going out -- you know, there's some unemployment benefits, additional benefits that would run out in March -- do you believe that these checks prevents some people from wanting to work?" McCallum asked.

"Well, there is a concern," McConnell replied, "about making it more advantageous to stay home rather than going back to work."

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/03/mitch-mcconnell-concerned-people-wont-want?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=42859

Fuck him right up his wrinkled old turtle ass.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

8 Democrats defect on $15 minimum wage hike - POLITICO
On an amendment introduced by Bernie Sanders.

These 8 Democrats joined all 50 Republicans in voting against it:

Joe Manchin D-WV, Jon Tester D-MT, Jeanne Shaheen D-NH, Maggie Hassan D-NH, Chris Coons D-DE, Tom Carper D-DE, Kyrsten Sinema D-AZ, Angus King I-ME.

AK, though an Independent, caucuses with the Democrats, as Bernie Sanders does.

The vote was not an exact extrapolation of where senators stand on raising the wage. Rather than a straight up-or-down vote on the issue, Sanders' amendment sought to override the parliamentarian’s ruling that the wage increase couldn’t be included in the Covid aid package, which requires only 50 votes and a tiebreaker from Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed thanks to the protections of a process known as budget reconciliation.

So Sanders needed to win 60 votes on Friday to get around that procedural hurdle — which was never going to happen given unanimous GOP opposition to doubling the current $7.25 minimum wage.

Would any of them support a minimum-wage increase as a standalone measure?

Note how most of those are from low-wage states where a $15/hr min wage would cause even more harm than it generally would.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

Your entire argument is premised on
1) an unrealistic assumption that the decision to have kids is necessarily rational,
2) the assumption that the minimum wage is a started wage, and
3) that everyone else agrees with your moral judgment about when people ought to have children.

Since the people arguing for a higher minimum wage clearly disagree with you on 2) and 3), it should not be surprising that your argument is unconvincing.

As for #1: If you screw yourself with irrational behavior that's your problem, not mine.

As for #2: It's 1% of our population. If you're still working at minimum wage after you're out of school you have failed badly.

As for #3: I'm not making any moral judgment about children, I'm saying they are expensive and one should not take on expenses you can't afford.

 

[ZiprHead]

8 Democrats defect on $15 minimum wage hike - POLITICO
On an amendment introduced by Bernie Sanders.

These 8 Democrats joined all 50 Republicans in voting against it:

Joe Manchin D-WV, Jon Tester D-MT, Jeanne Shaheen D-NH, Maggie Hassan D-NH, Chris Coons D-DE, Tom Carper D-DE, Kyrsten Sinema D-AZ, Angus King I-ME.

AK, though an Independent, caucuses with the Democrats, as Bernie Sanders does.

The vote was not an exact extrapolation of where senators stand on raising the wage. Rather than a straight up-or-down vote on the issue, Sanders' amendment sought to override the parliamentarian’s ruling that the wage increase couldn’t be included in the Covid aid package, which requires only 50 votes and a tiebreaker from Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed thanks to the protections of a process known as budget reconciliation.

So Sanders needed to win 60 votes on Friday to get around that procedural hurdle — which was never going to happen given unanimous GOP opposition to doubling the current $7.25 minimum wage.

Would any of them support a minimum-wage increase as a standalone measure?

Note how most of those are from low-wage states where a $15/hr min wage would cause even more harm than it generally would.

Where are you getting your information?

Ranking of states by average Pay
Nevada 6
New Hampshire 14
Delaware 20
West Virginia 27
Maine 31
Montana 32
Arizona 34

None of them are even in the lowest quintile.

And how do you know it would cause more harm than good?

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Average-Salary-by-State

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Gospel]

All I care about is when Imma get the cheddar yo! Any idea?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

8 Democrats defect on $15 minimum wage hike - POLITICO
On an amendment introduced by Bernie Sanders.

These 8 Democrats joined all 50 Republicans in voting against it:

Joe Manchin D-WV, Jon Tester D-MT, Jeanne Shaheen D-NH, Maggie Hassan D-NH, Chris Coons D-DE, Tom Carper D-DE, Kyrsten Sinema D-AZ, Angus King I-ME.

AK, though an Independent, caucuses with the Democrats, as Bernie Sanders does.

The vote was not an exact extrapolation of where senators stand on raising the wage. Rather than a straight up-or-down vote on the issue, Sanders' amendment sought to override the parliamentarian’s ruling that the wage increase couldn’t be included in the Covid aid package, which requires only 50 votes and a tiebreaker from Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed thanks to the protections of a process known as budget reconciliation.

So Sanders needed to win 60 votes on Friday to get around that procedural hurdle — which was never going to happen given unanimous GOP opposition to doubling the current $7.25 minimum wage.

Would any of them support a minimum-wage increase as a standalone measure?

Note how most of those are from low-wage states where a $15/hr min wage would cause even more harm than it generally would.

You misspelled, 'mainly purple state Democrat Senators".

 

[Worldtraveller]

Plenty of them--they just have no chance of being elected.



And why are people having children so early? You shouldn't be staying at minimum wage!

Mr. Reich says nothing about having children early. Where are you getting this from?

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

Lying with statistics again.

https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/

Overall, 58.3 million workers (43.7 percent) earn under $15 an hour; 41.7 million (31.3 percent) earn under $12 an hour.

Fuck your 1% number.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[lpetrich]

House set to vote on $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus - The Washington Post

House lawmakers are set to vote as soon as Tuesday on a roughly $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, putting President Biden on track to sign his first major legislative accomplishment into law by the end of the week.

Democrats in the chamber are expected to approve the bill — which includes a dramatic expansion of pandemic aid and federal safety net programs — despite changes to critical elements of the stimulus adopted by the Senate over the weekend.

All courtesy of reconciliation.


To Juice the Economy, Biden Bets on the Poor - The New York Times - "The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package moving through Congress advances an idea that Democrats have been nurturing for decades: establishing a guaranteed income for families with children."

For the president, the plan is more than just a stimulus proposal. It is a declaration of his economic policy — one that captures the principle Democrats and liberal economists have espoused over the past decade: that the best way to stoke faster economic growth is from the bottom up.

As opposed to Trump's top-down effort, an effort which failed miserably.

The “American Rescue Plan” advanced by Mr. Biden includes more generous direct benefits for low-income Americans than the rounds of stimulus passed last year under Mr. Trump, even though it will arrive at a time when economic and coronavirus vaccine statistics suggest the broad economy is poised to take flight. It is more focused on people than on businesses and is expected to help women and minorities in particular, because they have taken an outsize hit in the pandemic recession.

Researchers predict it could become one of the most effective laws to fight poverty in a generation.

 

[jonatha]

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

Your entire argument is premised on
1) an unrealistic assumption that the decision to have kids is necessarily rational,
2) the assumption that the minimum wage is a started wage, and
3) that everyone else agrees with your moral judgment about when people ought to have children.

Since the people arguing for a higher minimum wage clearly disagree with you on 2) and 3), it should not be surprising that your argument is unconvincing.

As for #1: If you screw yourself with irrational behavior that's your problem, not mine.

As for #2: It's 1% of our population. If you're still working at minimum wage after you're out of school you have failed badly.

As for #3: I'm not making any moral judgment about children, I'm saying they are expensive and one should not take on expenses you can't afford.

You need to adjust that 1% to account for all the people currently making between $7.26 and $14.99 an hour...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Minimum wage is a starter wage, 1% of the population. You should move up the income ladder before having kids. Thus whether minimum wage is enough to support kids shouldn't matter.

Lying with statistics again.

https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/

Overall, 58.3 million workers (43.7 percent) earn under $15 an hour; 41.7 million (31.3 percent) earn under $12 an hour.

Fuck your 1% number.

I was talking about the current minimum wage. All you're doing is showing a lot more jobs will be at risk from this.

 

[Ford]

As for #1: If you screw yourself with irrational behavior that's your problem, not mine.

As for #2: It's 1% of our population. If you're still working at minimum wage after you're out of school you have failed badly.

As for #3: I'm not making any moral judgment about children, I'm saying they are expensive and one should not take on expenses you can't afford.

You need to adjust that 1% to account for all the people currently making between $7.26 and $14.99 an hour...

There's also this notion that 99% of the available jobs are well-paying gigs provided by benevolent employers who pay people what they're truly worth.

Minimum wage is not a message to individuals that they should try to better their lives, nor is it designed to be only paid to teenagers who work at fast food joints and once you get beyond that first job you're rolling in dough. No, minimum wage is directed at employers. "Here is the absolute bare minimum you can pay a person by law." When you apply for that minimum wage job, the employer doesn't say "hang on a second...you're not some wet behind the ears kid looking for summer work, I can't hire you" or "oh, I'm sorry, this isn't your first job? Let me make you a manager and pay you a salary with benefits!"

Many businesses will grudgingly pay the minimum, offer meager raises, and have to be dragged kicking and screaming to pay out benefits. In fact many of them will limit your hours to whatever the state maximum is before benefits become required. The grocery store fuel center where I worked last year - I was a "front line worker" - did several things to limit the earning ability of employees. It would take years of service before some people would be allowed to "go full time," because you had to work a certain number of consecutive 40 hour weeks before that would happen. If you were in danger of reaching that milestone, they'd cut your hours for a week or so, and you'd start all over again. They also had a "maximum wage" for cashiers, which was (IIRC) $14.50/hr. If you wanted more, you had to go into management, and then there was a ladder for that. Hourly managers made that maximum, and didn't do any better unless by some long shot they worked their way up to a salaried job. Coincidentally, when you did that, you'd wind up working many more hours per week, essentially making your hourly rate the same or less!

When I left to go work at the factory, I surpassed the pay rate of everyone I worked with in the fuel center (manager included) and that of the hourly managers and cashiers inside the store. Were there some kids fresh out of high school who worked there? Yes, but usually just the courtesy clerks and lot attendants.

"Well, why don't you just get a better job then?" To which I would say "try it." A lot of these libertarians who deride minimum and low wage workers have probably been away from the hourly job market for years or decades, and as such have no idea what it is like out here in the real world. Myself included. I had the same cushy salaried job for a couple decades. On my long lunches my buddy and I would look down on the office drones we passed along the way wearing their khakis and name badges, silently laughing at them while they hustled on their 30 minute lunch before heading back into the call center.

Then I became one of those people. Then the zombie apocalypse hit and I responded to the "now hiring" sign outside the grocery store. What I found out is that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is bullshit. For starters, nobody has bootstraps anymore. Also, when you do try to pull yourself up, you've got an enormous amount of pressure on top of you...pushing you right back down. This entire scenario where the low paying jobs are just "starter" jobs and that once you're out of that first job you're catapulted into the middle class is pure fantasy. "But I'm going to sell my labor at a value that I set, and if they won't hire me, I'll find someone who will!" is an attitude that's going to run into a very sturdy wall in short order.

Once you're out in reality, you'll find that the "value" of your labor is not what you thought it was. The overwhelming majority of the jobs in your area are in retail, or in call centers, or in warehouses, or you string together some "gig economy" jobs like delivering food or people to destinations. Or if you're like one of my co-workers at the fuel center, you get off your shift at the store and start delivering door dash with your roommate's car because you can't afford either a car or your own apartment.

I'm lucky. I had a good job for many years. I was able to by a home before the real estate market went crazy. I was able to pay off my car and get (mostly) out of debt. If I didn't have those things and a little money in the bank, I'd never be able to survive in this libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" paradise.

 

[lpetrich]

Child Tax Credit, Proposed in Stimulus, Advances an Effort Years in the Making - The New York Times - "The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package moving through Congress advances an idea that Democrats have been nurturing for decades: establishing a guaranteed income for families with children."

Obscured by other parts of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which won Senate approval on Saturday, the child benefit has the makings of a policy revolution. Though framed in technocratic terms as an expansion of an existing tax credit, it is essentially a guaranteed income for families with children, akin to children’s allowances that are common in other rich countries.

Though it is for one year, Democrats hope to make it permanent.

The bill, which is likely to pass the House and be signed by Mr. Biden this week, raises the maximum benefit most families will receive by up to 80 percent per child and extends it to millions of families whose earnings are too low to fully qualify under existing law. Currently, a quarter of children get a partial benefit, and the poorest 10 percent get nothing.

The money will be sent out monthly rather than yearly, to provide a more stable cash flow.

By the standards of previous aid debates, opposition has been surprisingly muted. While the bill has not won any Republican votes, critics have largely focused on other elements of the rescue package. Some conservatives have called the child benefit “welfare” and warned that it would bust budgets and weaken incentives to work or marry. But Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, has proposed a child benefit that is even larger, though it would be financed through other safety net cuts.

I agree. I have plenty of experience of right-wingers going into hysterics about how welfare recipients live like aristocrats.

Mr. Biden’s embrace of the subsidies is a leftward shift for a Democratic Party that made deep cuts in cash aid in the 1990s under the theme of “ending welfare.” As a senator, Mr. Biden supported the 1996 welfare restrictions, and as recently as August his campaign was noncommittal about the child benefit.

The president now promotes projections that the monthly checks — up to $300 for young children and $250 for those over 5 — would cut child poverty by 45 percent, and by more than 50 percent among Black families.

...
The campaign for child benefits is at least a half-century old and rests on a twofold idea: Children are expensive, and society shares an interest in seeing them thrive. At least 17 wealthy countries subsidize child-rearing for much of the population, with Canada offering up to $4,800 per child each year. But until recently, a broad allowance seemed unlikely in the United States, where policy was more likely to reflect a faith that opportunity was abundant and a belief that aid sapped initiative.

That will also help in fertility by making children more easily affordable.

But rising inequality and the focus on early childhood brought broader subsidies a new look. A landmark study in 2019 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine showed that even short stints in poverty could cause lasting harm, leaving children with less education, lower adult earnings and worse adult health. Though welfare critics said aid caused harm, the panel found that “poverty itself causes negative child outcomes” and that income subsidies “have been shown to improve child well-being.”

Republicans may have unwittingly advanced the push for child benefits in 2017 by doubling the existing child tax credit to $2,000 and giving it to families with incomes of up to $400,000, but not extending the full benefit to those in the bottom third of incomes.

Republicans said that since the credit was meant to reduce income taxes, it naturally favored families who earned enough to have a tax liability. But by prioritizing the affluent, the move amplified calls for a more equitable child policy.

So it's an own goal on their part.

 

[Gospel]

tl;dr When do I get the cheddar?