Not entirely because unemployment benefits are capped at rather low levels. In my state, if you’re making more than $1300/week (~$6k/month), you’re at the cap with benefits capped just shy of $600/week. So even if you’re at the cap of $600/week, the extra $600 doubles your usual benefit amount. Bumping benefits from $2.7k/month to $5.4k/month should be welcome even if you were making $10k/month before.
They both attack the same problem; if your paycheck is maintained you dont get unemployment, if you’re getting unemployment there no paycheck to be maintained. But 80% is 80% either way. Here, in the US, the distribution of those payments is very fractured from either side; we dont have a centralized system like UK’s UI program to facilitate it.
I’d much rather see focus on one program that’s big enough to help everyone, rather than a bunch of little targeted programs that inevitably leaves wide swaths of people out.
Vaccine looking good in monkeys, trials for people to start shortly.
Armed with safety data from their human trials of similar vaccines for Ebola, MERS and malaria, though, the scientists at Oxford’s institute persuaded British regulators to allow unusually accelerated trials while the epidemic is still hot around them.
The institute last week began a Phase I clinical trial involving 1,100 people. Crucially, next month it will begin a combined Phase II and Phase III trial involving another 5,000. Unlike any other vaccine project now underway, that trial is designed to prove effectiveness as well as safety.
The Oxford scientists now say that with an emergency approval from regulators, the first few million doses of their vaccine could be available by September — at least several months ahead of any of the other announced efforts — if it proves to be effective.
Let’s leave politics that are not directly related to Coronavirus out of the thread please.
Back to medicine, I’d be cautious about vaccine in September. For any vaccine to be effective, you’d have to be sure that antibodies (built from vaccine or recovering from first infection) are effective at building immunity. The evidence of that is still not very clear. But this is why they do phase III on large number of people.
The other thing I’m concerned about is the North American pharma market they mention in the article. If US pharma companies drag their feet to start manufacturing a working vaccine because there’s just not enough profits in it for them, heads could start rolling quickly.
which is wide open for views on the election and matters relating thereto. If you simply cannot stand Trump, please post there. If you think Biden is an idiot, please post there.
Both liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, are welcome to post their most ardent feelings on that thread. It is wide open, and it is intended, for you to post your strong views on either side.
But please, again as Shandril suggests, let’s save this thread for matters relating to the pandemic. Thanks.
They hate her for it because they are getting paid better on unemployment than working for her. In other words, she pays people less than they would make on unemployment (which isn’t exactly a lot).
Naturally she thinks this is other people’s fault, not hers.
That story is in Washington state. The state minimum wage is already $12. Its near Seattle and the Seattle city minimum is $15.
The MINIMUM unemployment in WA is $788 / week when the base $188 minimum is added to the $600 extra from the fed. That would be equal to $19.70 /hr for a full time work week.
As I posted a while back, unemployment has been used as a back door for a de facto increase in the minimum wage. It’s no lose - either business survive and prove they can afford the higher wages, or businesses fail and it can be blamed on coronavirus.
I expect that mostly the people getting the extra $600 understand they’re getting a big fat government handout and will treat it as a windfall. I really don’t think someone making $12/hr is going to go to work in a few weeks demanding $20.
But it could lead to more calls for higher minimum wage or higher unemployment benefits or a universal basic income or any or all of those. But then reality of our ballooning deficit and local, state & federal governments nearing insolvency might preempt any of that …
Oh, after the $600 expires, of course. But between now and then, especially restaurants are going to have problems reopening without paying significantly more (and it is starting this week in places). If you refuse to return to work, you’ll generally lose that unemployment benefit - but that relies entirely on self-reporting that your employer called you .
Now, PUA benefits are supposed to kick in for a reduction in hours/pay too, so there should be a window to rehire people for reduced hours and let them continue to collect some unemployment (and the $600 bonus). But that may be difficult for the average manager/employee to get right.