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      Yes, some US small business owners actually support the $600 weekly benefit | Gene Marks

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      About 30 million unemployed Americans are now on tenterhooks waiting to see if the $600-a-week federal unemployment benefit created by the Cares Act will be renewed. As the political row over its efficacy and necessity continues, the House and the Senate remain far apart on a compromise.What shouldn’t be left out of the discussion is an unlikely, yet numerous, group of people who do support the added benefit: small business owners.The issue is complicated.Many I know in the business community have taken issue with the additional $600 federal payment. They complain that a great number of their workers – particularly hourly and part-timers – have avoided returning to the workplace because the benefit provides them with more compensation then they were getting at their job and merely incentivizes them to stop working.But some studies – like this one from a group of Yale University researchers – have found the opposite to be true. The study found “no evidence” that workers receiving the added federal unemployment benefit were disincentivized to work and that “people with more generously expanded benefits also resumed working at a similar or slightly quicker rate than others did”.However, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the study excluded part-time workers and other “short-termers” who make up the vast majority of employees that benefited the most from the federal bump. “A worker in Louisiana who made $2,400 from part-time jobs all of last year would collect $2,516 a month in jobless benefits today – $29 a week from the state plus the $600. An average worker who had made $17 per hour ($680 a week) in Ohio has been able to collect $940 each week with the federal boost.”The debate will continue.But many small business owners remain convinced the payments should continue. Why? Because it has provided a safety net for their employees during a time when their companies couldn’t pay wages due to the country’s self-inflicted economic collapse.“We want them to succeed, and we want to help them grow their careers, and we hope to continue to employ them well into the future,” Mark Frier, a restaurant owner in Vermont told NPR’s Marketplace. “Initially [the federal benefit] was a lifesaver.” Frier is just one of many business owners who have been unable to sustain employee wages – even with help from the paycheck protection program – and who are grateful that there’s an added federal benefit available to help them through these times.Julie Wineinger, the owner of Lulabelle’s Sweet Shop in Washington DC, has gone out of her way to assist her employees in applying for unemployment benefits. She has also run fundraisers – selling ice cream and other products – specifically to raise additional cash in order to help her staff through these difficult times. “Some of my employees are very young, some have to support families,” she told me in a podcast interview. “They didn’t ask for this and I’m going to do my best to do what I can for them.”One of the many benefits of working for a small business is that employees oftentimes develop close relationships with their employers. When bad things happen – a family illness, a financial problem, a global pandemic that causes an unprecedented economic downturn – many small business owners are as much concerned with their employees’ welfare as their own families. Because they are like family.But these same employees are also assets, which is why many small business owners I know are in favor of the additional federal unemployment benefit. Knowing that the benefit is there, they could furlough their staff and not terminate them. Without these checks, those employees who have worked for them for years and gained experience and knowledge of their businesses may be forced to move elsewhere or take other jobs in order to make ends meet. When that happens, small business owners like Wineinger and others lose good people and have to search and train replacements. That creates disruption and added costs.Maybe the added federal benefit does discourage some from going back to work, particularly part-timers and hourly workers. And it is true that many small businesses are finding this situation a frustrating obstacle towards rehiring and getting back to normal. But for many other small business owners, that additional $600 check every week has helped them retain and sustain their employees during an unprecedented national emergency until times – hopefully – get back to normal. More

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      US Postal Service announces cost-saving changes amid vote-by-mail fears

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      The United States Postal Service (USPS) is implementing cost-saving measures, including a management hiring freeze , the US postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, announced on Friday, amid reports of severe mail delays across the US and concern that Donald Trump is maneuvering to weaken the agency to make it difficult to accommodate an expected influx of mail-in votes.The changes will not result in an immediate reduction of the USPS workforce, the agency said in a statement. USPS added, however, that “to prepare for future changes” it was seeking approval to allow some non-union employees to take a voluntary early retirement. DeJoy, a major Republican donor without any prior USPS experience, said the changes were needed to address the postal service’s “dire” financial situation.Last month, USPS employees were told the agency was prohibiting overtime and employees were instructed to leave mail behind if it delayed them on their routes, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.In recent weeks, places across the US have reported long delays; some neighborhoods in Philadelphia, for example, reported some residents were going longer than three weeks without receiving mail, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.There are worries mail delays could leave many Americans disenfranchised in the November election. Dozens of states – including key swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania – all require ballots to arrive by election night in order to be counted. More than 65,000 mail-in votes have been rejected during the 2020 primaries and observers are worried that slower mail could lead to more people getting disenfranchised this fall.Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, announced on Thursday he was investigating the delays and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, sent a letter to DeJoy urging him to reverse the changes. Democrats have also asked the USPS inspector general to look into the changes.DeJoy disputed on Friday that the changes at USPS were motivated by partisanship.“While I certainly have a good relationship with the president of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president, or anyone else in the administration, is wholly off-base,” he said Friday. “Despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail.”DeJoy said the postal service had “ample” capacity to deliver election mail and deflected responsibility for any mail delays that could potentially occur. He noted USPS had long had delivery standards in place.“We cannot correct the errors of the election boards if they fail to deploy processes that take our normal processing and delivery standards into account,” he said.USPS has long advised voters to put their ballots in the mail at least a week before election day. But many states allow voters to continue to request ballots within that window, making it unlikely that they can get their ballot delivered in time. While DeJoy seemed to blame local election officials for that problem, state legislators are actually the ones who bear the responsibility for changing the deadlines, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund who is an expert in vote-by-mail procedures.In the past, USPS has “bent over backwards” to deliver ballots in a timely way close to election deadlines, Patrick said. But now, she said, the postal service was sending mixed messages about whether or not they would go to such lengths to ensure delivery this fall.“They haven’t said, ‘We are dedicated to election mail, even if it means overtime,’” she said.USPS officials have also signaled recently that they are going to more strictly enforce the delivery times guaranteed by the different classes of mail election officials choose to use for their mailings, Patrick said.Some states, particularly those in the western US that automatically mail ballots to every voter, send their election mail as marketing mail, which allows them to send it at a lower cost. Marketing mail had a guaranteed delivery time of three to 10 days, but USPS has traditionally given prioritized attention to ballots that have an official election mail logo. More recently, Patrick said, USPS officials have emphasized officials will get speed for the delivery they pay for. More

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      Another 1.18m Americans file for unemployment as benefits expire

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      Another 1.18 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week as economists worry the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits will lead to a sharp drop-off in household spending and set back the US economy’s near-term recovery.Claims dipped last week after two weeks of rises and were the lowest since March but the latest figure from the department of labor marked the 19th week in a row that claims have topped 1m. Before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, the record for weekly claims was 695,000 in October 1982.The figures come ahead of Friday’s monthly snapshot of the job market. Economists expect the unemployment rate to have dipped to 10.6% in July from 11.1% in June, a significant drop but still three times the pre-pandemic level.Americans have been receiving an extra $600 in emergency benefits since March as part of the government’s coronavirus stimulus package. But that agreement expired at the end of last month and Congress is split over a possible extension. About 30 million people have been receiving the extra cash and it has accounted for 15% of all weekly wages paid in the US.The expiration of the benefits without any replacement would likely cause a surge in evictions, hunger and poverty as well as having consequences for the wider economy.According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) the knock-on effect of removing that cash from the economy could be severe. The EPI estimated 5mn jobs could be lost by July 2021 if it is cut as consumers are forced to cut back on spending.“The $600 benefit is essential for millions of people to get food, to pay rent, to care for their children, to afford basic necessities. If it is cut off, it will mean a sharp decline in their living standards, an increase in poverty, and completely unnecessary suffering,” Heidi Shierholz, EPI senior economist and director of policy, wrote recently.“The spending generated by that $600 is supporting over 5m jobs. In other words, kill the $600 and you will kill 5m jobs – jobs in every single state,” she wrote.A recent paper from the JP Morgan and The University of Chicago argued that allowing the extra payment to expire could “meaningfully reduce” consumption. Eliminating the benefit “could result in large spending cuts and thus potential negative effects on macroeconomic activity”, the authors concluded.If the $600 payments expire and are nor replaced, the authors project that US consumption will 4.2% – a drop that exceeds the entire 2.9% fall in the Great Recession.🚨 new predictions of effects of alternative UI benefit supplements 🚨The UI supplements have expired. Congress is considering a range of options.What will happen to 1) *consumption*2) *UI replacement rates*Thread w/@JoeVavra @pascaljnoel pic.twitter.com/YdENQzgzBY— Peter Ganong (@p_ganong) July 31, 2020 More

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      US government shelves survey that painted bleak picture of Covid-19 life

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      The US Census Bureau has suspended a weekly survey that painted a bleak picture of American life during the Covid-19 pandemic, with no sign of when, or if, it will resume publishing the report.The “household pulse survey” tracked various quality-of-life measures, such as food sufficiency, internet access and mental health, and was first conducted by the Census Bureau on 23 April to “quickly and efficiently deploy data collected on how people’s lives have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic”, according to the agency’s website.While data such as weekly unemployment claims released by the Department of Labor has shown how many people have lost their jobs, the survey provided a window into the effect the economic downturn is having on the lives of Americans.US households were asked whether they had enough food to eat and internet availability for education, if they had experienced depression or anxiety over the last seven days, and whether they felt they could afford next month’s rent or mortgage payments, among other questions.Over the past three months, the survey painted a desolate picture of what American households are experiencing during the pandemic – a picture that showed little sign of improvement.According to data collected between 16 and 21 July, more than 29 million Americans do not have enough food. Of the 7.2 million American households who did not have sufficient internet availability for educational purposes, 20% were black households and 30% were Hispanic. Over 44 million Americans said they have felt nervous, anxious or on edge nearly every day over the past seven days, while over 28 million experienced symptoms of depression.The Census Bureau described the survey as “experimental”. It was administered via a 20-minute series of online questions. The agency “scientifically selected” addresses to represent the whole US population. People from those addresses received emails with a link to the survey. Administering the survey cost the agency $1.2m, according to NPR.The survey was intended to last 90 days, with the last of the survey’s data from that period being released on 29 July. The Office of Management and Budget, the largest office in the White House, approved for the survey to be administered until the end of July. It is unclear whether the OMB will agree to let the survey continue.“The Census Bureau is working closely with the OMB to determine the possibility for a second phase of the household pulse survey. We will announce any details as soon as they are available,” a spokesperson for the agency wrote in an email to the Guardian.The bureau is currently hard at work trying to administer its once-in-a-decade census, trying to count everybody in the US amid the pandemic.The bureau has also been subject to political pressure, recently announcing it will be shortening the census deadline. Though the bureau had in April asked Congress to extend its deadline, it offered no explanation for the reversal.The move is expected to lead to an undercount of Americans, particularly communities of color and poorer Americans. More

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      Think 'sanctions' will trouble China? Then you're stuck in the politics of the past | Ai Weiwei

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      The Trump administration has floated the idea of sanctioning Chinese officials and members of the Communist party of China. Before we ask whether this is a good idea, let’s ask how Sino-US relations got to this stage.The US cold war with the Soviet Union was over ideology, but today’s standoff with China is different. The Chinese state has no ideology, no religion, no moral agenda. It continues wearing socialist garb but only as a face-saving pretence. It has, in fact, become a state-capitalist dictatorship. What the world sees today is a contest between the US system of free-market capitalism and Chinese state capitalism. How should we read this chessboard?The post-Mao dictatorship in China has lived by the principle of “repress at home and be open to the world”. It has imported knowhow from abroad. There are an estimated 360,000 Chinese students currently enrolled who have come through America’s open door. Over 40 years, at least a million have returned to China and fed their new technical knowledge into the existing authoritarian structures that have built the dictatorship. It might be the most momentous personnel transfer in history. When I applied to study in the US in the 1980s, I filled out a questionnaire that asked if I had ever been a member of the Communist party. The point of the question was presumably to avoid ideological risks. But it is beyond doubt that the Chinese students coming in with me included many party members who were headed to some of the US’s finest schools, often with scholarships. Americans generally assumed that these students would feel the appeal of liberal values, which they would then take back to China. What happened more often, though, was that Chinese students were quick to see the cultural differences between the two countries, and to draw the very logical conclusion that American values are fine for America but would never work in the Chinese system.If those US hopes for the exportation of values had panned out, much of China would have been won over by now. But what has actually happened? Returnees are now leaders in much of Chinese business and industry, but anti-American expression in China is as strong today as it has been since the Mao era.Washington bears much of the responsibility for what has happened. In the years after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, administrations of both parties touted the absurd theory that the best plan was to let China get rich and then watch as freedom and democracy evolved as byproducts of capitalist development.But did capitalist competition, that ravenous machine that can chew up anything, change China? The regime’s politics did not change a whit. What did change was the US, whose business leaders now approached the Chinese dictatorship with obsequious smiles. Here, after all, was an exciting new business partner: master of a realm in which there were virtually no labour rights or health and safety regulations, no frustrating delays because of squabbles between political parties, no criticism from free media, and no danger of judgment by independent courts. For European and US companies doing manufacture for export, it was a dream come true.Money rained down on parts of China, it is true. But the price was to mortgage the country’s future. Society fell into a moral swamp, devoid of humanity and difficult to escape. Meanwhile, the west made their adjustments. They stopped talking about liberal values and gave a pass to the dictatorship, in which Deng Xiaoping’s advice of “don’t confront” and Jiang Zemin’s of “lie low and make big bucks” made fast economic growth possible.European and American business thrived in the early stages of the China boom. They sat in a sedan chair carried up the mountain by their Chinese partners. And a fine journey it was – crisp air, bright sun – as they reached the mountain’s midpoint. But then the chair-carriers laid down their poles and began demanding a shift. They, too, sought the top position. The signal from the political centre in China changed from “don’t pick fights” to “go for it”. Now what could the western capitalists do? Walk back down the mountain? They hardly knew the way.Covid-19 has jolted the US into semi-awareness of the crisis it faces. The disease has become a political issue for its two major political parties to tussle over, but the real crisis is that the western system itself has been challenged. The US model appears to others as a bureaucratic jumble of competing interests that lacks long-term vision and historical aspiration, that omits ideals, that runs on short-term pragmatism, and that in the end is hostage to corporate capital.Are sanctions the way to go? A foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing recently remarked words to the effect that the US and China are so economically interlocked that they would amount to self-sanctions. The US, moreover, would be no match for China in its ability to endure suffering. And there he was correct: in dictatorships, sacrifices are not borne by the rulers. In the 1960s Mao said: “Cut us off? Go ahead – eight years, 10 years, China has everything.” A few years later Mao had nuclear weapons and was not afraid of anyone.The west needs to reconsider its systems, its political and cultural prospects, and rediscover its humanitarianism. These challenges are not only political, they are intellectual. It is time to abandon the old thinking and the vocabulary that controls it. Without new vocabulary, new thinking cannot be born. In the current struggle in Hong Kong, for example, the theory is simple and the faith is pure. The new political generation in Hong Kong deserves careful respect from the west, and new vocabulary to talk about it.“Sanctions” is a cold war term that names an old policy. If the US can’t think beyond them, the primacy of its position in this changing world will disappear. More