I try to keep posts in this journal to fandom-related topics...

[lebateleur]

...but this morning I woke up to this little doozy and, just. No. Employers Can’t Find People to Hire. The author, Andy Puzder, styles himself the “former chief executive of CKE Enterprises.” Translation: he ran Carl’s Jr. and Hardees for about 20 years. Keep this in mind as you read:

Recipients under both state unemployment insurance and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (covering those, such as the self-employed, put out of work by the novel coronavirus but not qualifying for traditional aid) are eligible for a federally funded $600 weekly bonus as part of the Cares Act. Virtually anyone in business will tell you that this $600 per week bonus is discouraging work.

For example, many quick-service restaurants are experiencing improved sales in part because they have drive-through windows allowing customers to purchase food with minimal human contact. Their problem is staffing the restaurants. A Southern California restaurant operator with good sales told me recently that finding workers in Orange County is nearly impossible. He noted that some prospective employees have asked whether jobs will still be available in August. The $600 weekly bonus is set to expire at the end of July.

No wonder it’s hard to make new hires. A May working paper from the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago found that 68 percent of eligible workers can earn more on unemployment benefits than working. A stunning 20 percent of the unemployed doubled — or better — their lost earnings.

It isn’t complicated. If you pay people more to stay home than to work, fewer people will work. That’s understandable: Taking a job becomes unaffordable.

Put plainly:

• This is the invisible hand. This is the free market telling you that your business model is not viable. How about you pay these rational actors more to work than to stay at home?
• If one out of five of your prospective employees earns double—or more—from unemployment benefits than they would make working for you, you are not providing a “job with dignity.”
• Remember that quick-service restaurants teach their employees how to apply for federally funded benefits. In other words, they don’t pay their employees to work. Taxpayers pay their employees to work. Or rather, personal income tax payers pay their employees to work. You, Puzder, as the “former chief executive of Hardees and Carl’s Jr.” probably compensated yourself in stock and capital gains loopholes and paid no income tax at all.
  
  Again: you didn’t pay your employees. People like me paid your employees, you disingenuous little turd.

I could go on, but, gah.

これで以上です。