Many of us on the left and the blue hats were crying out for a universal monthly payment to get people through this crisis. Running this through the normal broken unemployment system would be a disaster. This is proving to be true.
Ohio Governor DeWine’s Daily Covid19 Press Conference
Watching the Ohio Governors daily coronavirus briefing today highlights the issue.
They announced a new online job board where grocery chains and gig delivery companies largely have posted approaching 12,000 essential jobs they can’t fill. An overwhelming majority of those jobs are for wages you yourself can’t pay rent and eat on, let alone pay for utilities or to take care of families.
Anyway, a reporter chimed in that he knew people that looked at those jobs wanting to pitch in, but they pay too little to get rid of their unemployment benefit. So now, we have a huge job need going unfilled, for services most of us need, but those jobs are not being filled because people are afraid to lose their coming benefits.
And they are right. I know, jobs should not be paying so little that people won’t take the work, employers should just raise the wages. But then you get into skyrocketing prices at a time when everyone is trying to be frugal. The system we operate normally is broken, but it is the system we have.
Drop Means testing, embrace universal programs
We must drop our modern obsession with means-testing every damned thing. Universal programs eliminate these kinds of issues.
If everyone was just getting a set amount per month, and I mean everyone, then as the states start showing needs people can go and fill that work for extra income, helping to meet a seriously critical worker need to confront this crisis and taking better care of their family.
More needs will arise as this crisis unfolds, and too many people, protecting the well being of their families, will hesitate to get involved for fear of losing the means-tested benefits as we have set them up.
We have pursued policies for decades now as a country that has created nothing more than a treadmill economy. Most of us have been losing economic stability year after year. People have been crying out for change to this broken system and always get told to shut up, we can’t do that, be pragmatic.
Enough
This crisis has proven the system we have been operating is a complete and utter failure. We aren’t even lasting two weeks without massive massive problems.
We must begin to approach major issues in our society with universal approaches so we can be flexible as crisis after crisis will beset us. Climate change catastrophes are coming, we know they are. Hopefully, this is a wake-up call.
Universal Basic Income is something we must consider. Medicaid for All, Universal college education, universal childcare and on and on and on all need to be considered
Basically trying to make the system we have been using work we are hamstringing our ability to be nimble and flexible enough to respond to this crisis and it is a crying ass shame, to be honest. “Pragmatic” means testing, (I actually call it mean testing cause the first guy ruled out by that $1 is not really in any different situation than the person qualifying for the benefit), is going to be the death of us, beyond those that have been means-tested to death through denial of affordable access to medical care already.