I was amazed to see this article in the Detroit News of April 29 that calls for Michigan to use some of the COVID-19 relief money to pay workers on unemployment $1K for taking a job. The article starts:
"A House panel is expected to approve a plan Thursday that would use federal COVID-19 relief funds to pay unemployed workers a $1000 incentive to leave unemployment and take available jobs in Michigan."
It continues with:
"About 800,000 people remain on unemployment in the state, even as businesses are hungry for more workers and the state unemployment trust fund continues to dwindle, said Rep Thomas Albert, the Lowell Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee."
Amazing to me is a Republican willing to pay workers to go back to work after watching government give extra money on top of unemployment to stay home! You'd think those politicians would know not to make staying home more profitable than working. Evidently, logical thinking is not a requirement for political leadership in Michigan.
No the workers won't be getting the money first. The article adds:
"To qualify for the incentive, people would need to be employed for at least 80 hours over a four-week period after leaving unemployment."
This is what happens when modern politicians schooled in Pragmatism start making decisions based on nothing more than the expediency of the immediate moment. And if their pragmatic solutions lead to disaster, they can always sing their standard pragmatic excuse "What was true in the past is not true today and what is true today will not be true tomorrow. So we had to take action, to do something. We can't know the future so it's not my fault."
If Republicans want to prevent this kind of economic lunacy in the future, they would hasten to repeal any and all laws giving the governor emergency powers lasting more than two weeks with no extensions.
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