People are trying to think rationally about a group that is irrational. "Emotions" are driving the decision-making process. Look for the underlying "emotional process" that is driving the irrational behavior.
I remain perplexed by the political strategy here. Senate Republicans' best argument was that the $600 led some people to earn more on UI than they did working. And it's not hard to see why in that situation it might discourage people from returning to work and in any case may not be particularly fair to people making less who still have to go to work. There wasn't anything stopping them from proposing capping the benefits at 100% of past wages. Or 80% of past wages. Or something slightly more complicated where it is a higher percentage if your wages were lower and a lower one if they were higher. Instead, they came in with $200. It doesn't really fix the issue (other than making it less likely), and it just makes them sound cheap.
Maybe the most maddening overall feature of this administration is not proposing bad policy, but proposing bad policy that has no real obvious political benefit. It's like pushing to get schools open before they are ready. If it were three weeks before the election, it created a sense of normalcy, and if it is going to blow up, it's after people vote, OK, at least I get the logic of it. Instead we do it now, and predictably there are almost immediately outbreaks all over the place.
People are trying to think rationally about a group that is irrational. "Emotions" are driving the decision-making process. Look for the underlying "emotional process" that is driving the irrational behavior.
I remain perplexed by the political strategy here. Senate Republicans' best argument was that the $600 led some people to earn more on UI than they did working. And it's not hard to see why in that situation it might discourage people from returning to work and in any case may not be particularly fair to people making less who still have to go to work. There wasn't anything stopping them from proposing capping the benefits at 100% of past wages. Or 80% of past wages. Or something slightly more complicated where it is a higher percentage if your wages were lower and a lower one if they were higher. Instead, they came in with $200. It doesn't really fix the issue (other than making it less likely), and it just makes them sound cheap.
Maybe the most maddening overall feature of this administration is not proposing bad policy, but proposing bad policy that has no real obvious political benefit. It's like pushing to get schools open before they are ready. If it were three weeks before the election, it created a sense of normalcy, and if it is going to blow up, it's after people vote, OK, at least I get the logic of it. Instead we do it now, and predictably there are almost immediately outbreaks all over the place.