
Because of high unemployment benefits, businesses can't find summer workers - ilamont
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/22/nation/with-laid-off-workers-making-more-money-collecting-unemployment-businesses-struggle-hire-summer/?p1=HP_Feed_ContentQuery
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westicecoast32
1\. Everytime I hear this I assume the business can't find people to work
anyway when the excuse doesn't apply

2\. If your underpaying people that's another problem

3\. You're asking people to work during a pandemic. They're not putting their
lives and fiances (who's going to pay for their hospital bill) to work for you

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NotSammyHagar
Most people don't get full pay on unemployment, it was a partial payment. $600
a week more for someone who was making min. wage is significant, that's an
extra $15/hour.

Mass has a $12.75/hour minimum wage. I wonder how many people were making
about minimum wage, there's always been an argument that min. wage was less
than most adults make, but these owners are saying it wasn't true for them.

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0zymandiass
Fixed Headline:

Businesses don't have enough need for summer workers to pay them

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cafard
1\. Aren't most summer workers students? 2\. How do you get unemployment if
you've been a full-time student since last August? 3\. The last time I stayed
on Cape Cod, the B&B owner said that local businesses employed a lot of
foreign workers, mostly European university students it seemed. How are they
affected by American UI?

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tracer4201
Could now be the time we reevaluate our idea of what is the minimum bar for
the wellness of our citizens here in the US?

And if businesses can’t find summer works, should those businesses be
reevaluating their model? Do those businesses have a right to exist going
forward as before COVID19 or do the workers have a right to a better living?

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SpicyLemonZest
The more businesses are forced to reevaluate their model, the longer and
harder the recovery will be. Maybe that’s worth it, I don’t know, but the
consequences of a long recovery are going to largely fall on the backs of
those same workers.

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asdf333
perhaps this is the consequence of a ubi like program.

not saying if its good or bad but it puts a floor on what salary people are
willing to accept for different jobs

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0zymandiass
Not really.

If you had ubi, then you could still take those jobs for additional income for
hobbies, travel, etc.

As it is right now, you're losing money by taking these jobs.

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stu432
In the UK, furloughed workers can take other jobs without affecting their
payments. The Land Army drive to fill in for normal seasonal workers failed
heavily to get 80k signed up despite millions literally sitting at home
twiddling thumbs.

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downerending
Kind of an interesting natural experiment along the lines of _What would
happen if we effectively closed the border to illegal immigration and also did
not also fix legal immigration somehow?_

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whateveracct
Sounds like those businesses' success is predicated on some people being poor.

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excalibur
[http://archive.vn/tC6ib](http://archive.vn/tC6ib)

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LiquidSky
Pay them more, then. It's that simple.

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qeternity
How is this the obvious conclusion instead of lowering unemployment? I’m not
arguing in favor of one or the other, but you’ve jumped to a massive
conclusion.

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olliej
Because businesses don't want to pay market rates for summer workers.

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rongenre
They should pay more.

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renewiltord
'Should' isn't a useful thing in this discussion. When thinking about policy
there is only behaviour pre-intervention and behaviour post-intervention.

In this case, you'd note that there are certain businesses that don't consider
themselves viable at the current value of unemployment benefits if
unemployment behaves as it does right now. Then you see if you're okay with
losing those businesses and if you are, then so be it, you think it's worth
the trade-off. If you're not okay, then you need to tune the intervention,
e.g. unemployment is guaranteed for some time even if you become re-employed,
or 'unemployment' is guaranteed to all, or you lower the payment, etc.

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NeuNeurosis
The only thing I would retort is that you are assuming their are only two
outcomes, the incentives get realigned to allow businesses to operate under
preexisting circumstances or we don't change incentives and these businesses
fail. I would totally agree we need to look at behavioral outcomes, I would
say that we need to look at it from the employer side and immigration side as
well not just the domestic labor side.

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renewiltord
Only stated it like that to keep it concise. Ultimately, I guess my point is
that it isn't a moral question. Moral incentives are hard to provide so policy
centres around the levers we know to pull. Saying "businesses should" without
incentivizing that is just saying "users are holding the phone wrong".

So yes, you are right that there are many parameters that can be tuned.

