
71 Percent of jobless Americans did not recieve their March unemployment benefit - grecy
https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-economy-recession-stock-market/2020/4/25/21236595/unemployment-benefits-71-percent-didnt-recieve-coronavirus-layoffs
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twoquestions
Even aside from the economic fallout which on its own keeps me up at night,
I'm really terrified of the social consequences of this. The United States by
and large is not a very compassionate society to begin with, and our hatred
for the poor and unemployed is among the highest in the world.

It was already bad enough in normal conditions, but when our collective fury
is unleashed on 20something million people, and likely more before this is all
said and done, I'm afraid of what the short-term and long-term effects are
going to be. I'm afraid to even speculate on this.

~~~
opo
The US population is generally considered one of the most generous in the
world whether you consider the amounts given to charity as a percentage of GDP
or time spent volunteering to help others:

>...The United States is often considered the most generous country in the
world. Why? Because Americans donate a lot of money. Its people, its
foundations and its companies donated roughly $410 billion in 2017 -- or about
2.1% of its own GDP. In fact, the amount Americans donated was more than the
entire GDP of all but about 40 countries in the world.

>You could argue that Americans can simply afford to be more generous. And
that if people in other countries could give more, they would.

>But what if instead of looking at how much people give, we looked at how many
people in a country are giving? And what if we looked at more than money --
and also counted people who volunteer their time and help strangers?

>Gallup does just that -- every year -- in more than 140 countries.

>In our latest survey, the United States isn't at the very top of this list.
We find that the most generous countries by these metrics are Indonesia and
Australia -- followed closely by the United States and New Zealand.

[https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/245192/generous-
count...](https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/245192/generous-countries-
world.aspx)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitable_donation)

~~~
twoquestions
To be quite honest I wasn't expecting data like this. America is a big place,
and it's entirely possible either I was wrong or I grew up in a tightwad part
of the country.

As far as opinions toward the unemployed, my google-fu is too weak to find
hard data, as current headlines are saturated with the millions of suddenly
"not necessary" people losing their jobs, so all I got for you is anecdata.
I'm from the Rust Belt, a part of the country that's largely abandoned by
Capital, where 30 years ago it was much easier to find a job then than now.

Between your data and jobs now deemed essential which were previously held in
contempt (gas station attendants, grocery store workers, etc.) my outlook has
become slightly more rosy.

------
mensetmanusman
If we had a small percentage of our best and brightest working on getting our
poorest workers access to the most basic forms of fintech, this would not have
happened.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Our poorest workers wouldn't be our poorest workers if they didn't lack
"access to the most basic forms of fintech". They are poor because they are
_exploited_ : by "businesspeople" who can't pay the daily maintenance costs of
their own workers and rely on public subsidies to make up the difference, by
banks and payday lenders who scrape fees and interest off meager paychecks, by
politicians who misdirect their outrage at college graduates.

~~~
mywittyname
It's expensive to be poor in the US. And, unless you've been poor, it can be
hard to empathize with because poor problems are largely solved by having more
money.

Example: people who receive their paycheck on, effectively, a visa gift card
need to pay relatively high fees in order to access that money. A solution
would be to suggest a bank account, but those are also expensive when you're
poor as banks often make a healthy chunk of profit from fees that hit poor
people the most.

Practically every solution to this problem is some variation on, "just [have
more money]." Which is why these people still face exploitation in the
wealthiest country in the world.

~~~
milkytron
Pardon my ignorance, but is getting paid in visa gift cards a common
occurrence for the poor in the US?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Not usually Visa _gift_ cards, but getting paid via debit card has become
somewhat common for low-wage workers.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-
rep...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-replace-
paychecks-bank-fees-hurt-workers.html)

