“Get back to work, you lazy SOBs!”

The Republicans in the Senate and the White House are as of today still very much undecided on what should be in the next relief bill, but they’re all agreed on one thing: They don’t like the Democratic proposal to extend the current $600 per week supplemental payment. Some of them, like Sen. Graham, don’t think there should be any bill at all – we should just let the whole supplemental payment idea drop when it expires at the end of the month (although it’s effectively expired already, given how unemployment benefits are normally calculated). Others – including Sec. Mnuchin, who seems to be running economic policy now, for lack of interest in the White House itself – want to be more generous and continue the current supplemental payment at about $2-300 a week. This is more likely to become the GOP position.

Given that state unemployment benefits normally provide $2-400 a week, which of course is no princely sum, this means that the GOP is proposing at best to have the unemployed receive $4-700 a week, vs. the $800-1,000 a week that they’re receiving now. For those of us with income above that level, this might not seem to be a huge difference, but it really is. In fact, economists have said that the $600/week benefit has a) prevented the poverty rate from increasing during the pandemic, when it would otherwise have increased dramatically, and b) provided the only real spending support to the economy, keeping the US from perhaps sliding into a real Depression, not just a severe recession. And that’s because it’s just about certain that every dollar in unemployment aid is spent on essentials like rent and food – nobody’s squirreling it away in Bermuda or buying a second home in Aspen.

What’s the Republicans’ reason for being so much against extending the benefit at the current level? You might have expected them to say things like “We just can’t afford it”, which is simply nonsense in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Depression – and very much mirrors what Herbert Hoover was saying as the banks started collapsing and people were thrown out of jobs in frightening numbers in 1932.

No, the Republicans’ real concern is that by keeping the benefit at $600 a week, we will – horrors! – end up paying people more than they earned when they had a job, and they’ll just continue to sit at home until the benefits run out. This is a nice, traditional GOP-style fairy tale, which is again much like President Hoover’s rationalizations for not doing anything to support people as the economy collapsed in 1932 (although the collapse was much swifter this time around). But it ignores these facts:

1.      If people were voluntarily staying away from work, wages would be rising as employers would be desperately trying to find workers. That’s not happening.

2.      If these people were laid off and subsequently recalled, yet didn’t return to work for whatever reason, they would have lost all unemployment benefits anyway. So people are still receiving benefits because either they’re still on temporary layoff or their old job is gone for good.

3.      Since most of the laid off people lost health or retirement benefits with the layoff, they have lots of other incentive to return to work, even if the wage is a little less than they received before. And Trump – always trying to be helpful, of course – refused to reopen the enrollment window on Healthcare.gov, so people who lost their health coverage but still make too much to go on Medicaid have no insurance at all. They should be extremely motivated to get their old jobs back.

4.      So the main reason the GOP wants to reduce the benefit isn’t to get people to go back to their old jobs, but to induce them to search for new ones, which of course is pretty hard when the unemployment rate is 14% or so.

5.      But here’s the catch: There are certainly jobs to be had. They’ll most likely be at a lower wage than what most people earned before and they certainly won’t be glamorous, but at least the person will be able to work. For example, the meat packing plants have lots of openings, since a lot of their employees have gotten sick, and many have died. Why not go there?

6.      The reason is obvious: Many of these openings are in unsafe workplaces. If we had a real OSHA like we used to, they would be doing their best to make sure all workplaces are safe. As it is, OSHA hasn’t investigated a single complaint about unsafe workplaces due to the coronavirus. They literally close every complaint by sending a letter to the employer asking what they’re doing about the problem. Of course the reply is always “Thank you. We’re on top of this.” And that’s all OSHA needs to hear to close the case.

So what the GOP is essentially saying is “You need to get back to work, period. We don’t care whether the workplace is safe or not, and we’re not going to do anything to fix it. In fact, we’re going to exempt the employer from liability, so you won’t be able to sue them if you do get sick. Oh…and be sure to vote for us in November.”

Sounds like a winning re-election strategy to me!

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 4%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	5,087	727
July 18	5,476	782
July 25	6,971	996
Month of July	26,566	857	111%
August 1	7,311	1,044
August 8	7,668	1,095
August 15	8,042	1,149
August 22	8,434	1,205
August 29	8,846	1,264
Month of August	34,772	1,122	131%
Total March – August	191,460

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 149,852

Deaths reported yesterday: 452

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 5% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 4,371,992

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 56,066

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 14%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 2,090,231

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 149,852

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 7%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com