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That could be true on the low end but it’s probably not true on the high end. Software developers, for example, are currently at less than 1% unemployment. On the high end the labor shortage will not end until high end employees are out of work whether by job termination or employer insolvency. So while unemployment is currently low in software there is tremendous opportunity for employers to operate with substantially fewer people provided the immaturity of candidate selection/retention and poor training of the average practitioner.
Not sure I understand what you're getting at. How is this related to what McConnell said? He's talking about the direct payments that were spent the moment people got them. The last payment was $1400, 16 months ago. Thinking that is contributing to unemployment is laughable and a sign of him being completely out of touch.
and it certainly wasn't enough to live on. I'm sure it play to his base though.
the software developer shortage is simple. there's not a large enough pool of people that enjoy coding and are willing to tolerate the corporate bullshit.
We ran out of stimulus money the month we got it, Mitch. Send more. ...Like $1,400 is less than one month of childcare for one kid. Talk about blaming a single drop of rain for the flood.
That's what I'm thinking. Who still has their stimulus money?

Assuming that someone qualified for all 3 checks, they totaled $3,200[0] before accounting for dependents. You're telling me that millions of households have managed to live on ~$150 per month for two years? I'm not buying it.

[0] https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/data-interactive-tools/dat...

3200 isn't even a month's rent for us..
do forget the states like ohio that didn't pay all of it out.
He's probably talking about the PPP loans that executives took as bonuses.
> Like $1,400 is less than one month of childcare for one kid.

Say you're married and have 3 kids under 6 and 1 kid over 6. With the fully refundable child tax credit, in 2021 your household would automatically receive 1400 x 2 + 3600 x 3 + 3000 = $16,600. That's more then 10% of Americans make a year at their jobs. That's not including any other benefits such as unemployment and food stamps, which you'd certainly be eligible for if you didn't have a job in 2021.

So... this is pretty hilarious.

First of all, you picked an arbitrary four kids to pad out your numbers, but... if each kid costs $1,500 plus a month for childcare, it'd cost $6,000 a month, or $72,000 just for childcare. I get a few thousand of that back as a tax writeoff, but... it's not going to break even. So thanks for the $16,600... by your math I'm still over $50,000 in the hole. I make plenty more than $50k a year, but there's also, you know, rent... food... did you know the cost of natural gas has tripled this year? In the winter it's $400 a month to stave off hypothermia.

Second, the child tax credit is... not free money. It's a credit on my taxes, and it's also not new. The only thing that really changed with the child tax credit is that the government allows you to collect it monthly instead of all at once during tax season. Which really just changes the formula between getting a big refund and getting tiny chunks of refund throughout the year. And bear in mind, you have to be bringing in that much taxable income in the first place to actually get anything back.

I'm guessing you don't have kids, or you'd have some idea how the math works out on these. But having kids is... not affordable... in the current economy, even if you're making a solid non-Silicon Valley tech salary. The idea that anyone would pay $70 to fill their gas tank, to spend nearly $100 a day on childcare, to do some restaurant job paying $10 an hour is absolutely laughable.

A quick search is saying the average US cost of childcare is around $850, but we're talking about a family who's unemployed. Why are we assuming a hypothetical married household is paying for childcare when both parents are unemployed?

> And bear in mind, you have to be bringing in that much taxable income in the first place to actually get anything back.

The 2021 child tax credit was fully refundable. You get it whether you owe taxes or not.

> average us cost of childcare is around $850

In Nebraska, maybe. Not here.

> we're talking about a family who's unemployed

No, I definitely wasn't, and if you were, almost nothing you're speaking of would apply anyways.

> You get it whether you owe taxes or not.

There's a difference between "not owing taxes" and "not having taxable income".

I see. The article was talking about labor shortages, which is why I was assuming we were talking about people who hadn't reentered the workforce yet.

> There's a difference between "not owing taxes" and "not having taxable income".

You get it whether or not you have taxable income.

That’s funny lol. As if any person hard up on cash would likely still have any of it. Thing is anyone likely to be thrown out on the streets aren’t sitting around waiting for the last stimulus nickle to run dry or it’s already gone & they're borrowing money already.

I’m sure if you want a clear picture of how people are doing you’d just need to talk to loan sharks & listen to families having to loan out money to their adult kids to keep them afloat.

He's not stupid. That man is very shrewd. He's playing to his base's paranoid, hateful beliefs.
> his base's paranoid, hateful beliefs.

Who do you consider to be his base and what are those paranoid, hateful beliefs they have? If by "his base" you mean "Republicans" I'd consider that to be an example of paranoid, hateful belief.

It's not paranoid if they're really out to get you, and sometimes hate is justified. If Republicans want to know why they're hated they should start with a mirror.
All of them? Remember that Trump got ~75 million votes, are all of them "paranoid and hateful"?

What will happen when those Republicans - the same people who you are calling "hateful and paranoid" - win the next two election rounds which they seem to be poised to do? Do you expect them to take your opinions into consideration, knowing that you deem theirs to be "paranoid and hateful"? How do you expect to be able to run your country like that, other than by running it into the ground?

> Remember that Trump got ~75 million votes, are all of them "paranoid and hateful"?

That's 75 million out of about 258 million Americans of voting age. Who are you trying to impress? That's not a majority, and if abstentions counted as votes for "none of the above" then Trump would be seen as the fucking loser he's been since around 1988, and Biden would be in a boomer gulag^W^Wnursing home where he belongs.

> What will happen when those Republicans - the same people who you are calling "hateful and paranoid" - win the next two election rounds which they seem to be poised to do?

I expect them to become even more openly fascist than they've been thus far. It will happen here, and maybe we need to lose the republic before we can understand the value of keeping it.

The tree of liberty might be overdue for a good watering.

> Do you expect them to take your opinions into consideration

That would imply that they currently do so, or used to in the past. I won't say that Republicans want me dead because I'm a working-class, autistic, openly bisexual atheist and the child of an interracial marriage, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of them wouldn't so much as piss on me if I was on fire.

> How do you expect to be able to run your country like that, other than by running it into the ground?

Look here, brother. Who do you think you're jiving with that cosmic debris? I don't run shit; I just work here.

> That would imply that they currently do so, or used to in the past. I won't say that Republicans want me dead because I'm a working-class, autistic, openly bisexual atheist and the child of an interracial marriage, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of them wouldn't so much as piss on me if I was on fire.

Good grief, you get hit by nearly all the Fucker Carlson hate spew.

Keep your head low... and stay safe.

I'm keeping my head low and my ammo dry.
> m a working-class, autistic, openly bisexual atheist and the child of an interracial marriage

Better keep out this litany of intersectional crossings if you really want to 'keep your head low', this looks more like waving a bunch of flags to me. Also, 'keep your ammo dry' sounds just like those Republicans with their Gadsden flags and as such is probably proof of the horseshoe theory [1] of political extremism.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

> What will happen when those Republicans - the same people who you are calling "hateful and paranoid" - win the next two election rounds which they seem to be poised to do?

Welcome to the Authoritarian States of America.

That's not hyperbole. It's coming. When SCOTUS rules on "independent legislature" the way everyone expects them to, it's all over.

Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

>>Americans built up a huge amount of savings during the pandemic, thanks to several federal rescue packages.

Perhaps Americans built up a huge amount of savings because the weren't allowed to leave their house to spend money on things they normally do.

I think some folks have their head in the sand with regard to the demographic shift that's happened. First, you finally got some of the younger boomers retiring on time or a bit early. They're flush with cash due to having stuck around with their 401ks and paid off their mortgages. This demographic won't be coming back in sufficient numbers to the work force. Second, the shut downs have forced people to find work where they could as for many their bills didn't pause during that time (barring the rent moratoriums), so folks either started up businesses, side gigs, or whatever they could to pay those bills. Third, many people took the opportunity that the enhanced unemployment benefits offered them to go into more stable industries. I'm sure many code bootcamps saw a marked increase in students. Fourth, some jobs were reshored in the US to tackle the supply chain issue which probably added more jobs than expected. So ultimately, this isn't a one facet problem, it's a multi-faceted problem that comes down to there being fewer people to replace the ones that left the economy (boomers) and this is going to be the new normal for at least a decade I'm guessing. The fact that right wingers refuse to acknowledge this in the US is just... weird. Absolutely weird.