Why the cost increase?

Three New Unemployment Programs Under the CARES ActProgramWhat it DoesFederal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC)Provides a federal benefit of $300 a week up to Sept. 6, 2021.*Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)Extends benefits to self-employed, freelancers, and independent contractors.

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President Donald Trump on Sunday backed off his veto threat and signed the $900 billion stimulus bill—a move that should immediately benefit millions of unemployed Americans, even if its $600 checks have been roundly criticized as insufficient relief for the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

For starters, the package will bring back weekly enhanced federal unemployment benefits for the more than 19 million Americans still on unemployment benefit rolls. These enhanced benefits will pay out $300 per week, on top of state benefits, for up to 11 weeks. That’s down from the $600 weekly payment that the CARES Act sent jobless Americans through late July.

There was only 4 months of $600 UI. The rest was $300 until now.
Gotta love all the fuzzy math. But hey, how ’bout 85% of CARES money going to corporations who use it to buy back stock to increase their shares values so when they leave, they can cash out on the highest rate? They didn’t even qualify for the aid!

Others gave themselves bonuses and still laid off employees when they didn’t have to. And, a lot of those companies didn’t qualify for the money but "informed" there favorite politicians to simply give it to them. They were given a heads up as the bill was being written so as to be the first to apply and crowded out the small business owners that were to be the actual recipients of the aid.

Knowing how to bilk taxpayers is their specialty and they were the first to line up to the trough for the money. That money was supposed to help small companies retain employees by making the workplace safer and keeping companies afloat during shutdown when they couldn’t feasibly do it.

Why, oh why, do they always pick on the workers?

All the best,
Nonoise

Be patient; Covid

Right. This is why the price of a bushel of corn was flat for over 200 years from 1650 well into the 1800's, but has climbed inexorably higher ever since 1913, and in particular since 1971.  

The Federal Reserve and the income tax were both created in 1913. Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1971.  

Be patient; Covid. Hilarious.

Be patient: Covid, is correct. 

A lot of this can be put at the foot of JIT (Just In Time) and it's implementation in the early '80s. Instead of warehousing parts, supplies, sundries, etc., manufacturers discovered that, like their Japanese counterparts who did this in the '70s, they could cut down on costs by closing down those warehouses and lay off the few employees it would take to manage them and keep the money saved for themselves.

The problem was, and still is, Japan is nowhere near as large as America and can very well afford to implement such a thing. And all it took was a pandemic to bring the whole thing down. Like others have said, we have backlogs of container ships out there with some crews never seeing land for well over a year. 

JIT has been exposed for the cheap, cost cutting tactic that it always was. It very well have been the first domino to fall and the rest, as they say, is history.

All the best,
Nonoise

When gold was the standard, market volatility was 2.5-3 times worse than what we now have. Imagine that many more recessions and depressions. Very unstable and unpredictable. It was the fact that is was finite that appealed to some who wanted to leave others behind.

All the best,
Nonoise