[nck4222]

Isn't the point to be able to sustain someone until they can get another job? What's the point of giving someone enough money to pay their mortgage but not enough to eat, or enough to feed kids?

There's more expenses to living than mortgage and utilities. Food, health care, home repairs, funerals, car repairs, etc.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Isn't the point to be able to sustain someone until they can get another job?

Yes, that's the point. It's not designed to enable (or even encourage) everyone to live paycheck-to-paycheck during the good times. The value is less than 100% of replacement income for several reasons:

- The system must maintain an incentive to return to work. Paying people 100% of their replacement income to not work will reduce the incentive to return to work. That's the last thing we need when trying to restart the economy as quickly as possible.

- The system should incentivize people to maintain their jobs. If someone can reliably get 100% of their income by being laid off, the incentive to maintain your job is reduced.

- People should share some of the burden for carrying themselves through hard times. This includes maintaining savings to help cover expenses in the event of an emergency and reducing lifestyle spending to reduce expenses. This is a difficult topic to discuss because people reach for strawman arguments about families becoming homeless, but realistically a $60K/year equivalent income is not far from the annual median household income. People can and do find ways to live on that amount all over the country. It's not realistic to expect that we can maintain everyone's previous lifestyle unchanged during unemployment.

- The money must come from somewhere. The more we pay out now, the larger our deficits and the higher our taxes will be in the future. The incentive structures must be aligned to minimize the amount of time people spend on unemployment. It's not designed to be comfortable. It's designed to be a little bit uncomfortable without triggering financial ruin for the majority. I know that sounds harsh, but it's necessary for incentive alignment.

[nck4222]

> - The system must maintain an incentive to return to work. Paying people 100% of their replacement income to not work will reduce the incentive to return to work.

Is there any evidence that shows this? I would think 4 months of 100% replacement income followed by no longer receiving unemployment benefits provides plenty of incentive to return to work.

>This is a difficult topic to discuss because people reach for strawman arguments about families becoming homeless, but realistically a $60K/year equivalent income is not far from the annual median household income. People can and do find ways to live on that amount all over the country.

I mean, the median household income in 2018 was 62k, and an estimated 78% of the country lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Yeah plenty of people can survive fine on it, plenty of other middle class people would be unable to afford their mortgage on it. Forcing people to sell their houses due to job loss from a pandemic seems like a pretty morally unfair system, as well as a poor economic outlook for the country.

[ModernMech]

> What's the point of giving someone enough money to pay their mortgage but not enough to eat, or enough to feed kids?

Because the banks care if you don't pay your mortgage. They don't mind if your kids go hungry.