The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

[ThelmaLou]

From the COVID News thread:

@Baron_Greenback

A stat from the UK which slightly blew my mind. The Job Retention Scheme came into force on 20th April. This allows employers to furlough employees, with the government picking up 80% of their wages (with a limit of £2500 p/m).

As of 3rd May, almost of a quarter of the entire UK workforce is now on the scheme. That’s quite the intervention by the Treasury.

https://twitter.com/HMRCgovuk/status/1257324798847451136

@galen_ubal

There’s a similar program in Australia, called JobKeeper. I’m not finding any hard numbers on how many are in it at the moment.

In this scheme, businesses are subsidized to pay their employees $1500/fortnight, whether or not the business is actually open and operating, so long as there has been a significant downturn in the business’s income.

Back in the USA, however:

@Euphonious_Polemic

Because the “Wealth creators” have discovered that they cannot create diddly squat if they don’t have a large workforce of poorly paid serfs to generate the money for them. So it’s “High, Ho, off to work you go, and sorry if you die, but we have profits to make!”

“Those Urpeens are just a bunch of goddam godless Socialists! They’re giving out free money (EWWW!) to people who haven’t earned it or shown their worthiness. This is Murika where poor people have the guaranteed right to die of starvation and Wealth Creators have the guaranteed right to make money no matter what! If God liked those people he wouldn’t have made them poor, amirite? Didn’t Jaysus say, ‘The poor you will always have with you’? Well, so there, says right there in the Good Book, not to mention the Declarashun of Independence and the Constitutitutitution. God bless America!”