Republicans want to punish Americans for not working—but it doesn't make economic sense the benefits are extremely popular with the public, including nearly half of Republican voters polled ......... for many Americans, working simply isn't safe .......... The latest research finds no correlation between the generosity of unemployment benefits and job finding. Current high unemployment rates are the result of a jobs shortage, not a sudden widespread lack of motivation. ........... The truth is that Conservative opposition to expanded unemployment benefits may have less to do with the amount of the benefits than who they think is receiving them. It's impossible to disentangle the politics of the safety net from the anti-Blackness that indelibly shapes them. .......... white Americans think recipients of safety net programs are primarily Black (despite the fact that the majority of recipients are white) and that Blacks are lazy and undeserving of assistance .......... when whites perceive threats to their relative advantage, their racial resentment increases, in turn leading to heightened opposition to safety net programs .......... Whites' belief that Blacks were lazy has been used to justify policies, like slavery, that coerce Black work for centuries. Modern work requirement policies for federal assistance, a particular obsession of the Trump administration, were actually born of a political compromise between New Deal reformers and Southern Democrats who wanted to ensure that Blacks did not have access to New Deal cash assistance programs like Aid to Dependent Children. This racist exclusion aimed at Black people, by propping up anti-safety-net ideology for generations, has also spilled over and harmed every other marginalized group in the U.S. ......... The Trump Administration's current threat to cut unemployment benefits, justified by the myth that these benefits are disincentivizing work, is just the latest in a long conservative tradition of attacking the social safety net by relying on faulty, racist stereotypes.
Transformational reform is the only way out for India, says Rajan According to Rajan, what probably keeps the government from offering more stimulus measures is that India had moved into the coronavirus crisis with a 9% fiscal deficit (for both the Centre and states) and the tendency of policymakers to take sovereign credit ratings as a symbol of its economic management. ........... According to Rajan, one area for policy reform is bankruptcy. The existing model, which prefers auctioning off even reasonably viable companies for default, could be replaced with one that encourages more debt renegotiation without replacing the existing management, as the economic circumstances have changed during the pandemic. ......... suspending fresh bankruptcy cases was unfortunate as it views bankruptcy resolution as a punishment and not necessarily as a way of restructuring capital structure and ownership. ......... having a fine-tuned bankruptcy system was important as banks, especially public sector lenders, were not willing to go for out-of-court negotiations for debt restructuring.
DO WE REALLY NEED THE OFFICE? What the WFH boom means for the future. ...... I exercise in the same space in which I answer emails and Slack messages. ....... anywhere from 5% to 15% of Americans worked from home before the pandemic. As of April, half of Americans who were employed pre-Covid now report working from home .......... rowing outbreaks across the country (and new evidence of indoor airborne transmission) may keep many other offices closed for an indeterminate period of time ............ despite a recent outbreak in Beijing, many offices have remained open since late February, largely due to widespread monitoring and aggressive testing and tracking ......... Covid-related restrictions are still largely in place in office buildings across Europe. ........ the trajectory toward more remote work for knowledge workers has been accelerating for years ....... “The share of the labor force that works from home tripled in the past 15 years ......... remote work benefits productivity, but this wholesale shift is forcing us to recognize, call out, and reject dangerous norms, such as the “ideal worker” fallacy that disproportionately affects parents and, primarily, women ........... a bleak picture of how forced remote work is impacting U.S. mothers in heterosexual dual-career households ......... the “gigification” of knowledge work ............ open offices had plenty of unintended consequences and that spaces can be designed to produce specific performance outcomes ........... how long employees will work from home (some companies, like Twitter, say “forever”) ............ whether a “hybrid” or rotational working environment is effective
Google just changed the WFH game for everyone The company told workers on Monday that they can work from home until July 2021. ...... "Google is a trendsetter," said Mauro Guillén, a management professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the forthcoming book "2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything." And the competition is always paying attention. "The first thing that will go through every [Silicon Valley] executive's and human resources teams' minds is: When do we introduce a policy that matches or beats it?" said Arran Stewart, co-founder of Job.com............. Google still didn't go as far as companies like Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB) that have already announced that some employees will work from home permanently. ....... Twitter said in May it will allow some of its workforce to continue working from home "forever" if they want. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said as many as 50% of the company's employees could be working remotely within the next five to 10 years. .......... remote workers also give companies access to a much wider talent pool. ......... something that could create -- for certain industries -- a truly global labor market ........ For companies who are planning to make work-from-home succeed for the long haul, there has to be a focus on measurable outcomes ......... managers need to lay out objectives and time frames and give employees the freedom to get things done when required.
