 Well, folks, I'm not sure if you heard the good news or not, but the pandemic is apparently over. We did it. We defeated COVID-19 as a nation. We should all be so proud of ourselves. At least this is what the U.S. government seems to believe, because the unemployment insurance meant to protect workers during a time of crisis like global pandemics, that's run out, and it's not coming back. So as Axios reported on Labor Day, more than 7 million workers lost their unemployment benefits, mostly women and people of color. Now, even though those 7 million workers individually are affected, each of them have children and spouses. So overall, the loss of these pandemic unemployment insurance benefits is going to impact about 10 percent of the total U.S. population. I mean, at a time when the Delta variant surges across the country and people are dealing with the worst that they've seen in some counties of COVID-19, we should be paying people to stay home. But that's not what happens in a late-stage capitalist society. We need to basically pretend as if the pandemic is over, send people back to work as quickly as possible, because that's what's good for the economy. We don't necessarily care about people, so much as we care about profits. So yeah. Now, for more on this, we've got a Matt Brunig of Jacobin, who explains that the Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment insurance report on Friday. This is the last report before pandemic unemployment benefits are eliminated across the entire country today, September 6th, and thus gives us the best indicator of how many people will be affected by the cuts. In the report, we learned that 9.2 million people are currently receiving benefits from either the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Commencement Program or the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program. Another 0.1 million filed an initial claim for PUA in the last week. According to the Census Household Poll Survey, the average household that is receiving UI benefits has 3.8 members in it. This means that around 35 million people, 10% of the US population, live in households that are scheduled to lose unemployment income today. These are not small cuts either. Based on what happened in the same states that already cut these benefits, we know that around half of those on UI will see their benefits drop to $0 while the remaining half will see their benefits cut by $300 per week which is equivalent to $15,200 per year. Those formerly on unemployment insurance will also cut their spending by about $145 per week or $7,540 annually which will have negative effects on the revenue and employment of the businesses they patronize. So what's happening isn't just cruel, it's idiotic. We should be paying people to stay home. We're never going to be able to defeat this pandemic if it continues to spread. If people are out in public pretending as if it's over. But by cutting off millions of Americans from this program pretending as if this is no longer necessary, you're just going to propagate the spread of this virus even more. And Joe Biden's administration has been upfront about the fact that they have no plans to renew this. So good job. Good job leaving millions of Americans hanging during a pandemic. I mean how many people as a result of this are going to lose their homes, be unable to make rents, be unable to feed themselves. I mean and when this happens what do you think is going to happen with regard to COVID-19? If you know somebody loses their apartment and they have to move in with someone else, that's more people congregating in one space increases the chances of COVID-19 spreading. It's the last thing that you want to do. Again, every single person should be paid to stay home. I sound like a broken record but that's what you do if you want to contain the spread of the virus. But in the United States of America, we don't have this mentality. It's kind of a, you know, you're on your own. You have the vaccine so take it and then shut the fuck up, go back to work. As if people weren't already trying to go back to work. Now I want to play this clip from case study QB. It's of an economist who went on MSNBC to explain why people who believe that like the individuals currently on unemployment insurance are just lazy, they're totally misinformed. That isn't what's happening. President Biden said the economy is strong enough to end these unemployment checks but we just talked about it. Those August job numbers that were released Friday really show a big slowdown in hiring. What I found so interesting about your article is you really dispel the myth that everyone collecting benefits can work but doesn't want to. You talk to people who are literally literally taking low paying jobs, switching careers, even selling plasma to make ends meet. What's the impact here? The real world impact that these benefits will have and the lack of them in a climate like this. Yeah, I think there's this idea that because there are jobs out there and there are jobs out there, then everybody could just go back to work overnight. There are a lot of reasons why that is not the case. The pandemic itself is an obvious reason. There are a lot of people who still face significant health concerns. I spoke to a woman in Pennsylvania whose son is immunocompromised, he's too young to be vaccinated. He can't go back to school in person and so that rules out a lot of jobs for her. I've talked to people who are looking very actively for jobs but are not able to find them in their industry. In some cases they're considered too qualified for some jobs, overqualified for some jobs and not qualified enough for others. We're seeing childcare continues to be disrupted. I'm speaking to you this morning from southern Indiana where I'm visiting some family. The schools here started up at the beginning of August and in this school district shut down two weeks in to go remote because of a surge in COVID cases. So we're again, you know, if you've got kids at home, you may not be able to work right now. So it's not as simple as saying that everybody can just go back to work overnight. He's exactly right. This idea that nobody wants to work is so stupid. It's so stupid as if people want to be impoverished for extended periods of time as if people don't want to be independent and find jobs. That's not the case. But even if, let's assume the worst for a moment, let's assume that people actually didn't want to work and they were like trying to, you know, squeeze out as much from unemployment as they possibly can. Can you really blame them? Who wants to work during a pandemic and deal with all these carans that we're seeing in viral videos? Like my niece works at Walmart and they have a door greeter who gives out masks to people and enforces the mask mandate. Do you think that dealing with all the stress that that causes from anti-mask dipshits is worth like the minimum wage? Of course it isn't. Blame people for not wanting to work, especially considering the fact that when you look at this graph, worker compensation has not kept up with productivity and the stagnation in wages is correlated with the drop in union memberships. So people are working harder, but they're not benefiting from the fruits of their labor. And also when you consider the fact that we're living through a global pandemic, I don't blame people for not wanting to work, but that's not actually the case. People aren't on unemployment because they don't want to work. They're on unemployment because they don't have a fucking choice. They don't have a fucking choice. And even if they did have a choice, they should still be getting money from the government to stay home because we should be going into lockdown again. ICUs are at full capacity in states across the country. What happened to flatten the curve? What happened to combating this disease together collectively? Of course that's all at the window. So this is extremely cruel. It's unnecessary. The government has the money, has the means to pay people indefinitely throughout the duration of this entire pandemic, but they're choosing not to. And that speaks to the cruelty of the US government, even when Democrats are in control. You think that things would be at least a little bit better when it comes to distributing funds to people. No, Joe Biden is aware of the fact that the pandemic in many states is worse than it's ever been, and he's allowing this to run out. It's a choice. Remember that this is a choice. And it goes to show you that our government is cruel and neoliberalism is absolutely a curse. And anyone who thinks that it's necessary for people to, you know, lose their unemployment insurance so that way they can go back to work because they're just mooching. Shut the fuck up. We all should be technically mooching right now, because again, that's the only way you combat this virus if people stay the fuck home, but they can't stay home. So yeah, this is really, it's a depressing story, especially considering that we got this news, you know, on Labor Day. I mean, it's not like this is a surprise, but you know, this runs out on Labor Day. It really goes to show you what America thinks about its workers, what the government more specifically believes, you know, its workers deserve. And that is jack fucking shit, unfortunately.