This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. This article first appeared on the Economic Policy Institute’s blog.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1296112
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1296112
Well Fox Business is against sick leave because of socialism
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This would change in a heartbeat if CEOs had to mingle with their lowest paid employees, which they should probably be doing anyway.
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It’s only the peasants. They’re pretty much expendable in Trumpland.
Our CEO, CFO, COO, etc. are in the 19th floor of my office building. Yeah, I expect expanded WFH policies to come down any day now. I am extremely fortunate to have a job where WFH is an option. I’m an aficionado of “social distancing” in the best of times; now I’m especially keen to stay the hell away from my co-workers.
Guy yesterday used the urinal, then splashed some water on his hands and walked out. I swear it pissed me off so much the plexiglass faceplate of my hazmat suit fogged over! This would be a STEM-educated guy in a well-paid IT job. Whaaaaaat the fuck is wrong with people?
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This is why the payroll tax cut he is proposing is stupid and illogical.
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Olive Garden was publicly shamed for not offering paid sick leave for employees - they announced a change in their policies earlier today.
The initial thread about the lack of paid sick leave:
The result:
We need to make it clear that paid sick leave will have an impact on where we shop.
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The WH press conference again kind of misses the point. The middle-class doesn’t need a tax cut, it needs to have assurance that 100,000-200,000 elderly Americans aren’t killed by this disease. Still confusion about intake, testing protocols, dealing with surge capacity, isolation wards, and social-distancing. Just today we saw a case where a child in Finland brought the disease home to one parent, requiring testing of the whole school, testing of all the parents and all siblings as well as closing of the school, i.e. several hundred tests. Time to get real, people.
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Have been in the corporate world for a long time. Read up on “dead peasant” insurance, where companies got a tax break plus a bonus payment if someone actually died.
A psychologist or a behavioral economist would explain that this kind of self-destructive idiocy among employers is a result of the (badly chosen) distinction between positional and absolute goods. For some people and some things, it’s more important that those below them have less than that they themselves have more.
And at some point it even makes a twisted kind of (psychological) sense: a millionaire won’t get a lot of additional happiness from the few thousands dollars a year extra profit they could make by offering paid sick leave, but they might get a whole lot from the cringing subservience of employees who don’t have it.
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“I have people who do that for me.”
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I know, right?
There’s a guy at my office who does his best to start an avian flu epidemic by walking around the office with some kind of a bird perched on his head!
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Well, they do actually have contact with the lowliest of workers in ways that increase their likelihood of catching the virus. They just haven’t thought the matter through yet. How many janitors do you know with paid sick leave?
Or maids, chauffeurs, cooks/chefs, and other support staff the elite have in their office suites and mansions.
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Needed now, a version of Andrew Yang’s idea: Everyone whom the IRS knows made wage, salary, or self-employment income gets a Treasury check for two months’ income, up to, say, $10,000.
The Fed can push a trillion dollars out to the banks with a few keystrokes. That money will stay with the banks. We need to push money out immediately, so that no one who is ill has to go to work.
This is always the case with Republicans. Work from the top down instead of bottom up. I have been voting since 1954 and I think Nixon was the only Republican President that passed legislation that had the masses in mind. They have been trying to decrease taxes for the wealthy constantly, even during this crisis, do away with social Security and Medicare and the ACA…The three that mostly help the less of us.They have done nothing to bring down prescription costs that are incredibly high compared to other countries. Nothing on infrastructure building and repair that would create well paying jobs and other than service jobs that are usually lower paying.
Sadly, paid sick leave means nothing if you get laid off first.