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Foolish Not to Get Out $600 Unemployment Payments

Kerry Landon-Lane
2 min readJul 31, 2020

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Image is edited from militarytimes.com

Dead people (150,000 of them) and dead economy — wow! This is a spectacular feat for a country with the most resources in the world to cope with adversity. Donald and his helpers in Governorships, House and Senate have conjured the worst of outcomes. The country has failed to contain Corona and consequently the economy is now not just a little queasy, but in bed and very sick. We made stupid, selfish, undisciplined and unnecessary blunders. Looking forward, we are about to repeat our magic and produce the same blunder — an outcome that is the worst of both worlds.

Like Donald, who washed his hands of Corona once she declared that she was not going away, the Republican Senate has shut themselves off from reality by deciding not to continue the $600 unemployment payment. “Enough freebies”, they say. “You lazy bones need to return to the factory pronto! so that we can win our election on the hum of the economy — the way is clear ahead for Christmas”.

The distribution of packets of $600 a week till the end of the year is rescue on the cheap. It is financially prudent to keep roofs over heads, gas in car tanks and children’s stomachs full (if not in school). Empathy of those dismissed from jobs and luxuriating on the living room sofa would be welcome, but not actually needed to make the right call. The costs of the disruptions due to…

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Kerry Landon-Lane
Kerry Landon-Lane

Written by Kerry Landon-Lane

OP-ED writer, designer and artist. Most recently returned to architecture and deliberately presents the subject void of buildings.

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