The Labor Department has stated that close to 26 million Americans are still collecting their first stimulus checks from the federal government. Of the 26 million, half of them have been relying on programs that are pandemic-related- in order to get benefits as they wouldn’t be eligible otherwise. Unfortunately, negotiations for a second stimulus check has been a roller-coaster ride with both sides both accelerating and stalling- wasting precious time before the Presidential elections. Jeremy Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve mentioned that if Congress made the economy wait for a longer time, it could mean a very weak recovery later on- bringing forth immeasurable hardships for the citizens of this country.
O’Leary’s Statement on Stimulus Checks?
This is precisely why major unemployment benefits need to be at the forefront of the next stimulus checks. And this sentiment has been echoed by Kevin O’Leary, an investor in ‘Shark Tank’ by ABC, and the chairman of O’Shares ETFs. He believes that the best thing to be done now would be to bring about a $400 check that would be given every single week to anyone who is unemployed for the next 14 months. He reasoned that if anyone had lost their employment as a result of the pandemic, then it was justified paying them a few hundred dollars every single week till they regained employment.
He stated that he would definitely support an enhancement of $400 over the $600 that was previously doled out, courtesy of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security- or the CARES Act. He believes that citizens would rather prefer an incentive- allowing them to seek work, rather than being in a position which is of great pain and hardship. There have been several sporadic rumors about how businesses are not being able to fill their businesses with employees, courtesy of the unemployment boost. But yet another report by several economists from Yale proved that the extra $600 that they were receiving wasn’t the cause for this- people weren’t working because they weren’t getting enough jobs. As the report claims, people who were in possession of a much larger unemployment benefit found it easier to get hold of a job, than people who didn’t.
But Are Stimulus Checks That Unneeded?
As far as questions go regarding the next stimulus checks, O’Leary is not as enthusiastic about it. He mentioned that people didn’t really need the $1200 any more, because they had already found jobs. But, this isn’t the entire truth. Every single week, around a million Americans still continue to file for benefits- and while the claims for unemployment benefits have reached their lowest level since March- 840,000- we can’t simply dismiss it.
Michael Evermore of the National Employment Law Project is of the opinion that the $400 might actually be less than $600 but it actually gave citizens some modicum of a plan. Most of the experts are of the opinion that a stimulus check of any form is going to help in the development of the economy- so there is no point debating in what to do- but rather doing it.
