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My initial response to this is... duh. How many governments have ordered people not to work. Is it surprising that all those people would then file for not working benefits?

Of course not. Its an artificial unemployment spike (provoked by very real, fundamental forces in the world i.e. covid-19).

It will be VERY interesting to watch how state governments react to this spike. The federal government has monopoly money but state governments are VERY MUCH concerned with debt levels.

We'll see how long these isolation orders last. States will have to chose between unemployment, pensions, welfare programs, transit operations, etc. I wonder who gets the axe first. You could very easily see states go bankrupt and whole classes of the social safety net depleted for a generation.




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