This article from Slate's Jordan Weissmann supporting the continuation the unemployment benefit of $600 a week is nicely argued. It is not 100% persuasive to those of a different world view or political philosophy, but shows us the cruelty inherent in anyone's world view or political philosophy if they disagree with his arguments.
I don't think many economists, let alone political pundits, realize how deep our nation's economic problems would be if we did not have people (including me) receiving that extra $600 a week on top of the usual unemployment check. What has happened is the US chose a different route than most of the other civilized nations. Instead of nationalizing payroll departments of most businesses, so as to keep people technically employed, and practically speaking, tethered to their jobs, the US ended up letting people get laid off, and had people wait weeks or months to start getting money again. This is still a bad result because, instead of maintaining people's employer-based health coverage, millions were now solely responsible to pay into their employer-based health coverage, so that much of the $600 would go to the health insurance companies.
I thank God Bernie Sanders put in that provision for the extra $600 and a provision which widened definition of "unemployment" to include gig workers, small business owners with no employees, and independent contractors, that people like McConnell, Graham, Schumer, and Pelosi did not read carefully. It is one of those rare instances where the incompetence of these leaders overwhelmed their corruption, and, in the case of Graham and McConnell, cruelty on top of corruption.
