United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned individuals who are offered their jobs back after being laid off due to the coronavirus crisis that, if they refuse to return to gainful employment, they will not be eligible for unemployment benefits.

Mnuchin referenced the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) which has allowed some employers to invite workers back into the fold. “If you offer a person a job…and that person does not take the job…then that person would not be allowed to get unemployment,” Mnuchin said.

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The Wall Street Journal reported last month that under the CARES Act, a stimulus package passed in March, a significant portion of Americans can earn more with unemployment benefits than they did while working.

Unemployment Pays Better Than Work

Republican senators warned last month that the boost in benefits during the pandemic would raise the unemployment rate because workers could, for months, draw a higher check from the government than they could from their employer. “I want to [help] people who lost their job through no fault of their own,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said. “But I don’t want to pay people more not to work than to actually go to work.”

Graham went on to explain that “some people’s wages could actually be temporarily increased by 150 percent by leaving the workforce,” something he described as “a perverse incentive which needs to be fixed.” As currently structured, those benefits are only scheduled to last until the end of July. Meaning the government handouts will —to the point where they outweigh the need to work— end soon.

AOC Encouraged Workers to Boycott Work

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently urged Americans to boycott their employers when the coronavirus crisis clears. “When we talk about this idea of reopening society you know, only in America does the president —when the president tweets about liberation— does he mean go back to work,” she lamented during a Vice TV talk show. “When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot [of] people should just say ‘no’…we’re not going back to that,” AOC suggested.

Fortunately, as opposed to AOC’s socialist utopia, a vast majority of Americans actually want to work, want to help feed their families, and generally want to make a better life for them.

This piece originally appeared in ThePoliticalInsider.com and is used by permission.

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