Thread by @BharatRamamurti

NEW with @owenslindsay1: We're heading towards a wage apocalypse unless Congress intervenes. Our proposal builds on the unemployment insurance boost to:

✅Raise wages by $320/week for millions
✅Increase economic growth
✅Create half a million jobs

rooseveltinstitute.org/fair-wage-guar…

As many as 22 million people—around 15 percent of the entire American labor force—have higher incomes on UI now than from their previous jobs.

Even if Congress extends UI, current rules say those people will lose UI if they're offered a job with comparable pay to their last one.

Think about what that means:

As employers pick up hiring, millions could experience painful income cuts as they return to work.

Our economic recovery will be at war with itself: Economic expansion and hiring will produce income losses and contraction.

Our fair wage guarantee solves that problem:

-People only lose UI if they're offered a job that pays them comparably to their current benefit amount

-Employers get a credit covering the wage difference between a currently unemployed worker's former wage and their new one

Our proposal has four primary benefits:

Congress absolutely must extend the current $600-a-week UI boost. But by adding the fair wage guarantee on top, it can parlay that short-term boost into a sustainable long-term wage increase that will help millions of American families and accelerate our economic recovery.

Addendum: read this great piece by @talmonsmith and think about what it would mean to these people to not just extend this income boost for a few more months, but to turn it into a permanent income increase in the form of higher pay.

nytimes.com/2020/07/22/sun…