I think a big debate in macroeconomic policy circles in coming years will be between people who say "The federal response to the coronavirus was successful in maintaining incomes despite a deep fall in employment. That should now be our standard for future downturns" 1/2
vs people who say "The response to the coronavirus was successful in maintaining incomes despite a deep fall in employment. But now that crisis is over, we can go back to doing things the way we did before." 2/2
In other contexts, we don't ignore extreme cases, but regard them as natural experiments that are *more* informative than the usual range of variation. There's a reason e.g. David Card picked the Mariel boatlift as an ideal case to look for effect of labor supply shifts on wages.
If the $600/week didn't produce observable labor supply effects, that's strong evidence that we should be less concerned about those effects in normal times too.
The concerns that led to a flat rate -- an earnings-based formula imposes more administrative barriers, misses important groups of workers, etc . -- apply in normal times too. I don't understand why we wouldn't want to learn from this experience for design of UI going forward.
