12-17-2020, 08:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-17-2020, 08:22 PM by danbrotherston.)
(12-17-2020, 07:56 PM)jeffster Wrote:(12-17-2020, 01:17 PM)taylortbb Wrote: Given the current lockdowns aren't really lockdowns (so many people going in to office jobs just because management doesn't like work from home) that seems overdue, especially the part about reviewing the rules.
From what I hear the public health calls with people that test positive are not good. Lots of "No, I'm not staying home, Covid is just a cold" and "I'd lose too much income using EI, I'm still going to work". So I'm not surprised the current lockdowns are ineffective. There's too many people uninterested in following the rules in any way, so the only way to get compliance is to force shutdowns. Even then, the frequency with people that are supposed to be self isolation say things like "I haven't left home, just as you asked, but I had several friends over for pizza night" means there's lots of people that the rules are not getting through to.
I think this brings up a good point. For those w/o sick time, and really, for those that don’t want to waste all their sick time on something COVID related, need extra help. While we have the Federal that has been very generous to people with very low paying jobs, for example, someone earning $100/week can take sick time off for COVID and get $500/week. While someone earning $1,500/week will only get $573/week. This needs to change.
As for people having friends over when sick, perhaps the government really needs to figure out how to start charging people are a careless like this.
There are a lot of problems with the fact that someone may be earning only 100 dollars a week--barely pays for groceries, and I know that they may be a second income.
But the framing that the government is "very generous" to low income people, who will get less money when on sick leave, and less generous to high income individuals who will get more money is ... well...I don't think you'll get a whole lot of sympathy.
I agree there should be some scaling (and there is) as a result of variable expenses during a short term temporary loss of income.
But I also think that it is reasonable to expect higher earning folks to be putting away their own rainy day fund. When my parental leave began, I knew I'd have to live on ~570/week, so I accounted for that in my spending. I also have chosen not to max out my spending on my inflexible expenses.
That being said, I think we'll all agree that people breaking quarantine can really just go...shove something....somewhere.