"When you add $600 to the national average unemployment payment... the replacement rate goes from 38 percent to almost exactly 100 percent."

"In other words, that amount is what it would take for Congress to replace what the average American worker receiving unemployment would have earned.... Unemployment benefits are typically meant to keep people afloat but stay low enough to incentivize them to find a job. Now, when seeking work may be both fruitless and dangerous, the incentives have nearly reversed.... And a $600 flat amount, rather than one relative to each person’s income, on top of a state’s usual benefits, is perhaps the simplest possible policy to enact.... While an extra $600 a week is enough to replace 100 percent of the average national income, the added benefit will differ depending on where people are and what they typically earn.... A person who earns close to the average weekly wage will roughly get their salary replaced on unemployment, but low-wage workers who lose their jobs are more likely to end up making greater amounts than they were before...."

From "The $600 Unemployment Booster Shot, State by State" (NYT). At the link, a graph shows the states in order of how much the new benefit exceeds the income replacement level. At the top of the chart is Maine, where the unemployed are getting an amount that looks like about 125% of the average income in the state. Before the $600 bump, the payment was something like 48% of the average income. At the bottom of the chart is Maine's next door neighbor New Hampshire, where it looks like the payment is 88% of the average income of the state. That really isn't that big of a discrepancy, but the average income figure doesn't tell you the extent to which low wage earners are doing especially well (or the extent to which higher paid workers are getting into trouble meeting their regular expenses).

One commenter over there says: "I would like to see an article that shares both sides of the story on this. My husband is a small business owner of an essential business that he has built for 40 years. He is now having a hard time getting his few employees back to work because they are making more on unemployment. As I do understand the concept, it will, in the long run, put these small businesses out of business."

Yes, the extra $600 is premised on the idea that the incentive to get back to work is inapplicable because people aren't supposed to work. But what about those working in "essential" businesses? How do low-paid workers there feel seeing that they could make more money by not working? We often like to think that people want to work. Trump frequently repeats that people want to get back to work. But if your job isn't intrinsically rewarding to you and you could make more money not working, would you want to get back to work? Maybe you would.

The small business owner — like that commenter's husband — has an opportunity to see who has a strong work ethic and a dedication to the company. That may be worth remembering when the $600 add-on is taken off and everyone wants to come back. In the meantime, however, he is suffering, and it must be demoralizing to see that people don't want to support the company that had given them their jobs. Maybe some of the fault is with the owner: Why didn't he foster a spirit of loyalty to the company, when he had the chance?