- Six states — including New York, which has the highest number of cases in the US — can only fund up to 10 weeks of unemployment benefits from their state coffers before money runs out and they have to turn to the federal government for additional funding, according to a recent estimate from the Tax Foundation.
This is what it looked like two weeks ago:
Now that spike is about twice as high.
"have filed" WA state, for one, hopes to make it possible for the new categories of unemployed to file by April 18. As of now, the only people who can apply for unemployment are those who fit into the traditional categories. I believe this is true for 20 other states. IBM is busy scrambling to find COBOL mentors because apparently once the world's data managers got through Y2K they figured why bother fucking with it again until we get to Y10k.
... or that they would rewrite into something more maintainable and less generally creaky before it came up again. Which was overly optimistic, of course, rewriting software when the reasons for rewriting it are invisible to the people you have to convince to let you do it is tough. And the real reasons for rewriting things is always invisible to the people you have to convince.apparently once the world's data managers got through Y2K they figured why bother fucking with it again until we get to Y10k.
"young people with nothing to do" is one of the principal causes of revolution. Daughter and I watched a bunch of local teenagers push a shopping cart off a cliff in the park last month. Yesterday someone had artfully arranged all the garbage out of a bin on a park bench. Now - those are undoubtedly kids who would otherwise be in school. But "fuck with shit to feel less powerless" is one of the fundamental erosive drives in human society and "powerlessness" and "uselessness" and "idleness" share a lot of real estate on the venn diagram of unemployment.