The Walking Dead: WV legislature version

 I had to stop watching “The Walking Dead” television show a few years ago. It reminded me too much of real life.

I’m not saying that dead and decomposing people are literally shuffling around eating the living and turning those who get bitten by them into fellow flesh-eating walkers. Not yet anyway, although not much surprises me lately.

But it is the case that harmful policies and ideas that should long ago have been decently buried are shuffling around with considerable alacrity in the Legislature. And they do bite.

One such walker is Senate Bill 59, which would cut down on unemployment insurance for workers who lose their jobs from no fault of their own. A similar bill was defeated and buried last year, but it’s returned from the crypt. As was the case last year, the bill passed the Senate. Last year, fortunately, it died in the House of Delegates. This year, its fate is up for grabs.

The short version is that the bill would increase the number of hoops that people who have lost their jobs or been laid off need to jump through to get a fraction of their usual earnings, possibly threatening their ability to access this lifeline for their families.

If that weren’t bad enough, it also reduces the eligibility period for receiving unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to as little as 12, depending on the state unemployment average.

That’s another problem. West Virginia is a very economically diverse state, with unemployment, poverty and other measures of economic well-being (or the lack of it) varying widely from county to county. A statewide index would basically shackle the majority of rural counties to employment conditions that prevail in more urban and prosperous areas.

Not to pick on Monongalia County, but it’s in a different economic universe than counties like McDowell, Mingo, Logan, Wyoming, Calhoun, Clay, Wirt, etc. Mon and other counties with more economic options shouldn’t set the pace for the entire state.

Further, people laid off from well-paying jobs, such as mining or manufacturing, often take longer to find comparable work with their skill set because of local market conditions.

Let’s play it out a little further. Imagine a machinist or electrician laid off with a reduced term of eligibility. They might well take a job paying much less than a living wage that doesn’t take advantage of their knowledge or skills, while knocking someone else out of a job at the lower end of the market. When employment conditions improve, they’ll drop the old job like a hot potato, simply creating more churning and turnover for their new employer.

The ultimate effect would be to drive down wages for all workers, not to mention cause an economic loss to local economies. Unemployment benefits get spent really quickly on the basics.

These benefits also help ward off other social problems. Research on child well-being shows that economic supports in hard times increase the “protective factors” for kids and families. Every additional $1,000 spent by states on benefits is associated with a reduction in child maltreatment reports, less substantiated child maltreatment and fewer kids in foster care.

A recent study published in Demography, Duke University’s research journal, even found that “the harmful effects of job loss on opioid overdose mortality decline with increasing state unemployment insurance benefit levels. These findings suggest that social policy in the form of income transfers played a crucial role in disrupting the link between job loss and opioid overdose mortality.”

According to the authors, there is “a growing body of evidence that [unemployment insurance] may mitigate the harmful effects of job loss on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes. They concluded that “cuts to social welfare benefits such as [unemployment insurance] have second-order effects on outcomes such as health that extend well beyond basic financial needs.”

All of which is to say that being poor and unemployed isn’t nearly as much fun as some rich people seem to think.

To be fair, sometimes well-meaning people confuse unemployed workers with those not in the labor force and think cutting unemployment insurance will boost labor force participation. They are actually two different populations. The labor force consists of all workers, including those who recently lost jobs through no fault of their own.

If the intent is to boost labor market participation, rather than just stick it to families that hit a rough spot, there are better ways to do that, some of which have been proposed as bills in this session. One obvious step in the right direction would be increasing state investments in child care, which can cost more than a college education and typically hit at a time when a family’s earning capacity hasn’t reached full bloom.

Another would be to support policies such as a Medicaid buy-in that would help lower wage workers keep health benefits if they have a chance to get a raise. Or West Virginia could join the number of states that offer refundable child tax credits or earned income tax credits.

Incredibly, while some state lawmakers support cutting assistance for the jobless, others have called for setting aside $500 million in American Rescue Plan money intended to help families and communities with the damage done by COVID to give away as corporate handouts to mostly out-of-state corporations.

It’s a question of priorities. Are we going to stand beside a coal miner’s daughter whose dad gets a layoff notice from the mine, or are we going to turn our back on them?

(This ran as a column/op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)