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Let's go next to Magnis from Scotland.
Magnis, you are on the air.
Magnus, if you unmuted yourself, we will all be able to hear
you, can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
And I don't really have a question about the US at the moment and.
But Scotland has our.
And national elections coming up in a couple of months, right?
And I wondered if you had any thoughts on that.
Not expecting you to, but just in case you did,
you know, I'm not informed enough to be able to comment, unfortunately.
OK, well, that's all I've got.
Well, what's going on vaccination wise in Scotland?
And we we're
doing it differently to England, and I think we got our care home and that a lot of people
done earlier than England and inquire about level at the moment.
Think 60 year olds are being done at the moment, when are you expecting to be able
to get vaccinated?
Two or three months, I mean, the last group to be done, so they're not looked into it,
and then how about as far as like, you know, in the U.S., a big thing has been, for example,
to support the restaurant industry by getting takeout or maybe you you call it take away
in Scotland.
Is this something that people are doing to rally behind restaurants in Edinburg?
And I I've not been doing it.
I've been cooking my own stuff just because I like cooking.
That's fair.
All right, very good.
OK, Magnus, thank you so much for the call.
I appreciate it.
All right, Magnus, checking in from Scotland, very important.
Let's go next to Varuna from New Delhi.
Varun, you were on the air.
Oh, hey, David, how are you?
Well, how are you?
I'm doing well, OK, if I just had a simple question, you know,
barring for the moment that the minimum wage increase isn't going to be passed, that it's
been removed from the relief bill, I mean, it was removed from the relief bill.
If it had been passed and you eventually got to a minimum wage, how would that affect the
minimum wage recipients functional liquidity?
Because if that elevates them beyond the qualification threshold, like the minimum for, you know,
I guess broadly welfare benefits, snap benefits and low income housing, that sort of thing.
I mean, basically all their money is just going to go back into that stuff.
So you argue in favor of demand side stimulus, but, you know, how does that work out?
Does it have to be accompanied with other sort of policies that raise the, you know,
the income threshold to qualify for these things?
So this is a great question.
And the crux of the question is if you make nine bucks an hour, but in addition, you qualify
for certain welfare benefits and then you have some total income for the year, which
is your nine dollar an hour job, plus maybe one hundred and eighty bucks a month in food
stamps.
You add it all together and then you say, OK, we're going to give you fifteen dollars
an hour.
But as a result of that, you will exceed the income threshold for some of these benefits.
Do you really come out ahead?
That's the crux of your question, right?
Yeah, basically, yeah, it's a it's a very fair question, the answer is it depends significantly
on what's going on at the state level in many, which is which is different from for many
people.
But you have to account for a couple of different things.
One is, is a 15 dollar minimum wage, for example, like Alabama has no state minimum wage.
So in Alabama or maybe it's Mississippi, maybe it's both the minimum wage and some of these
states is the federal, which is seven.
Twenty five.
So 15 is more than doubling.
The impact there on eligibility for programs is going to be very different than in a state
that already has an eleven dollar minimum wage and it goes to fifteen.
And that's going to vary state by state.
You also have to remember that a lot of people who qualify for benefits don't actually go
through the process of getting them because the they either don't know that the benefits
are available or the system is cumbersome or complicated or whatever the case may be.
So while there's no question that there are some people who will get a raise from a minimum
wage increase and they'll lose something on the welfare side, when you account for the
difference in money in the pocket versus a housing subsidy, money in the pocket versus
food stamps, people who don't understand or avail themselves of these systems, the net
benefit is still significant, but that doesn't mean what you're saying doesn't exist.
And I think it's important to consider it.
Oh, OK, thanks.
All right, no problem.
Yeah, these are like problems to solve rather than reasons not to increase the minimum wage.
You know, if the minimum wage should be higher on an inflation adjusted, productivity adjusted,
whatever basis you do it, and then you figure out how to solve that problem as an example
that Varun brought
up