Paychecks

Perhaps you’re underestimating the positive effect that your career transition can have on your children.
The positive effect? I make about 90 grand a year now. Unemployment is what – 250 bucks a week? Is that one of your positive effects? We’ll get to be cosier cause I’m not gonna be able to pay my mortgage on my house. So maybe we can move into a nice fucking one-bedroom apartment somewhere. And I guess without benefits, I’ll be able to hold my daughter as she, you know, suffers from her asthma that I won’t be able to afford the medication for.
Well… tests have shown that children under moderate trauma have a tendency to apply themselves academically… as a method of coping.
Go Fuck Yourself. [Up in the Air]

“More than 80% of the benefits of a tax change tucked into the coronavirus relief package Congress passed last month will go to those who earn more than $1 million annually, according to a report by a nonpartisan congressional body expected to be released Tuesday.
The provision, inserted into the legislation by Senate Republicans, temporarily suspends a limitation on how much owners of businesses formed as “pass-through” entities can deduct against their nonbusiness income, such as capital gains, to reduce their tax liability. The limitation was created as part of the 2017 Republican tax law to offset other tax cuts to firms in that legislation….
The analysis included the impact of another tax change in the coronavirus relief legislation that allows firms to write off 100% rather than 80% of their losses, reversing another change in the 2017 tax law…
It also included more than $500 billion in tax cuts, including a payroll tax holiday for employers and tax incentives for employers who keep workers on the payroll. Republicans used the must-pass legislation to make tax code changes they had sought for years, including returning to policies from the 2017 tax law. All Senate Democrats also voted for the legislation.” [Jeff Stein Washington Post]

How have you been spending your time in self-isolation?
It depends how much you count the time you spend sulking. Let me put it this way: when they compile a list of the heroes of this era, I will not be on it. Mostly I’ve been reading. Also, taking phone calls from people who for the last ten years have told me they hate to talk on the phone. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to think about this, because it is a very startling thing to be my age—I’m sixty-nine—and to have something happen that doesn’t remind you of anything else…
How do you see New York City being transformed on the other side of this? You mentioned restaurants, but there’s also the arts: galleries, theatre companies.
It depends what you mean. These big New York art galleries, they’re so rich. I’m not worried that they’re going to close, and, if they did, so what? There will be art galleries. There aren’t very many small ones anymore, and that was caused by contagious unfettered capitalism, not a virus.
New York City is pretty much unrecognizable from when I was young. I don’t expect it to be more unrecognizable at the end of this. It’ll be different… [Fran Leibowitz in conversation with Michael Schulman]

During the record-stretch of low unemployment and solid economic growth before the coronavirus spread, it was easy to look past the savings shortage. But after at least 17 million people lost their jobs in recent weeks, many of those without much financial cushion will struggle to make ends meet, even with the expanded unemployment benefits and other forms of government assistance included in the $2 trillion legislative package enacted last month.
Many are lining up at food pantries. And many will fall behind in their rent, loan payments and other bills, amplifying the economic damage. [David Harrison on our economic contingencies]