Extend the $600 unemployment stipend

Re: “The time for $600 stipend has come and gone...” Aug. 2 commentary

Does Krista Kafer have any idea why the federal government has provided an additional $600 a week on top of the regular unemployment benefits? It’s not to reward or encourage laziness as she implies. The unemployment compensation is being used to funnel money into a stalled economy.

We need people to stay home for the same reason we need some businesses and schools to close for a while. It’s to reduce the contagion. And we need them to stay home to care for their children staying home from unopened schools.

If the $600 stops, then Kafer’s experience liquidating estates will serve her well with all the evictions and foreclosures that will follow.

Paul Brown,

Krista Kafer’s smug column calling for an end to enhanced unemployment benefits echos Ivanka Trump’s recent tone-deaf praise for the “Find Something New” project.

She refers to continued benefits as “paid vacation,” assumes “quite a few of the 330,000 Coloradans” receiving benefits are making more money unemployed than they were while employed and suggests that those who “complain” about a lack of jobs should find the courage to make “difficult changes” by seeking another line of work.

It is ludicrous to suggest that workers who may lack transportation, child care, family support, reserve funds, or a sound educational background can realistically transition to new jobs, even if there were 330,000 openings in Colorado.

However, if her goal is to agitate people by claiming that tens of millions of unemployed Americans in the midst of a historic economic crisis are taking advantage of the rest of us, Kafer’s message makes sense. Taxpayers, don’t ask for transparency for the trillions that have gone to corporations, cronies of the administration and congress, and other dubious recipients. Instead, be on the lookout for COVID Welfare Queens.

Bonnie Arnold Wenngren,