Sure, if you take the article at face value. The key argument seems to be "more than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return". On the surface that might suggest that people are getting out for non-monetary reasons (ie. not related to pandemic relief), I'm skeptical whether that's actually the case. It's easy to tell yourself and the pollster that "no amount of pay" would make you go back when the government has been paying you unemployment for the last 16 months. When unemployment ends and the bills pile up, I suspect a good chunk of them would eventually go back.
That might be the intent, but that's irrelevant to the actual distortionary effects that it causes on the job market that gp is talking about.
The comment was correctly flagged dead for being flamebait.
What facts do we need here? That the program exists? I doubt that's in dispute.
>It’s also highly irrational to suggest the government is paying people to sit at home, since they are not.
1. I think the "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." guideline[1] applies here. The weaker interpretation you seem to be using is "the government's unemployment policy was deliberately designed to get people to stay at home" (as opposed to providing safety net), but the stronger interpretation would be "the government is effectively paying people to stay at home by enacting a policy that gives people money, but will withdraw it should they find work".
2. An argument could be made that the government literally wants people to stay home, as a matter of policy. After all, there would be much less people complying with stay-at-home orders if they ran out of cash, couldn't buy food, and had to find a job.
>for being flamebait.
I fail to see how that's the case. If the commenter called the people on unemployment "lazy" or whatever, you may have a point, but they didn't.