All right, cost analysis:
Main source for preliminary numbers comes from Figure 1 of the following paper:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr846.pdfwhich breaks wage groups into four quartiles. Based off of an analysis of tax records, the only relevant quartiles here are the third and fourth (containing people whose incomes were above $50,000).
Roughly 3.7% of individuals in quartile 3 last year were reported to be in lower-paying jobs this year, while 1.2% of individuals in quartile 4 last year were reported to be in lower-paying (quartile 1 and 2) jobs. Based off of some rough projected tax return data broken down by income, around 1,360,000 people would be eligible for wage insurance under the current iteration of this bill. Assuming all of these people are eligible for the full $10,000 (unlikely, but an overestimate is better than an underestimate), this is around
13.6 billion dollars in cost.
Error estimate is +/- 1 billion dollars, making allowances for possible differences in these statistics due to differences between Atlasia and RL.
Note that the cost will increase if the amendment is adopted, because the likelihood of earning a lower wage in a subsequent job is higher as income decreases.
