Because the UK has an efficient tax system, unlike the US, they could funnel money backwards just as easily. The US is missing out entirely on a critical pathway to the newly unemployed: through the companies that laid them off.
Instead, the connections between employees and companies are being severed and state unemployment is supposed to pick up the bill. The US government is paying corporate banks and bailing out the states in a multi-layered approach with room for corruption and malign incentives.
The timeline for rebalancing and recovery of the US labor market likely will extend an order of magnitude longer than our European counterparts who aren't resorting to sending checks in the mail and relying on congressionally approved bills to bail out states and central banks to direct cash to companies.
Convoluted, paper-based, politically-fraught systems will be hard hit. This is Darwinian economics.
Furlough Q&A: All you need to know about the coronavirus job retention scheme
