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Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

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Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#161

Post by macintux »

SubuSS wrote: post #132
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure people in the top 10% are not likely to need this money, but giving it to everyone is a lot easier and faster than figuring out who needs it the most. Even in that top 10% there are still people that live paycheck-to-paycheck. I was there not long ago. It's a lot better to give everyone the money and be wrong about ~10% of the people needing it then delay it for people who have bill past due right now.

Why isn't it a direct credit towards rent and free food/water/meds instead of cash? Wouldn't that be a way to ensure it isn't stowed away?

Setting up the bureaucracy to manage indirect funding would take significantly more time than we have.

People are losing their jobs as we speak, and weeks-long quarantines are happening right now too. I have a couple of friends who have literally no idea how they’re going to stay housed and fed.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#162

Post by decebalus1 »

alecco wrote: post #38

Actions have consequences. Your income and your future pension are going to pay for this in one way or another.

we don't have a functioning nation-wide social safety net. Some say it's the price we pay for innovation and market driven prosperity. That's fine, I guess. But I'd rather pay for this in the future than having to deal with rioters and looters now. Not to mention living in a healthy and civil society where people don't have to worry about the first level in Maslow's pyramid of needs. There was a quote about being X meals away from anarchy.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#163

Post by wool_gather »

SubuSS wrote: post #132
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure people in the top 10% are not likely to need this money, but giving it to everyone is a lot easier and faster than figuring out who needs it the most. Even in that top 10% there are still people that live paycheck-to-paycheck. I was there not long ago. It's a lot better to give everyone the money and be wrong about ~10% of the people needing it then delay it for people who have bill past due right now.

Why isn't it a direct credit towards rent and free food/water/meds instead of cash? Wouldn't that be a way to ensure it isn't stowed away?

Well, it's not the government that vends those things. So that's much much harder to administrate than stuffing and mailing millions of plain old paper checks, or even dealing with direct deposit. (Granted that checks have their own problems -- thousands of people don't have banks.)

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#164

Post by 9uq34aofgh »

Entalpi wrote: post #142
9uq34aofgh wrote: post #96

The media/political response is a giant hoax. Read the source paper from the CDC our corporate and political leaders are using to justify the panic: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm and appendix 5 https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/44314 From the evidence section of appendix 5: "Mandatory quarantine delayed the peak of the pandemic, but when cost was taken into account, mandatory quarantine was not an…

"Isolations only delay the peak, they don't prevent it, /.../ Zero evidence it will happen." Isolations and shutdowns limit virus transfers. This is 'flattening the peak'. The peak will always be there and since the only way not to have a 'peak' is to not have virus to deal with from the start!

I agree a temporary reprieve of infections from isolation will happen and based on the type of pandemic isolations can be an appropriate response.

What I haven't found is good evidence of what happens after isolation ends? Why won't a peak happen soon after? Any scientific sources you can point me to?

Also, the economic affect of isolations must be taken into account when implementing NPIs. The paper from the CDC states the economic disaster of isolations outweighs its general usefulness. This seems especially poignant for covid-19.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#165

Post by pbourke »

dpcan wrote: post #72

Chasing our own tails. If this virus does very little to zero damage in the US, I’m afraid it will become the worst “cry wolf” situation in the history of humanity.... when the truly dangerous bug arrives.

Even if the US had a magical force field that kept the virus out, it would still do a considerable amount of damage.

The supply disruptions that hit China are now moving to the rest of the world.

The largest companies in the US do a large amount of foreign business - I’ve heard up to 40% or so of the revenue of the S&P 500 comes from outside of the US.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#166

Post by JoeAltmaier »

9uq34aofgh wrote: post #164
Entalpi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Isolations only delay the peak, they don't prevent it, /.../ Zero evidence it will happen." Isolations and shutdowns limit virus transfers. This is 'flattening the peak'. The peak will always be there and since the only way not to have a 'peak' is to not have virus to deal with from the start!

I agree a temporary reprieve of infections from isolation will happen and based on the type of pandemic isolations can be an appropriate response. What I haven't found is good evidence of what happens after isolation ends? Why won't a peak happen soon after? Any scientific sources you can point me to? Also, the economic affect of isolations must be taken into account when implementing NPIs. The paper from the CDC sta…

I'm confused - what economic effect outweighs "1,000,000 dead"?

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#167

Post by jonnycomputer »

shartshooter wrote: post #26

As long as the money is given to folks who need and/or will spend it, it feels like this is the exact situation where the federal government steps in for stimulus. There’s no pull yourself up by your bootstraps talk right now and there shouldn’t be. I know the single parent working a couple of jobs will spend every dime they’re given in a time like this, just to survive. A yuppie like me would just park it in my savi…

In general, giving things only to poor people generates opposition to the program giving it. The attitude is, "Why should my hard work pay for those lazy people." Means testing can also add a lot of overhead and headaches for the people involved.

My suggestion: use it to pay down your upcoming tax bill, give it to people you know could use it, if you order food, leave some really fat tips for the delivery guy, donate to charity.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#168

Post by macintux »

abfan1127 wrote: post #92
ekidd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineering taught me one very important lesson. We can never get something for nothing. There is always a trade off. If the government is handing out money, it has to come from somewhere. Its either taxes, which means that tax money collected can't be spent elsewhere. Or it has to be printed, which is inflation. If we leave the money aside for a moment, what we're looking at here is the need to massively reorganiz…

there is so much hyperbole here. Massively reorganize our way of life? Lets keep perspective. We're talking about building some temporary hospitals, temporarily increasing our respiratory support. This isn't the Spanish Flu. We have months of data showing so. Millions won't die.

No one knows yet how this ends. All we have is informed speculation.

The worst case scenarios are still very much in play.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#169

Post by ekidd »

abfan1127 wrote: post #92
ekidd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineering taught me one very important lesson. We can never get something for nothing. There is always a trade off. If the government is handing out money, it has to come from somewhere. Its either taxes, which means that tax money collected can't be spent elsewhere. Or it has to be printed, which is inflation. If we leave the money aside for a moment, what we're looking at here is the need to massively reorganiz…

there is so much hyperbole here. Massively reorganize our way of life? Lets keep perspective. We're talking about building some temporary hospitals, temporarily increasing our respiratory support. This isn't the Spanish Flu. We have months of data showing so. Millions won't die.

What makes you say that this isn't the Spanish flu?

If we look at the mortality rate in places that are doing heavy testing, such the Diamond Princess and South Korea, it looks like we have slightly below a 1% fatality rate among people who test positive assuming adequate modern medical care for everyone.

The CDC's worst case scenario is 1.7 million dead in the US. Some British epidemic modelers put it closer to 2.2 million dead in the US assuming no health care overload.

But of course, medical systems in Lombardy, Washington and the Bay Area are already stretched to the limit. Wuhan had 80,000 patients and had to be reinforced by multiple Chinese provinces. And these overloads were with just a few 10s of thousands infected. The natural peak, assuming current numbers are correct, would far exceed our medical system's ability to cope.

At which point that 2.2 million number goes up. I've been staring at the numbers, running the calculations, and I keep getting roughly the same worst case answers as the CDC.

Unless there's some critical number that we're missing, we're in an ugly fight until we have a vaccine, or treatments that allow most people to breathe unaided. Until then, our best hope is to figure how to live life outside lockdown while preventing exponential growth.

Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress

#170

Post by wool_gather »

ed312 wrote: post #133
mtberatwork wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do a progressive amount based on income (available from the IRS)? Those in higher income brackets would receive less, while those in lower income brackets would receive more.

Because some people live in very high cost of living areas - high income alone is not sufficient. Ultimately if you don't hand out the benefit equally you're making some kind of value judgement: you ought to live this way, and not this way, to be worthy of support from the government. This is a _hard_ problem to even quantify. The real goal here is to keep the economic engine running (even on idle). Adding a politica…

> The real goal here is to keep the economic engine running

I would say that the real goal is to keep people from suffering because they lack necessities, including housing. Granted that the economy is how we supply those things, so we need it to work, but I would say it is a close second priority-wise.

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