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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

#171

Post by newhotelowner »

ModernMech wrote: post #131
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.

Yes, a lot of times you'll hear $100,000 as a cutoff for aid. I made $100,000 in the Bay Area. It doesn't go as far as people might think.

I lived in the bay area with a family and moved to Ohio in the middle of 2018. 1/3 of the population living on minimum wage in a 50k population town in Ohio. That is $18,000 per year.

$100,000 has much more purchasing power than $18,000. For you saving $5000 is easy. For someone making minimum wage, saving $500 by the end of the year is impossible.

If you have a car, your deductible might be 250-500. The majority of the minimum wage earners deductible is 500. They usually don't have that when accident happens. When the boiler goes out, it usually cost same to fix it for high earners and minimum wage earners.

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

#172

Post by alecco »

cultus wrote: post #126
alecco wrote: post #38

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

Great, we'll just have tens of millions of new homeless then.

It's not the only possible measure to handle the problem.

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

#173

Post by dylan604 »

kingludite wrote: post #155
piokoch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The price of the stocks does not affect company in any way. If the company sales are going down or clients stop coming this is an issue, stock value is important only for those who hold/speculate using them. You company has already got the money from selling stocks, nobody is going to take them away.

It seems they only share a name? In some stores people are buying more than ever. But stocks are down?

Products for sell on a shelf now have been in the pipeline for months. The stock market is looking past the immediate now, and is looking at the tomorrow, next week/month. If factories are closed and not manufacturing things, the supply stops. That doesn't affect the retail end today, but will in a few weeks/months.

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

#174

Post by tialaramex »

diggan wrote: post #158
tialaramex wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Opt-in" systems have disappointing levels of people who need the benefit but are too proud or scared to claim. Where possible avoid this problem and give the benefit to absolutely everybody. The administration is simpler, it will get to all those who need it, and if you become concerned Bill Gates is getting too much free childcare or whatever, feel free to increase his taxes accordingly.

> "Opt-in" systems have disappointing levels of people who need the benefit but are too proud or scared to claim. Is there any source to this claim when it specifically comes to giving people money for opting in for something? Using some nordic countries as example, many of them help people by giving them money each month in order to survive. These people are not too proud or scared to claim free money when they need…

Specifically for giving cash money? No. But the UK has experience with benefits that are automatic versus have to be claimed and it's noticeable.

As an example elderly people in the UK are entitled to use some types of public transport at no cost so as to ensure they don't end up isolated (of course right now isolating them is a good idea, but ordinarily it's a problem). But the entitlement takes the form of a smartcard with photo ID. So of course you need to do paperwork to get it. The very wealthiest may not bother, if you have a chauffeur who cares about free bus travel? But the poorest don't apply at anywhere close to expected rates, because somebody needs to explain to them that they need to apply, help them take a photograph and upload it, and so on.

Are you sure about Nordic countries just "giving people" money with no strings attached? They have much better social safety nets than the US, which are important for softening things like this - but an improved social safety net is not free money.

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

#175

Post by alecco »

tryptophan wrote: post #88
alecco wrote: post #38

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

I think this is one of these situations in which doing nothing has a higher cost than doing something, even if that something(give people money for free) is generally bad in most circumstances.

The goal is to make the economy to recover quickly. Fail fast, learn the lesson, make things cheap and keep unemployment low. Or do something against centuries of experience and see what happens.

Avoiding short-term pain by trading it for a much worse problem later is what made us so vulnerable to a not-so-deadly virus. Zombie too big to fail banks and corporations and a real estate market out of control. Same happened everywhere, not just US.

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

#176

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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…

It often costs more than the money, to set up a bureaucracy just to decide who gets it.

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

#177

Post by megous »

wmeredith wrote: post #129
etxm wrote: post #112

Honest question, not an economist. How would giving everyone money impact inflation? Is giving money the same thing as “printing money?”

Giving money != printing money. If I give you $20 that doesn't mean I fabricated the bill myself. The money could come from any numbers of places in the vast Federal budget.

The budget already has a huge deficit. They'd have to cut funding to something, in order not to increase it further. Or they could add it to the deficit (which means borrowing the money), and that translates to higher inflation, pretty much, as banks create the borrowed money. Recent lowering of the interest rates by the FED also plays into this.

I think any kind of stimulus will almost certainly translate to higher inflation.

It's not necessarily bad. It's a bit of an equalizer. You give money to everyone, money loses value somewhat, but only the people who have the most money at the moment, will suffer from the inflation in absolute terms (money received vs value of savings lost).

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

#178

Post by andbberger »

ModernMech wrote: post #131
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.

Yes, a lot of times you'll hear $100,000 as a cutoff for aid. I made $100,000 in the Bay Area. It doesn't go as far as people might think.

Maybe if you have family, but that's a comfortable range for an individual.

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

#179

Post by slantyyz »

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?

It's probably just simpler to administer if it's just universal vs having layers of red tape to manage and police it.

You're never going to get 100% of it put back in the economy immediately, but I think a very large percentage of it will.

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

#180

Post by wuunderbar »

piokoch wrote: post #98
tombert wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree; the only caveat I'd give is that it's tough to say how much longer any of us are going to be yuppies right now; I work for one of the many big megacorporations whose stock is tanking right now. If the stock doesn't pick up soonish, there's a non-zero probability of me being laid off. While I'm not that worried (I've been able to find work in bad economies in the past), I also do feel a bit of paranoia…

Why? The price of the stocks does not affect company in any way. If the company sales are going down or clients stop coming this is an issue, stock value is important only for those who hold/speculate using them. You company has already got the money from selling stocks, nobody is going to take them away.

This sounds nice and sound in a textbook, but the real world with humans doesn't follow.
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