i'm gainfully employed and I would surely spend it
Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
181–190 of 266 posts
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#182Earlier 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.
“ The price of the stocks does not affect company in any way” RSU value is lower for employees, harder to retain talent, more incentive to fire and cut costs to keep shareholders happy.
> harder to retain talent, more incentive to fire
I struggle to understand how those two things can happen at the same time, to the same company, due to the same cause. I mean, if it's harder to retain talent, presumably this means some people leave the company, leaving the company more dependent on those who stay. Why would they fire them?
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is impossible to know from demographic information alone exactly how people will spend a windfall. If we're doing helicopter money, we should do it for everyone equally. Maybe instead of food I buy a bunch of video games or beer or some other good. Still keeping the economic engine running.
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.
At this point, you would have to use 2018 tax year info. 2019 tax filings aren't due for another month, and I think most people file in the week before the deadline.
There's a lot that can happen to income levels in that time period.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#184As 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…
> As long as the money is given to folks who need and/or will spend it
only if admin cost to determine if a person needs it is low enough.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#185Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#186As 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…
There are a lot of businesses out there that are non-essential services, that will be hit hard by this. Someone still has to shop at the local bookstore when this is over, because those people – even with direct stimulus – will be struggling to stay afloat. If we want to start the economic flywheel spinning again, it's gonna take stimulus at pretty much all levels.
Most working class people will spend that money directly on essential goods and services. But for the health of the overall economy, it's important that enough people will have enough that they feel confident they can start going out again and supporting all sorts of shops.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most important aspect of the claim about spending money is the broken window fallacy. Henry Hazlitt wrote a great book on the subject called Economics in One lesson. The simple example is that we can't go around breaking windows to stimulate the economy. Sure, the window manufacturer and the window replacement companies might benefit, however that money which went towards the window could have gone elsewhere. Eng…
"money has to come from somewhere" is not a bad thing. Not all the money is reasonably allocated with equivalent side-effects. For example, it could come from the $748 billion dollars that are allocated for the military budget, which would take away $327 billion and still leave the US as the country spending the most money on the military. Maybe that means we stop wars that break windows in other countries for a year…
We spend more on Social Security and Medicare+Medicaid. Not that we want to use the money from either over Defense, but the notion that we spend more on the military is a myth.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#188Hmm. A lot of businesses will get into big trouble over the coming weeks and potentially months. Bars, event organizers, even shopping malls. They're all going to go down to almost zero profit for a while. The problem is if you just give people money right now, they literally can't spend it on those things because they are or will be closed during that time. Money isn't the reason they're not going, Corona is. The mo…
> Maybe right now the focus should be on not making people homeless
I think this is the primary motivator for providing money to all Americans. Many people on HN who are salaried and able to work from home might not be worried about making rent but many people who work hourly jobs aren't getting a paycheck this week.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#189Earlier 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?
If I'm a person who doesn't actually need this to pay my rent, then I'm just going to use the rent voucher and take the cash I was going to use to pay my rent and stash that instead.
Re: Giving Americans Money to Offset Coronavirus Impact Gains Support in Congress
#190As 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…
The government pulled more money than this out of thin air to throw at the stock market just the other day, only to watch it vanish just as quickly. Money is a fiction that we have invented to grease the wheels of commerce.
Why bother creating a bunch of rules that people have to apply in the middle of a crisis? You are living human who has not received this month's stimulus yet, great, here you go, good luck and blessings upon your health. Bureaucracies take time to spin up, more complex rules take longer to apply, and there are a huge number of people whose jobs are destroyed by "don't go outside until the virus dies off".
If you are way too rich for a thousand bucks to mean anything, then give it to someone who needs it more. Maybe a super-broke friend, maybe just withdraw a few hundreds and hand them out to homeless folks, whatever.