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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

#201

Post by sangnoir »

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.

> The price of the stocks does not affect company in any way.

That would be the case in the ideal world. However, stockholders care a lot about stock prices being low, and they elect the board, which in turn chooses/advises the CEO (and other executives). When it's the CEO's butt on the line, the company will be reactive to share prices; just to make sure the stockholders are happy.

A secondary concern is that low share prices makes a company vulnerable to non-/hostile takeover bids - which again is bad for CEO job security.

TL;DR: The tenure of the top echelon (board & executives) of public companies is directly tied to (relative) stock performance due to share voting rights.

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

#202

Post by mtberatwork »

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…

> Because some people live in very high cost of living areas - high income alone is not sufficient.

No system will be perfect, but the government certainly can make adjustments based on dimensions like residence area. (They already do something similar with GS pay scales.) Similar income distribution programs exist in other Western countries (Kinder Geld in Germany comes to mind) so it's not like variations of this have never been successfully implemented before.

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

#203

Post by ghouse »

nvusuvu wrote: post #139

Why can't we collectively say, no Americans have to pay mortgages/rent for x months. No small/medium sized businesses have to pay business loans for x months. Everyone focus on social distancing and making sure everyone has food and shelter. Weather this out, and start back up after peak infections/hospitalizations has been dealt with.

Rent too? What about car payments? Utility bills? Student loans? That's fine, but then the banks go out of business? So, do we bail them out? How much is appropriate? And now we're a central-planned economy...

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

#204

Post by 9uq34aofgh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #166
9uq34aofgh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Your assumption seems we should spend an infinite amount of money keeping everyone alive. While admirable that is not the world we live in. Every day doctors, corporations, and politicians make decisions weighing how much to spend to keep individuals alive.

Your healthcare plan has a max spend. Your life insurance has a max payout. Our police force has a max enforcement capacity for keeping people safe. Etc, etc.

So given we have never been willing to spend infinity to keep everyone alive. What is a reasonable compromise for a given risk scenario?

Covid-19 is 99.9999% survivable for those under 70 with no pre-existing conditions. Should we tank the economy by trillions of dollars for months or years? Should we negatively affect 300 million Americans - their jobs, education, housing, etc - instead of calmly reviewing alternative measures to mass isolation?

The real question is how do we keep the roughly 49 million Americans over 70 safe. Instead of destroying our economy, why not spend millions of dollars to provide programs to help them stay safe. Far more reasonable and inline with the specific threat of covid-19.

Mass isolation feels like using global variables. It's quick and looks reasonable to newbies, but in the end creates worse problems than it solves.

If you have scientific evidence supporting mass isolation for a pandemic like covid-19 please share.

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

#205

Post by isoskeles »

msoad wrote: post #145

Do we have the infrastructure to pay every American some amount of money?

Yes, we’ve done it before, near the end of Bush’s second term. Although I believe that mainly went to adults, it would still work that way.

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

#206

Post by choward »

reaperducer wrote: post #83

I've heard people say this won't change anything, and that rich people will just use it to buy gold-plated toilets while poor people will use it to buy meth waffles. I remember the last time everyone got checks from the government.† The $1,200 I got was enough to keep my family from living under a bridge. There are tens of millions of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, so even if this helps some people, I'm in favor…

It's funny how much people can be influenced by the media and other people without any actual facts. Who cares what rich people do with the money? And not everyone is poor because they are drug addicts. "If we just give everyone money what incentive is their to work?" That's another one of my favorites.

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

#207

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mtberatwork wrote: post #70
ed312 wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

There is a degree to which people who make more need more in cases like this, i.e. if one person makes $80,000 and another makes $40,000 and they both have their hours cut and lose half their income, the one who "makes more" just had their income reduced by a larger amount and is likely to have higher recurring expenses to carry.

On the other hand, the person who had been making more has had more opportunity to save. So it goes both ways, and giving people the same amount of money is a middle ground that also has the advantage of being much administratively simpler.

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

#209

Post by adventured »

tombert wrote: post #40
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…

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…

This is a situation where much of the global economy is going down if this doesn't stop in 60 to 90 days.

The sick leave programs, either public or corporate, will all fail in a short amount of time when strained by 90 or more days of hyper low economic activity. The US and EU can't afford $2 trillion in sick leave programs every 90 days; especially when the future is unknown as to whether that will continue indefinitely (meaning there is weak production to support the huge costs), the entire financial system collapses if that keeps going.

Sometime in the next few months a decision will have to be made, about going forward, going back to normal life, and accepting the deaths that will occur. This will have to be made by essentially all nations in unison, and or the smaller nations will get pulled along into the decision by the larger nations regardless.

First we need to know how common the virus is among the population, in terms of how many people are walking around with few or no symptoms. Some large nations need to be doing massive randomized testing for Covid, to compare positive results versus how many are walking around with it and don't know it. This is data we absolutely must have immediately.

If there are really 10x or 20x the cases and the mortality rate is that much lower accordingly, then we do two things: we go back to work, and we do quarantine and care for the most vulnerable and most ill simultaneously. We ramp up medical supply production further to focus on those people, who will saturate our ICU systems. Everyone else goes back to routine, to keep the global economy functioning. If that all shuts down, far more people will die, and far worse chaos may ensue, including potentially war as tensions rise globally.

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

#210

Post by pwinnski »

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…

Combine a handout with negative interest rates, and you almost guarantee it will all be spent, as it loses value sitting in a savings account.
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