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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

#211

Post by DanBC »

9uq34aofgh wrote: post #204
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Covid-19 is 99.9999% survivable for those under 70 with no pre-existing conditions.

No, your six 9s are wrong. So far, the best quality evidence we have says: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1239693272311828483/...

If you are aged

   10-19 you have a 0.006% chance of death
   20-29 0.03%
   30-39 0.08%
   40-49 0.15%
   50-59 0.60%
   60-69 2.20%
> If you have scientific evidence supporting mass isolation for a pandemic like covid-19 please share.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

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

#212

Post by pythonaut_16 »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #167
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…

Using what you don't need to further help people around you is a really great suggestion!

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

#213

Post by briffle »

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.

Unless you work at a tech unicorn. Remember that uber loses money on every ride, but has grand plans to make it up on volume :)

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

#214

Post by tomatotomato37 »

tombert wrote: post #111
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.

Because if the stock price is tanking, there's an incentive to figure out how to either a) increase profits or b) decrease spending. Since the market is tanking, there's a likelihood that people will be spending less, thus leading to less profits for my company; as a result, the only easy way to keep investors happy is to reduce costs, and the easiest way to do that is to start doing layoffs.

That only applies for long-term recession projections where the company is seen as doing a poor job, not now where stock is down because there's a pandemic shutting everything down and market volatility is going batshit. As long as the company has enough cash on hand to ride the pandemic out they'd want to retain everyone so they can ramp up again as fast as possible

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

#215

Post by kube-system »

baybal2 wrote: post #9
23B1 wrote: post #2

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/suspend-mortgage-p... 3 signatures so far. If the housing market, core to our economy, can be insulated from a crash rebuilding will be significantly easier.

I think housing market in USA seriously needs a healthy correction to make housing available to masses again

There is plenty of housing available, just not west-coast 3000 sqft 4/3 new construction. High housing prices are a localized issue.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12810-Leeila-Ave-Clevelan...

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/302-Purdy-St-Buffalo-NY-1...

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/405-Gimber-Ct-Indianapoli...

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5720-Pepperbush-Dr-Fayett...

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

#216

Post by cliffy »

9uq34aofgh wrote: post #156
cliffy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you're some newly created sock-puppet account too afraid to post under your real handle. COVID-19 will absolutely cause the death of millions in the US alone if proper steps aren't taken to reduce R0. If not from the disease itself, then from hospitals being completely overloaded. Edit: Let's be real: lockdown/isolation is going to have to persist for at least a month or more to have a real chance of preven…

Not a sock-puppet. Where's the evidence isolations will flatten the curve and not just cause another spike of cases after isolation ends? Covid-19 isn't going to die out after a few weeks or months. Deaths are coming from ages 70+ with severe pre-existing conditions during non-peak hospital conditions. This is normal and nothing to panic about. Also, do R0 values of a virus change dramatically? I thought they were se…

"R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population." [0]

If we hold R0 down long enough through change of behavior then we can absolutely flatten the curve.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

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

#217

Post by toast0 »

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…

What happens after isolation ends will depend on a bunch of things.

If testing capacity and health department capacity is available to do contact tracing on new cases, we would see (significantly) reduced spread as unknown carriers could be tracked down.

If the virus has reduced viability in warm weather (as has been suggested) and isolation ends during warmer weather, that will reduce the rate of new infections vs today without isolation.

If many people with undiagnosed cases heal during isolation, they may not transmit to anyone, and they may emerge with some immunity afterwards, reducing spread when isolation ends.

There's certainly a chance none of this works well. There's also a real chance that the (mostly longer term) negative health effects from isolation outweighs the (mostly shorter term) negative health effects from an uncontrolled epidemic.

I think it's pretty unlikely that the peak after isolation will be as high as the peak without isolation, and there's hope that with isolation, the health system won't be overwhelmed with this to the exclusion of other urgent needs. The economy is going to be a big mess with either isolation or an uncontrolled epidemic.

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

#218

Post by sangnoir »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #73
choward wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious, would a UBI be limited to citizens only? I'm guessing not, given the "universal" nature of it That's the conclusion you came to because of the word "universal"? Have you watched fear mongering entertainment news lately? You assume that everyone who happens to be in the country gets money? So this will cause the others to invade our perfect utopia that we can't defend without a magical wall. Do tourists…

Everyone who comes to CA for example, citizen or not, can get a drivers license and access to a variety of social programs and they are protected by the state against federal prosecution. It's a legitimate concern.

> It's a legitimate concern.

We're in the midst of a pandemic and you still think giving undocumented/illegal immigrants access to social programs is a bad idea? Not doing so would seed clusters of infection that will cross over to citizens without asking to see their papers first. I suspect even the most nativist person in the country would agree that ICE arresting people in the ER would be a terrible idea, based on self-preservation alone.

While you may not agree with it, the idea of discouraging people from lurking in the shadows comes from a place of pragmatism, not kumbaya hippiness. Even red states apply this principle to combat opiate addiction.

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

#219

Post by save_ferris »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #20
save_ferris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but if that happens, the economic factors leading to a housing crash (i.e. mass unemployment) will almost certainly also prevent most people who need affordable housing from being able to purchase it.

All else equal, getting rid of superfluous zoning rules that are preventing new construction and thereby lowering prices, wouldn't harm those who close to being able to afford housing today. Relaxing zoning doesn't hurt the economy. If anything, restricted zoning limits the economic growth we need.

That I completely agree with. It just sounded like the parent suggested that a housing crash would somehow make real estate affordable for everyone, which clearly isn't the case, based on what happened in 2008.

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

#220

Post by pwinnski »

isoskeles wrote: post #187
optymizer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Money given to people benefits people. Money given to the military benefits fewer people per dollar spent, and silly percentages of that military money is wasted and lost.

Every dollar you take from SS/Medic* impacts a person. You could cut the military budget by a large chunk before you'd have to actually impact a person.

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