531–540 of 591 posts
Related to the restaurant industry, Yelp is laying people off due to the corona virus. My contract with the Yelp has been withdrawn. This "corona panic" will kill more people than the virus itself.
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UBI is honestly the only solution here.
I think targeted redistribution will work better. If you want to protect the economy, take the people with excess wealth — providing no utility right now — and give some of their wealth to those who cannot earn income during this crisis. It avoids the inflationary effects of printing money. You could accomplish this by raising taxes on the wealthy and sending the revenues directly to those who will lose their livelih…
Most "excess wealth" is tied up in business and other investments. It's not like wealthy people just horde cash like Scrooge McDuck. That wealth is currently working to support the economy. It is hardly passive.
Forcing the wealthy to pay increased tax on this value will cause them to close business functions, sell stocks, etc.
Is that really wise at this point in time? To redistribute value from existing, proven formats into unspecific, theoretically useful ones?
Theft is not immoral simply because it is unfair or mean. It's because it causes systemic dysfunction.
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SBA just announced a program for loans up to $2M at 3.75% to make payroll
Loans don't solve this. It isn't like once this is over restaurant patronage will jump up to 200% of normal. This is business these companies will never get back. Giving them a loan that they can't repay is just delaying the problem.
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Yes, better from a personal standpoint, but jeez, from a humanitarian perspective, can you really blame any restaurant owner from wanting to make payroll at any cost so that their employees can continue to feed themselves, pay rent, and take care of their loved ones?
My point is why are we putting them in this position? How about a GRANT instead of a loan? The restaurant is TOAST when the loan starts being due as they try to reopen in the middle of recession after a forced closing and they'll all be out of work trying to feed themselves, pay rent and take care of their loved ones.
You mean free money, just because? How could you even begin to figure out who deserves it? That'd be a lot of offices and bureaucracy to set up to solve the question. Unless you just want to give wads of cash to any restaurant claiming to need help, in which case I'm glad you're not leading the economy.
Wow, 50-70% drop in online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-in diners, compared to last year, in every country measured by OpenTable. The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals.[a] Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous. [a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-res…
Or it's just a correction; especially in the US, the eating out culture is ridiculous, and the staff are massively underpaid and taken advantage of (zero-hour contracts, low wages, dependence on tips which in practice means they're expected to do a lot of additional emotional labor, flirting, etc). This money is not lost from the economy; people still have to eat after all.
I understood that in the US, waiters make fairly good money because of tipping, no? Which isn't the case of other workers though.
Wow, 50-70% drop in online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-in diners, compared to last year, in every country measured by OpenTable. The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals.[a] Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous. [a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-res…
Or it's just a correction; especially in the US, the eating out culture is ridiculous, and the staff are massively underpaid and taken advantage of (zero-hour contracts, low wages, dependence on tips which in practice means they're expected to do a lot of additional emotional labor, flirting, etc). This money is not lost from the economy; people still have to eat after all.
You do know about this thing called service sector that accounts for more than half of the economy ?
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People in Hubei are closing in on 3 months of lockdown. Other provinces not far behind. Are Americans really that uncivilised they cannot bear the thought of several months locked down in the comfort of their own homes?
There is so much doomsday nonsense like your post I don’t know where to start. People have lost their god damn minds on the internet. Go outside and go on a walk. If you don’t understand why a 3 month country wide lockdown would be orders of magnitude more dangerous than this virus, you need to snap yourself out of the trance you are in. People have lost their minds around here.
I cannot go outside for a walk. We are on state of alarm and the army is on the streets controlling that no one goes out to stop a pandemic that is killing many people and will kill many more.
Does that data indicate that seated reservations are only presently down 56% YOY in the US ? That's pretty discouraging if that many people are still ignoring standard guidance.
Can someone give money to OpenTable to support restaurant in difficult time? I wanted to help a couple of local business but there’s nothing on-line: Google Maps says that they are open (and my city in in lock-down).
If OT wanted to be charitable, they could lower their service fee, but nobody’s making any reservations right now anyway.
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You seem like you're panicking. If you need evidence for the necessity, go read literally anything about what Italy is facing. China locked down cities with 0 infections pretty completely for ~4 weeks, and they still have isolation measures going. I believe the heavily hit cities are still totally locked down. This is what it took to get numbers under control once it had spread, and because of the US' late reaction,…
America is not even close to Italy. Not demographically, not density, not medically. Nothing is the same between us. And it isn't "Italy" it is a region in Italy with the problem. Same with china. China isn't locking down "China". Just a small part of it. You cannot take those two datapoints and apply them to the rest of the world. Not even close. And I'm not panicking, I'm just tired of people running around doomsay…
You say: "lock-down 2 weeks tops", when the incubation period is known to be around that or even more, and we have clearly seen that a 2 weeks period does not have any appreciable effect. You say the situation is different than in Italy, even when the number of people in ICUs and deaths is growing exactly in the same way in every other part of the world, with the only exception of countries who took measures earlier. You say it won't be so bad when you admit it will kill a 1% of the infected and all studies talk about at least ~50% of the population catching it at some point. You are not being rational.
I am also tired of the doomsaying but I have not seen any serious study that is minimally optimistic, and I've seen many pessimistic ones.