Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides] • Hacker News Board

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#81

Post by hogFeast » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

Yep, I am not totally sure what you do about it (stuff like testing people at work is going to be tricky legally) but I came to this conclusion the other day too.

The issue really isn't the virus but the fact that people who end up spreading it, don't know they have it. Shutting down the economy is a backwards way of solving this...it is assuming that everyone has it.

I am not sure how exactly we get to that point and you are kind of hoping that people who have it isolate...but testing really should be priority. My govt is ramping up but the numbers they are talking about are still ludicrously small...total tested is 0.1% of population, and they are saying it is a resource issue (whilst they are spending literally hundreds of billions on stuff that is being caused by their testing strategy).

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#82

Post by ramraj07 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #49

codingslave wrote: post #7

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

1) Hedge funds didn’t crash the market. There’s just no evidence for that. The market crashed because there’s enormous uncertainty and people would rather be liquid while they wait to see what happens vs losing a huge percentage of their wealth. 2) Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders. Yes, they should have some retained earnings as a rainy day fund, but some of these companies are losing 75-100%…

Wasn't buybacks banned for a longtime in the century? Perhaps you consider this to be socialism and that's why it was unbanned, but given the perverse incentives politicians seemed to have had for the past few decades, I don't see an unbiased argument why it was in the interest of the public to unban stock buyback.

Clearly the past year has proven why it should have stayed banned.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#83

Post by hanniabu » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #16

lettergram wrote: post #2

One thing that really horrified me was how quickly people threw away the economy. Unfortunately, this virus is highly contagious (to the point that the vast majority of countries won’t contain it) and fairly lethal. We don’t actually know how lethal, but it appears 1%-3%, but without widespread testing we wouldn’t know. At the moment, we just reduced our GDP by 30%-50% in regions under quarantine. Think about that fo…

So let's cancel any sort of response, as you propose. What do the next two weeks, two months, etc. look like? I think it's the human condition to least try, but I can entertain the reality that some Americans just aren't for social distancing and of that segment, some will become superspreaders.

They should be charged and prosecuted for putting others in danger.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#84

Post by maxaf » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

Are you writing a “Black Mirror” episode?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#85

Post by senordevnyc » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

Worth discussing, but it would take months to deploy the level of testing required. You’d need to test a significant fraction of the entire US population every day. Say 30%, which is probably too low. So we need 100 million tests per day? That’s many months away, as is the miraculous (and privacy issue laden) database you’re talking about. By then, this will all be over and millions dead if we just let it run unchecked. We’re buying time to be able to actually implement something like that. It can’t happen in a matter of days or weeks.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#86

Post by zouhair » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

> It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

Why not? This is a matter of survival. If the economic system breaks because of one pandemic that will last less than a year maybe that economic system needs to die and be replaced by something more solid and useful for most.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#87

Post by maxden » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #41

lettergram wrote: post #2

One thing that really horrified me was how quickly people threw away the economy. Unfortunately, this virus is highly contagious (to the point that the vast majority of countries won’t contain it) and fairly lethal. We don’t actually know how lethal, but it appears 1%-3%, but without widespread testing we wouldn’t know. At the moment, we just reduced our GDP by 30%-50% in regions under quarantine. Think about that fo…

I wouldn't say it's lethal, at least not for everyone. The last report from Italy has stats on 2000 deaths. No deaths under age of 30 and only a few under 50, all with pre-existing health conditions. Women's median age close to 84. Men's 80. And vast majority of deaths are people with multiple pre-existing health conditions.

It could be because the application of medical care is skewed towards the young, such that they survive and those older or with less chance of surviving die. If you can reduce the demand on hospital services, then you might have enough resources to treat those high mortality cases, and under those circumstances they may survive.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#88

Post by mywittyname » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #61

codingslave wrote: post #7

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

Should companies not return profits to their shareholders? CEO's should be in jail for doing so? Be serious.

I'm not sure how you got to this post after reading the OP.

Company leadership should focus on returning capital when appropriate. They should not be repurchasing shares at obviously inflated prices as a last-ditch effort to further raise share prices so they can cash out their bonuses. They should be using that money to improve the business.

Basically, leadership needs to think about long-term health, instead of making poor business decisions to improve executive bonuses.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#89

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #7

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

[deleted]

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#90

Post by hyperion2010 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #68

testfoobar wrote: post #38

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

> The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. I disagree, and strongly. This would be a knee-jerk, hyberbolic, and woefully ineffective over-response. Typical for the times. The only thing this might achieve is creating an even greater climate of fear and loathing. There will be false positives. And false negatives. There are with every medical test. Back-of-the-envelop…

Your logic is off. In the absence of data there is more fear because you have no idea who might possibly be sick. Once you start testing you can bring epidemiological tools online and alert people to possible exposures. If you don't do that the only sure thing is to quarantine everyone because you have no data, that will tank the economy for sure.