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

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are going to be destitute if nobody is producing goods and services. Money is worthless if there's nothing to buy.

I think one thing that this pandemic is teaching us is that most people's jobs do jack shit to maintain the basic needs of society, and the ones with important jobs are often paid the least.

> the ones with important jobs are often paid the least.

that's the wrong way to think about it, and also a misunderstanding of economics.

If a teacher is paid the way a CEO is paid, there won't be enough money for very many teachers. You'd find it hard to afford a teacher for your kids, let alone free education.

A doctor, back in the middle ages, is only affordable to the nobility. These days, doctors are still quite highly paid (too high imho), and that is one reason why medical services are expensive.

Imagine if you associate the "importance" of a resource with its price. Water would cost more than diamonds and gold! Water is needed for sustaining life - you die without it. Therefore, in theory, it's so important that you end up paying infinity amount of money to have it, under your system!

The fact that we have water so cheap (literally 0.000001 cent per cup), is a good outcome. Everybody can afford water.

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

#282

I’m honestly looking forward to a new economy served by large corporations. Large companies are more consistent in their user experience across multiple locations, and are better buyers of tech. They are always looking for new ways to automate their operations and frequently turn to tech companies to solve their problems at scale. So in a way, it’s good for the valley if more of the economy becomes more corporate.

Right, great consistency in customer experience from companies like Comcast, Google, United Airlines, Bank of America, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.

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

#283

Here are the issues from my paper napkin analysis: * large businesses not being able to pay for maintenance of tools. * small businesses not being able to pay employees, rent, services, etc. * people not being able to pay for rent and food. What are possible solutions for a long-term lockdown? * for large businesses: bail out. * for small businesses: rent should be free. * for people: rent should be free, food should…

> rent should be free

What about property maintenance?

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

#285
post #144
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the options are have a lockdown vs have a functioning economy and a bunch of sick people. Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway. If hospitals can get the supplies they need, and testing and health department capacity is there to do contact tracing, the lockdowns can loosen, and our economy can start back up. Bonus points if the warmer weather i…

>Once hospitals start overflowing with this, you're not going to have a functioning economy anyway. Is this true though? I'm not trying to be insensitive, but according to reports, ~15% of the infected need hospitalization, and the distribution of those people are mostly over 60[0]. Is having these people hospitalized on a large scale more detrimental to the economy than shutting everything down? Serious question. 0.…

Yes, it would. King County WA (where I live) has around 2 million people. Assuming half of that get infected and 15% require hospitalization. That's 150k people flooding the hospitals. That is way WAY above what the hospitals can handle. And I'm not only talking about beds and ventilators. Think about road accidents or coronaries which happen at a known steady pace when it's business as usual. These cases require ambulances and quick response times which cannot be met anymore because the system is overloaded with covid-19 patients. What do you do? Turn the 60+ patients away?

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

#286

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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%…

> Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders. It is an insidious and morally bankrupt myth that this is the only purpose of a company.

I don't know how you do your financial planning, but when I invest my money, I expect to see a return. I expect most folks do. Everything else falls out of that.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Out of curiosity, why do you think it's likely that something more solid and useful to most is likely to come out of an economic collapse? Economic collapses have happened before - are there any instances of a solid and useful syst…

French Revolution? Arguably the Russian Revolution if you accept the USSR as a step up from feudalism.

> French Revolution?

Didn't even last a decade until they got themselves an emperor.

> Arguably the Russian Revolution if you accept the USSR as a step up from feudalism.

Considering that the USSR killed orders of magnitude more of its own people than feudalism under the Czars ever did, I'm going to vote "no" on this one.

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

#288
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They reached maxed capacity of beds or ventilators right? They just started to reach max capacity, and not in every region, every hospital at the same time...

Fair enough, I should have said, ”In some areas” . A little snippet from the CDC I have posted a bunch that I found useful - ”Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in…

> Why not target the cities entering acceleration only?

Because the long incubation period and the lack of sufficient testing makes it impossible to know which cities are infected early on.

And, to put more bluntly, because we have two models to look at and choose from: the Chinese one, with harsh containment measures that were very effective (if you believe their numbers) and the Italian one, with moderate containment measures and a lack of sense of urgency from the populace, which resulted in a downward spiral with more deaths than China despite having only ~58% the number of cases.

> I should have said, ”In some areas”.

And no, you shouldn't have said that, you should just wait another week.

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Yorker here. From what I see through my window, my fellow New Yorkers still don’t “get it”. I see clusters of people hanging out and families going for leisurely walks. If this keeps up the number of infections - and deaths - will only increase. Last week my brother suggested instead of working from home I work from a Starbucks. I feel like people don’t understand how serious this is and it’s really bothering me.

There's nothing wrong with people that are living together going for a walk together, it won't particularly increase their exposure. People should cooperate and keep distance, but it's not a big deal to just be outside a reasonable distance from small numbers of other people.

> There's nothing wrong with people that are living together going for a walk together, it won't particularly increase their exposure.

And it might help to keep them from going stir crazy from being cooped up inside too long...

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

#290
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left That's quite the overreaction. Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man). 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... To put it an…

It's not just old people though. Infants. Immunocompromised individuals. People with asthma. People undergoing chemotherapy. The narrative that this disease only affects the economically unproductive is dangerous at best, and inhumane at worst.

Honestly, what do you think is going to happen to these people if the economy totally shuts down? it's going to be easy to have a chronic & serious health condition? The same?

My feeling is that I'd rather be chronically sick in a good economy than in a depression. What happens when medicine becomes unavailable due to supply chains being cut off?

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