Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#121

Post by ksdale » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #113

ksdale wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that’s how it is meant to work, but I think small businesses are, on average, a lot closer to insolvency than people think. This is like offering low interest loans to... anyone to get through the crisis. It’s definitely better than nothing, but it doesn’t replace income, it just shifts it around (as you mentioned), which doesn’t help very much when you’re so close to insolvency. They’ll come out the oth…

> make business “survival” kind of pointless they continue to survive and make the payments. Yes, profits will tank, but eventually they will pick back up. It's not like there's a better alternative. It's better than shutting doors - you may not be able to pick back up when this all blows over.

Just as a hypothetical to illustrate my point, it's really common for small business owners in low margin businesses (like retail and restaurants) to have take-home pay of about $50,000 on $1,000,000 of revenue, which means they have $950,000 of expenses in a year. Even if they don't have to pay for certain parts of their business when they're shut down, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt would they need to take on to keep the business in existence for the next few months?

How many hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt can $50,000 of net income service, even at .5% interest? Those dollars for debt service come straight out of the dollars for living expenses.

It may be better than nothing, but it may also not be. Trying to start over from scratch may be better than trying to start back up with basically any kind of additional debt.

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#122

Post by conanbatt » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #115

conanbatt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

APY rates are 0.3% yearly. Not precisely raking it in..

I consider making three billion dollars in a year raking it in.

You need a trillion dollars to make 3 billion dollars a year with that strategy. Like you could buy Amazon, and have a 100 billion spare still.

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#123

Post by rapind » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #119

rapind wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not terribly interested in this thread, but for the record %0 interest loans when they're big (billions of dollars) are effectively the same as handing out free money. A bank would need to be ridiculously incompetent not to turn those loans into significant profits (and hey, give out executive bonuses too!).

Which 0% bailouts are you referring to that gave billions to a single company? Sounds a bit like a straw man to me.

Well you brought it up, so which bailout are you referring to when you said "Corporate “bailouts” are just loans." that isn't referring to billion(s) dollar loans?

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#124

Post by boomboomsubban » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #122

boomboomsubban wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider making three billion dollars in a year raking it in.

You need a trillion dollars to make 3 billion dollars a year with that strategy. Like you could buy Amazon, and have a 100 billion spare still.

The topic was about investing a trillion dollars, in which case even the worst growth rate common would make you filthy rich.

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#125

Post by ma2rten » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

ttul wrote: post #81

ma2rten wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain that?

Prices increase when there is more demand for things than there is supply. If the economy collapses by 10%, then it’s likely that people will be offering deals on products to stimulate demand. That means prices going down, not up.

Okay, but as companies shut down, supply chains are disrupted and employers implement measures to enact social distancing, why wouldn't supply also go down?

Does the GPD going down necessarily mean that there is less demand and not less supply?

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#126

Post by ookblah » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #93

ookblah wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL minus the diamond princess or the obvious one from like the woman from Iran? people were falling thru the cracks like candy, i happen to know 1 or 2 people that were confused they weren't even screened at the border. i suggest you do more than just take any announcement from the WH at face value, especially when there are numerous sources saying otherwise.

Links? The people returned from diamond princess were subject to a 14 day quarantine at army bases? https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0215-Diamond-Prince... But, yes america has an obligation to repatriate american citizens, and subjecting them to quarantine is the right thing to do. I have no doubt people were falling through cracks though. America has an incredibly open border with lax enforcement, mainly du…

i'm saying the diamond princess people were probably the few that were properly quarantined given the news coverage. the flight entry points during that time didn't even bother, just asked a few questions on where you were coming from.

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#127

Post by conanbatt » Sun, Mar 22, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #124

conanbatt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a trillion dollars to make 3 billion dollars a year with that strategy. Like you could buy Amazon, and have a 100 billion spare still.

The topic was about investing a trillion dollars, in which case even the worst growth rate common would make you filthy rich.

It's just not true. Even investing in treasury bonds today has risk of loss.

There is no such think as risk-free investments. It can be risk-favored, for sure. And it is definitely a benefit to the receiver. But its not a "guaranteed killing".

Re: Senate passes bill to provide benefits to individuals and small businesses

#128

Post by boomboomsubban » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 12:19 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #127

boomboomsubban wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic was about investing a trillion dollars, in which case even the worst growth rate common would make you filthy rich.

It's just not true. Even investing in treasury bonds today has risk of loss. There is no such think as risk-free investments. It can be risk-favored, for sure. And it is definitely a benefit to the receiver. But its not a "guaranteed killing".

This conversation is about a hypothetical where we have a trillion dollar loan with no interest. In that situation, taking on the lowest risk for the lowest return, or "bank checking account" would still make you rich. You wouldn't need an amazing knowledge of investments.

In actuality, trying to invest that much independently would probably damage the economy, and it's difficult to have any clue what would happen.