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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

wsj.com

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Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#81

Post by scottLobster »

sundaeofshock wrote: post #59
rubber_duck wrote: post #35

And this is just the start. While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts. In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the…

Seriously? There were a number of submissions yesterday to HN discussing the relative merits of sacrificing millions for the sake of the market. Perhaps you missed those?

Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic.

But nah, the "market" apparently entirely consists of assholes on Wall Street playing Capitalism II and lobbying governments for payouts. No way it has any real impact!

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#82

Post by alharith »

duxup wrote: post #64
wil421 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The financial crisis didn’t prevent most people from spending money on entertainment or eating out. People scaled back spending or went to cheaper places. People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business…

>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.

My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths.

Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza restaurant. I find fast casual restaurants doing just fine in my area. It's traditional sit downs that are struggling.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#83

Post by sct202 »

stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

I definitely know more people laid off this week than last week. No one was really sure how much business they could sustain with this whole thing going on, and now that there's been a full week and a partial week employers are starting to pull the plug.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#84

Post by sneeze-slayer »

shripadk wrote: post #45
PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

> And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again. Doesn't UBI directly result in inflation and cause currency devaluation? If the money that you hold loses its value (because everyone has at the very least the same amount of money as a basic, consistent income) then it is worth nothing in the end. It is as good as having no money in my humble opinion. Money has to be valuable…

Here is a pretty good article that assumes that you have zero knowledge and talks about how UBI could be implemented without any more inflation than we already have.

https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#85

Post by ian0 »

How is our social system so fragile?

I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#88

Post by luma »

stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task.

My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in.

These numbers are going to get much, much worse.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#89

Post by wmeredith »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

> and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead

Good luck. Their base doesn't care. I was speaking with my father a couple days ago, who is a US Board-Certified surgeon and ran his own practice for 40 years. He's a smart guy, but firmly lives in the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh bubble. He was saying how he was hoping this crisis would put the final nail in the coffin ... for the corrupt democrats. It's insanity.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#90

Post by nahname »

dubcanada wrote: post #7

Canada is at 1 million or about 5% of our population. And it's only going to go up from here. I have no idea how they are doing to handle any of this, having that percentage of your population on EI is going to hurt.

Have heard similar estimates, found an article corroborating this.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemploymen...

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