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Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

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Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#41

Post by lubujackson »

nimbius wrote: post #8

Im sure someone on HN has explained this before, but why are the markets steady and rebounding when the actual state of the US economy is so dire?? I've been waiting on that promised $1200 check for 2 days shy of an entire month now, and every day that passes I see another bar or clothing store or furniture outlet with boards up on the windows.

The simplest explanation is that the stock market is a marketplace of buyers and sellers. There was a big selloff in March, then we ran out of people willing to sell. How do you price, say, Google? Or Nike? Or anything? There is too much disagreement on how things should be priced for any shares to change hands until we have more information.

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#42

Post by xkapastel »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #36
iamthirsty wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you know that this too shall pass and things will go back to normal. No, we don't. Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? What will the new "normal" be like when—if—things truly settle down. Surely our world will be forever marked by this event.

> Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? Wait, what? I keep hearing this notion floated around and I'm honestly very confused. Are people under the impression that our lockdowns are going to eradicate this? Or are you using "going away" as a metaphor for "will recede to the background level of death from flu/etc that we have learned to tune out?" It should be stunningly obvious that a highly infectiou…

> It should be stunningly obvious

> it should be equally obvious

Clearly it is not obvious, considering most people have never spent a significant amount of time thinking about how infectious diseases work.

> What's that? Do I hear the "There's no evidence for immunity to covid-19" crowd in the distance? I'm getting a bit tired of that line, but if someone wants me to dismantle that argument (again) I am happy to.

Why make a snarky, coy comment like this? If you have something to say about immunity then just say it. In fact the WHO are among those who make this claim[0], so "dismantle" away.

[0]: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#43

Post by williamstein »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #36
iamthirsty wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you know that this too shall pass and things will go back to normal. No, we don't. Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? What will the new "normal" be like when—if—things truly settle down. Surely our world will be forever marked by this event.

> Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? Wait, what? I keep hearing this notion floated around and I'm honestly very confused. Are people under the impression that our lockdowns are going to eradicate this? Or are you using "going away" as a metaphor for "will recede to the background level of death from flu/etc that we have learned to tune out?" It should be stunningly obvious that a highly infectiou…

Just to support your argument, according to Wikipedia only one human disease has ever been eradicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise... It is thus unlikely that Covid will be eradicated, and much more likely that it will be endemic. My best guess is that when people talk about Covid being "eradicated" they are making a mistake and really mean something like "there is a vaccine"...

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#44

Post by karlshea »

dang wrote: post #24
karlshea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why are the markets steady and rebounding when the actual state of the US economy is so dire? Because everything anyone involved in the markets has ever told you is a complete lie.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

What, exactly, was unsubstantive about that comment? I'm flabbergasted that after what the market has done in the last couple of months, especially given the OP, that anyone is under the impression investors have any idea what they're doing.

Please, everyone tell me some more about it all being "priced in."

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#45

Post by chongli »

lostmsu wrote: post #31
chongli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people live in so-called "food deserts" [1]. That means they don't have access to fresh produce or bulk ingredients like milk, flour, eggs, beans, rice, pasta, or potatoes. Instead, they're stuck with convenience store food which is mostly junk food. If they wanted to buy healthier food they'd have to travel a long way to reach a grocery store, a problem greatly exacerbated for those who do not own a car. It…

They define "food desert" as 10 mile distance. I don't know how many of those 23 mil. don't have any means of transportation, but most probably do, in which cases 10 mile is just 10-20 minutes of driving away.

From the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine):

>In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5 million Americans live in "food deserts", meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas.[6]

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#46

Post by __blockcipher__ »

xkapastel wrote: post #42
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? Wait, what? I keep hearing this notion floated around and I'm honestly very confused. Are people under the impression that our lockdowns are going to eradicate this? Or are you using "going away" as a metaphor for "will recede to the background level of death from flu/etc that we have learned to tune out?" It should be stunningly obvious that a highly infectiou…

> It should be stunningly obvious > it should be equally obvious Clearly it is not obvious, considering most people have never spent a significant amount of time thinking about how infectious diseases work. > What's that? Do I hear the "There's no evidence for immunity to covid-19" crowd in the distance? I'm getting a bit tired of that line, but if someone wants me to dismantle that argument (again) I am happy to. Wh…

"immunity" is a bit of an imprecise term. There's two major components:

(1) The presence of active circulating antibodies, which in sufficient concentrations should result in literal immunity in the sense of inability to catch the virus

Eventually those circulating antibodies will no longer be actively present, but you'll still have

(2) Memory B Cells which lie dormant, waiting for exposure to viral antigens at which point they ramp up antibody production like crazy.

So in the worst case scenario, immunity in the sense of inability to be infected disappears after X months, but any infection would be much milder and would clear much more quickly than normal with lower peak viral load.

Let's talk about "herd immunity" while we're at it since that's been branded as a "dirty word (phrase)". Herd immunity is just the logical consequence of individual immunity as applied to population-level dynamics. So people that don't "believe" in herd immunity are like people that don't believe in evolution, in that both logically follow from the ground truths.

--

Nothing I've said there contradicts the WHO, but it's worth mentioning that at this point it seems inaccurate to say "there is no evidence" rather than to say "there is not overwhelming evidence", and they've sort of given themselves away with this line:

> People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice

So, as always, they carefully shape statements to try to control behavior.

--

Anyway, I'm actually not trying to argue against the WHO here, but rather the hordes of people who trot out the "we don't know if there even is immunity" to try to argue that "herd immunity" is a foolish/dangerous proposition when the truth is that it's how we deal with every non-containable pandemic. That is what I was getting at with my needlessly snarky and coy comment.

BTW, just to be clear, vaccines rely on the same principle. So those who point to the uncertainty as an argument "against" herd immunity (which again to me is like arguing "against evolution" since both herd immunity and evolution are logical consequences of some simple ground truths taken to their logical conclusions), are also arguing against hunkering down for 2.5 years while we develop a vaccine.

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#47

Post by __blockcipher__ »

williamstein wrote: post #43
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? Wait, what? I keep hearing this notion floated around and I'm honestly very confused. Are people under the impression that our lockdowns are going to eradicate this? Or are you using "going away" as a metaphor for "will recede to the background level of death from flu/etc that we have learned to tune out?" It should be stunningly obvious that a highly infectiou…

Just to support your argument, according to Wikipedia only one human disease has ever been eradicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise... It is thus unlikely that Covid will be eradicated, and much more likely that it will be endemic. My best guess is that when people talk about Covid being "eradicated" they are making a mistake and really mean something like "there is a vaccine"...

Yeah, I think that's what many people mean. Although I have actually talked to a terrifyingly high number of people in real life who really do think that the goal of the lockdowns is to eradicate the disease. And it's not surprising given the absolutely unclear and misleading messaging from our public health officials who appear to be more concerned with mass social control than with actual evidence-based public health policy. But now I'm ranting again...

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#48

Post by fzeroracer »

wbronitsky wrote: post #38
roenxi wrote: post #7

I suspect shutting down such broad swathes of the economy is unprecedented even in wartime. Nobody has any idea what we are toying with here or what happens next. It wouldn't be surprising if everything worked out well, and it isn't unthinkable that this ushers in the worst decade of chaos and suffering in the last 200 years. The economy is the most complicated machine we have and nobody knows what it is doing right…

This argument elides the fact that the US government is giving away plenty of money that these people could use on food and rent. They are just giving it to people who don’t need it. While you’re busy arguing that the shutdown is the problem, our government is literally giving the taxpayers’ money to billionaires.

I mean, this is literally the problem. We had a ton of money pumped into the stock market which went directly into the hands of wealthy shareholders and just the other day when someone brought up the idea of doing UBI at minimum, people asked 'but how are we going to pay for it'.

It's only going to get worse too as places reopen and workers are forced to either go back to work and risk their health or lose their unemployment.

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#49

Post by axguscbklp »

slashdev wrote: post #35
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but recall that the Great Depression and the resulting widespread poverty is considered by some historians to be one of the factors leading up WW2.

I would say the suffering, hyper-inflation and widespread poverty imposed on Germany by the allies after World War I was a stronger proximate cause for the rise of the Nazis and the war in Europe. A very depressing illustration of the proverb that you reap what you sow. WWI was a complex jostling for power of the kind that had always happened in Europe, but on a scale and devastation never before seen. If not sparked…

Not sure about that. From what I understand, the German economy was recovering nicely and the Nazis were doing poorly in elections in the late 1920s. Then the Great Depression hit.

Nazi share of the vote in German federal elections from 1924 to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933:

  May 1924 -   6.5%
  Dec 1924 -   3.0%
  May 1928 -   2.6%
  Sep 1930 - 18.25%
  Jul 1932 - 37.27%
  Nov 1932 - 33.09%

Re: Millions of Americans can't afford food, rent and other basics, report finds

#50

Post by [deleted] »

chongli wrote: post #10
lobbyingWins wrote: post #5

Can't afford food? Between food stamps and eating for $1.50/day (source- https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layo... ) I don't think the problem is the cost of food. Rent, sure. Health insurance, sure. Food? Not the major expense, especially with food stamps.

A lot of people live in so-called "food deserts" [1]. That means they don't have access to fresh produce or bulk ingredients like milk, flour, eggs, beans, rice, pasta, or potatoes. Instead, they're stuck with convenience store food which is mostly junk food. If they wanted to buy healthier food they'd have to travel a long way to reach a grocery store, a problem greatly exacerbated for those who do not own a car. It…

[deleted]
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