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Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#81

Post by zrail »

anovikov wrote: post #53

I wonder how anyone at all expected this to turn out. So, businesses had to stop operating. GDP and income earned and spent, dropped. This by definition results in someone becoming poor - with or without bailout - the government does not have any of "its own" money - all money it can possibly distribute is taken from taxpayer's pockets. Call me cynical, but people working in the service industry were the safest ones…

> all money it can possibly distribute is taken from taxpayer's pockets.

This is a facile understanding of how government spending actually works. The US Federal government _creates_ money. Just up and makes it, essentially out of thin air. Congress could have, had they felt like cooperating, printed ten trillion dollars and given every single person in the US a semi-weekly $1000 direct deposit to get everyone through. Keynesian spending is only a problem during inflationary times, but in the middle of a pandemic when tens of millions of people are told they cannot work _is not one of those times_.

Ultimately Congress (i.e. Senate Republicans) decided that 8 million people thrown into poverty and 300,000 needless deaths are better than actually doing anything.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#82

Post by umvi »

t-writescode wrote: post #3
war1025 wrote: post #2

Who would have guessed that kneecapping the service industry would be bad for the service sector?

Most reasonable people that asked for lockdowns also asked for stimulus packages to give those people who couldn't work money while they're out of work so they could survive.

And other reasonable people are concerned with the side effects of printing 3+ trillion dollars

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#83

Post by bearjaws »

neuland wrote: post #62
uoaei wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that would be a reason to stop the lockdowns. Remember that there is a severe respiratory contagion going around that spreads from breathing the same air as infected folks.

Florida, Texas, and Sweden seem to be doing fine enough.

Tell that to the ICU nurses and doctors in Florida who have to code several people a day due to Covid...

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#84

Post by uoaei »

ketzo wrote: post #76
anovikov wrote: post #53

I wonder how anyone at all expected this to turn out. So, businesses had to stop operating. GDP and income earned and spent, dropped. This by definition results in someone becoming poor - with or without bailout - the government does not have any of "its own" money - all money it can possibly distribute is taken from taxpayer's pockets. Call me cynical, but people working in the service industry were the safest ones…

> all money it can possibly distribute is taken from taxpayer's pockets. This is the insanely reductive view of government spending that allows the Republican party to float austerity measures in the worst economic times since the Depression. Taxes are not the only place that government money comes from. How would that even make sense? What do you think the Federal Reserve even does ? Why do you think we have a natio…

Taxes are not the place where government money comes from, period. Taxes are charges to pull money out of circulation so inflation doesn't fall into a positive feedback loop. Taxes have nothing to do with the amount of money that the government can spend at one time. The only thing limiting that is the threat of a sharp devaluation of the currency, and even that is not as big an issue as you might think because countries all over the world are still filling their reserves with dollars.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#85

Post by thebean11 »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #56
TheBlight wrote: post #42

I sure do hate it when I slip and fall into poverty as if it were some silly accident of my own making and not entirely caused by the actions of state and local governments.

You are that saying herd immunity would be the only option?

It's not like that's the only solution that's been floated. Stimulus checks would have kept people out of poverty too.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#86

Post by mrzimmerman »

anovikov wrote: post #53

I wonder how anyone at all expected this to turn out. So, businesses had to stop operating. GDP and income earned and spent, dropped. This by definition results in someone becoming poor - with or without bailout - the government does not have any of "its own" money - all money it can possibly distribute is taken from taxpayer's pockets. Call me cynical, but people working in the service industry were the safest ones…

It's been commented already, but I have to say you have, not a simplistic way of viewing how the federal government handles spending and money, but a completely wrong view of it.

It's appalling this comment hasn't been downvoted into oblivion with how wrong and uninformed it is. I think you should start reading here and consider an economics textbook to follow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy_of_the_United_...

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

neuland wrote: post #12
t-writescode wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most reasonable people that asked for lockdowns also asked for stimulus packages to give those people who couldn't work money while they're out of work so they could survive.

And yet they didn't stop the lockdowns once it was clear the stimulus was not going to happen.

The lockdowns were more essential than the stimulus payments, though no sane government would fail to do both in the circumstances.

(Our government failed on both the lockdowns, which were scattered, too late in many places, and too poorly enforced in most places, and stimulus, but then our government, at many levels, has not been sane.)

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#88

Post by purple_ferret »

coderintherye wrote: post #44
purple_ferret wrote: post #29

Yet the rich get richer as Congress passes 'relief' plans that allow the wealthy to sneak massive chunks of cash directly into their pockets. Here's just one example: "According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), about 85% of all the approved Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were for less than $150,000...The bipartisan bill holds the intention of automatically forgiving loans of less th…

You combined a source with a follow-up statement that appears nowhere in that article and is factually incorrect. I don't know where you came up with your made up number of $22,000, but this isn't some big conspiracy, what is forgivable is directly viewable in the SBA's PPP Loan Forgiveness Application: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2020-11/PPP%20Loan%2...

The 22,000 number is off of the original caps per employee. 2.5 months of salary capped at $100,000 = 21,000. I misremembered the number.

As for forgiveness, the forgiveness is part of the latest, yet to be passed, bill. My point is that PPP loans were sold as something, and are now being revised to be not that all, for the benefit of employers and not employees.

>While until the SBA issues revisions to that IFR the final answer can’t be known for sure, one likely option is that the SBA limits owner-employees to 2.5/12 of their 2019 employee cash compensation and employer retirement and health care contributions made on their behalf, with a likely cap at $20,833 across all businesses.

https://www.currentfederaltaxdevelopments.com/blog/2020/6/16...

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#90

Post by kthxbye123 »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #6
war1025 wrote: post #2

Who would have guessed that kneecapping the service industry would be bad for the service sector?

The blame for the situation lies squarely at the feet of the federal government. If you are going to shutter businesses and put people out of work, you need to pay the business owners and the employees who you have affected. Staying economically viable vs staying medically viable should have never been a tradeoff people had to make here, and Americans should all remember that when the next election rolls around.

The whole game for the social sociopaths is to pretend that the federal government had no obligation to provide for people's livelihoods during lockdown - which they absolutely did, obviously. This was wholly intentional, to sabotage health-and-safety conscious Democratic local governments, and force them into the Sophie's choice of mass unemployment or mass death among their constituents (local GOP leaders, for the most part, of course didn't actually care about mass death OR mass employment, since their constituency is the handful of billionaires who fund the whole party and right-wing ideological apparatus; so they were able to further sabotage the health-and-safety efforts by simply refusing to implement any).

The state and local governments that shutdown did the right thing - they put the health and safety of their populations first. The federal government failed them by defaulting on its obligations. It did this intentionally.

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