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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

#131

Post by AlexandrB »

umvi wrote: post #73
ceilingcorner wrote: post #68

Meanwhile, some of the strongest voices calling for near-permanent lockdowns came from the well-paid professional classes, who could afford to order Uber Eats twice a day and had zero chance of losing their over-inflated incomes. The continuing erosion of the middle class isn’t a good thing. Expect populist political rhetoric to continue growing.

It's what happens when you fixate on optimizing for only one variable (in this case total covid deaths or perhaps hospital ICU capacity). All other variables must be sacrificed to optimize the one variable, even if it means pushing millions into poverty, destroying industries, educationally handicapping multiple generations of students, etc.

If that one variable was actually optimized for in a prompt manner, COVID would already be over in the US. It’s the half-assed waffling that’s causing this to drag on for the better part of a year now.

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

#132

Post by t-writescode »

umvi wrote: post #121
t-writescode wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very frustrating thing with this statement is that it's very arguable that financing the survival of this country's citizens during a lockdown is _exactly_ the sort of thing the government should be doing, as well as minimizing the duration of the lockdown. It enables the status quo to return quickly and minimizes the change to the social fabric. Those are things I would have imagined conservatives would want: stab…

As I understand it, we have no saved money, we are just going deeper into debt. In 2020 alone we took on at least 4T of debt when in past years we only take on ~1T debt per year. And all we have to show for 2T was a "woefully inadequate" $1000 check. In order to pay everyone's rent for a year, we would need at least 12x as much, in other words a cool 24 Trillion which would more than double the entire debt the US cur…

In a very real sense, what more have the "lockdowns" in the US been than "masks and social distancing"?

In places where "social distancing" minimums have been impossible, the places have closed.

I'm in one of the most strict places in the entire United States, but I can still go to most every store I want, including hair salons. I'm only barred from places where there's a LOT of breathing (gym, church with singing), tight confines where social distancing can't be done (bars, restaurants) or staying in a singular location for a long time (church, clubs, sporting events).

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

#133

Post by ceilingcorner »

jeromegv wrote: post #106
ceilingcorner wrote: post #68

Meanwhile, some of the strongest voices calling for near-permanent lockdowns came from the well-paid professional classes, who could afford to order Uber Eats twice a day and had zero chance of losing their over-inflated incomes. The continuing erosion of the middle class isn’t a good thing. Expect populist political rhetoric to continue growing.

Whatever the US did was not near permanent lockdowns, what is allowed to continue and be opened is more lenient than almost every country. The only countries with less restrictions than the US are opened exactly because they did a lockdown and kept the virus at bay. What kills the US economy is the virus being out there and making people afraid to get together into public settings.

I really don’t think many people are afraid to go into public settings. Maybe not into a crowd, sure, but a restaurant? The holdup there is from the government, not the public.

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

#134

Post by uoaei »

rayiner wrote: post #130
uoaei wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every dollar bill is an IOU from the federal government. It says so right on the paper bill: "This note is legal tender." Money only means something if people believe it means something. I can make up a new currency but if no one believes it has value, then it does not. Any and every economist you find will tell you the same. With this sort of flexibility you are forced to abandon the zero-sum style of monetary polic…

Explain why the EU (and countries like Germany) impose tight limits on budget deficits.

Sure! First you will have to support your claim that they do so.

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

#135

Post by lumost »

nradov wrote: post #45
OminousWeapons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the governors and mayors always had to weigh the economic damage they were doing to people whenever they made a shutdown decision, which resulted in erratic, complicated, and somewhat nonsensical shutdown orders. If the federal government had backstopped the economy properly and compensated any business or person directly affected by a shutdown, then the governors / mayors would have been able to tak…

Most governors and mayors didn't perform a rigorous cost benefit analysis before making shutdown decisions. Many of the lockdown orders were arbitrary and capricious, full of exemptions for politically favored groups. These were largely faith based policies without proper scientific backing from an evidence-based medicine perspective. Free money from the federal government wouldn't have improved that situation. If st…

When we’re talking about 30% of national GDP and millions of lives, then turning it into a state v state issue doesn’t sound like a recipe for long term stability.

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

#136

Post by t-writescode »

henrikschroder wrote: post #127
bearjaws wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Heart disease and cancer combined kill four times as many people every year, than what covid-19 has done this year. About 10% of all the people who died in the US this year will have died from covid-19. Why are those 10% of deaths so much more terrible, so unimaginably horrible, that we're focusing exclusively on those, and completely ignoring the remaining 90% of deaths?

Because it's an infectious disease spread through droplets in the air; because it's abnormal and therefore new and scary; and because it's more deadly than our other regular disease, the seasonal flu.

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

#137

Post by nobody9999 »

umvi wrote: post #96
matthewmacleod wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who were you planning to staff all of your temporary hospitals with?

So you are saying our hospital beds and staff are fixed immutable resources and that in an emergency all other variables must be sacrificed in order to not exceed those fixed immutable resources?

> So you are saying our hospital beds and staff are fixed immutable resources and that in an emergency all other variables must be sacrificed in order to not exceed those fixed immutable resources?

Absolutely. Steve the UberEats delivery driver can be moved into the ICU, putting folks on ventilators and providing critical care in a week or so, right?

And Gustavo, the busboy can be out providing EMT services in just a few days, right?

A doctor requires 8+ years of post-secondary education, in addition to several years of on-the-job training.

An RN requires at least 6+ years of post-secondary education, plus several years of on-the-job training. LPNs even longer.

So, yes. In the short term (~6-18 months), staff are most certainly fairly fixed resources.

As for hospital beds, those are limited to the square footage available for them. Sure, temporary hospital wards can be constructed and put in place fairly quickly, but unless Steve and Gustavo are staffing them, you still have a big problem.

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

#138

Post by uoaei »

henrikschroder wrote: post #127
bearjaws wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Heart disease and cancer combined kill four times as many people every year, than what covid-19 has done this year. About 10% of all the people who died in the US this year will have died from covid-19. Why are those 10% of deaths so much more terrible, so unimaginably horrible, that we're focusing exclusively on those, and completely ignoring the remaining 90% of deaths?

You can't catch heart disease and cancer by standing for 10 minutes in the same room as someone who is afflicted by either of those.

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

#139

Post by pkaye »

djsumdog wrote: post #50
OminousWeapons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the governors and mayors always had to weigh the economic damage they were doing to people whenever they made a shutdown decision, which resulted in erratic, complicated, and somewhat nonsensical shutdown orders. If the federal government had backstopped the economy properly and compensated any business or person directly affected by a shutdown, then the governors / mayors would have been able to tak…

The way the US is structured makes this very difficult. We're not a country of countries like the United Kingdom, but the US is a country of States. Despite our federal solidification over the past century, states still have a lot of autonomy. Passing marijuana laws that contradict Federal law, is probably the most prevalent example of this. The Federal government tried to create PPP programs, but look at what happen…

They could have done a tiered fund. A PPP pool for businesses under $Also Trump removed the independent watchdog for the coronavirus funds.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/07/trump-removes-indep...

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

#140

Post by umvi »

t-writescode wrote: post #119
umvi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying our hospital beds and staff are fixed immutable resources and that in an emergency all other variables must be sacrificed in order to not exceed those fixed immutable resources?

At some point, you're experiencing runway problems. 9 women can't produce a baby in a month, after all. They can, however, collectively produce 9 babies, 9 months after the start date.

In an emergency situation, you make do. Train temporary workers to man the temporary hospitals. Teach them how to know when to defer to a medical professional. You can hire a bunch of boy scouts to do the repetitive stuff, and have them call in a real doctor or nurse if symptom progression isn't matching their training.
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