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U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

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Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#81

Post by thehappypm »

grecy wrote: post #12
scohesc wrote: post #3

Man, it's so frustrating seeing all these businesses shutting down (smaller ones are closing for good), meanwhile I'm sure Bezos and the Silicon crew are reporting record profits this year through food deliveries and amazon purchases. I sometimes find it very _very_ hard to not see this all a transfer of wealth from the middle/lower classes to the upper classes - either calculated beforehand or just being taken advan…

In my small town all the locally-owned and operated coffee shops were forced to close due to government mandates, and most are now closed permanently, because they couldn't afford to pay rent without any customers. McDonald's and Starbucks? Still churning out coffee to people standing in long lines. It's infuriating, but what can you do?

This doesn't really make sense. If there's a long line at Starbucks for takeout, why are you saying there aren't any customers?

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#82

Post by grecy »

thehappypm wrote: post #81
grecy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my small town all the locally-owned and operated coffee shops were forced to close due to government mandates, and most are now closed permanently, because they couldn't afford to pay rent without any customers. McDonald's and Starbucks? Still churning out coffee to people standing in long lines. It's infuriating, but what can you do?

This doesn't really make sense. If there's a long line at Starbucks for takeout, why are you saying there aren't any customers?

The locally owned and run stores were forced to close by a government mandate, while the "big boys" where deemed essential and were allowed to stay open.

The joys of being rich, you get to influence the government!

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#83

Post by tw04 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #67
tw04 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has been using tax havens for years and years. Amazon has been actively preventing unionization of employees. Jeff Bezos has personally donated to both political parties. Don't confuse his personal dislike of Trump with some sort of undying support of the Democratic party or their tax policies.

Of course he donates to both political parties, he's not a moron. Of course he uses the most advantageous legal tax strategy available. Almost every US company prevents union organization (nothing they've done comes close to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart#Labor_uni... , and I wouldn't be surprised if companies astroturfed union initiatives in competitors) He is a private citizen and just because h…

>Of course he uses the most advantageous legal tax strategy available. Almost every US company prevents union organization

>just because he's wealthy it's not his job to fix the US financial system.

In other words, he should be lumped in with all the other billionaires that avoid taxes and aren't doing anything to uphold the social contract.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#85

Post by dillondoyle »

acct776 wrote: post #63
dillondoyle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long post alert... -- If Bezos's and the other mega billionaires wanted to truly change the tax code for a top .0001% tax rate or whatever they could almost certainly get it done. How much does Bezos spend on lobbying (not Amazon specific interests)? Virtually a 25 cents to him - .000086 Adelson spent something like $500mm over a decade and he probably has 75% or more of the 'credit' for changing pro-Isreal policy. B…

That's not his fuckin job !

I'm specifically responding to parent " He couldn't control how the response was managed and he doesn't control tax policy"

saying he could easily exert a LOT of power to change tax policy if he wanted to. And could step up and pay more in taxes even without changing the laws

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#86

Post by centimeter »

triceratops wrote: post #61
centimeter wrote: post #20

I think it's disingenuous how all of these news articles phrase it as if the pandemic itself was responsible for hurting these businesses. In reality, the effect of covid alone on business would be very small for most industries. The thing that's actually destroying these businesses (and the middle-class wealth behind them) is the government reaction to the pandemic , not the pandemic itself.

More accurately the government non-reaction to the pandemic. Patchwork of confusing lockdown rules, poorly observed, and next to no assistance for those truly in need. We got the worst of both worlds: death and economic destruction.

> More accurately the government non-reaction to the pandemic.

This is precisely the opposite of true. Countries with strict and widely observed lockdowns don't seem to be generally better off health-wise than those with no lockdowns whatsoever, but their economies are certainly worse off.

> next to no assistance for those truly in need

If you think "assistance" such as it could have been rendered would have been good for the economy, your economic model is badly broken. The only viable approach is to not impoverish those people in the first place, which was an option.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#87

Post by [deleted] »

grecy wrote: post #78
ravenstine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's no wonder these people are angry and rallying behind a psudo-fascist like Trump. Say what you want about Trump, and there's a lot bad to say about him, but at least he pretends to listen to the blue collar class. People need to understand this because most of his voters are not the radical MAGA people. If those voters don't believe they have a voice now, and arguably they don't have that voice, that increases…

> but at least he pretends to listen to the blue collar class And while he pretends to listen, you've got politicians like AOC and Sanders fighting their backsides off for the blue collar classes, trying to get them healthcare and education.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#88

Post by shadowprofile77 »

perrygeo wrote: post #79
medium_burrito wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've normalized political violence on the left and right this year. One side trashes a bunch of cities, the other the capitol. That genie won't go back in the bottle for sure. Eventually the poors will get angry and united. So far our industry is helping keep them divided, but I'm not sure how long that will last.

> One side trashes a bunch of cities, the other the capitol First, both sides are mostly made up of non-violent people dedicated to their cause. Both sides can rightfully claim that a minority of "bad eggs" amongst them caused the violence. But that's where the equivalency ends. We have to look at the cause itself. It's quite a stretch to say that a group protesting police brutality (in the face of actual police brut…

Bullshit. A great number of those protesting on the left/progressive side during the fairly recent BLM marches were peaceful people legitimately angry about police violence, but more than enough others used the same starting point as a launch pad for mass riots, burnings, lootings and the promotion of extremist (but leftist extremist) political postures that were little different in their love of overthrowing legitimate institutions from anything recently done by the idiots at the Capitol. In terms of sheer scale and distribution, the former protests had much more violence to them than more recent right-oriented protests. Emotional attachment to a certain ideology is no excuse for claiming two obviously related things "ain't even the same fucking sport". They very much are, but from different teams.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#89

Post by eckmLJE »

exabrial wrote: post #73
eckmLJE wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even rely on citizens to wear masks. What makes you think that if government were competent enough to develop complex rules based on the factors you mention that we would be any better off.

Exactly, this is a great example of a failed policy. Lets apply the simple rule: the less moving pieces a system has, the less it's likely to fail. So, instead of getting 100 people to wear a mask in one business, get 1 business to increase the airflow in the business by 10x. Much simpler solution and something that can be directly measured. And really, they're non-competing; we can do both. Furthermore it eliminates…

I'm sorry, you think that increasing airflow by 10x in businesses in many various buildings and conditions is a simpler matter than people putting a piece of cloth over their face? xD

The key government failure in the US, at least since a total failure by the white house to seize the moment early on, is republicans seizing mask-wearing as a wedge issue. Following the most simple measures such as masks would effectively solve the issue enough for vaccines to catch up. Cynical exploitation of ignorance in the people by republicans has been the true societal failure in this pandemic.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#90

Post by triceratops »

centimeter wrote: post #86
triceratops wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately the government non-reaction to the pandemic. Patchwork of confusing lockdown rules, poorly observed, and next to no assistance for those truly in need. We got the worst of both worlds: death and economic destruction.

> More accurately the government non-reaction to the pandemic. This is precisely the opposite of true. Countries with strict and widely observed lockdowns don't seem to be generally better off health-wise than those with no lockdowns whatsoever, but their economies are certainly worse off. > next to no assistance for those truly in need If you think "assistance" such as it could have been rendered would have been goo…

> Countries with strict and widely observed lockdowns don't seem to be generally better off health-wise

No? So we're not counting China or Australia?

I also didn't say anything about lockdowns specifically. Those are the last resort after travel restrictions, mandatory testing and quarantine for travelers, contact tracing, universal mask-wearing have failed to slow the spread. We didn't even try any of that, did some weakly-observed lockdowns and then said "See? Nothing works! Not our fault!"

> good for the economy

I said it would have prevented the widespread misery. The economy exists to provide for human wants and needs. It's not an end in itself. If we were going to print money (yes I know that's a simplistic view of what happened) give it to people to buy food and pay rent.

> The only viable approach is to not impoverish those people in the first place, which was an option.

Definitely. By doing everything I said above - testing, quarantine, contact-tracing, not denying the existence of the disease in February etc. Instead we did none of the preventive measures, then half-heartedly locked down in a haphazard fashion.

If we'd done nothing, the virus would have run amok and impoverished those people anyway by destroying their industries and we'd have way more deaths.

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