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Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

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Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#131

Post by thrill »

adamsea wrote: post #75
bradstewart wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely think we should do that. The problem is it's extremely hard to quantify that cost/gain, while its extremely easy to quantity the cost/gain of low-interest loans. Not to say its impossible, or that we shouldn't try--we should. But when you have a bunch of senators arguing, it's easier to point to the easy numbers.

Is it really that difficult to quantify or is it that the government doesnt want to do the work of quantifying it? I think you said it yourself with your comment about senators arguing. The root cause is an overall lack of political will, not any technical or logistical impediments in modelling impact.

It's less political will than not having simple competence in any arena other than the political that got them there. Throwing gobs at cash at a broken system is what keeps Congress employed. If we had an unemployment system that didn't try to use "one size fits all" numbers, required two minutes on your phone to get enrolled, and two minutes on the employers' part to verify your application, then we wouldn't have have need of a significant number of government employees, and Congress's role wouldn't exist to posture about caring, but instead to simply fund a functioning system simply needed cash.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#132

Post by gerbal »

commandlinefan wrote: post #90
Nightshaxx wrote: post #49

> "You feel like, you guys [the government] never have money for people that really need it, and all of a sudden you have money for everybody," The government doesn't have this money, they are borrowing it. Debt levels are increasing like we are in wartime [1] but there is a massive negative impact on jobs, not a positive one like in a war. I have seen more than one person echo this sentiment and I wish people acctua…

> they are borrowing it People have been saying that deficit spending will catch up to us since I was a kid, 30+ years ago. Every time deficit spending starts "catching up to us", the government responds with more deficit spending. It seems unsustainable to me, but there are people like Krugman who assure us that this can go on forever.

If the economy grows by ~3% per year on average, and the interest rate is ~1% on government debt, can the debt actually "catch up"?

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#133

Post by alexpetralia »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #114
gregwebs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That breakdown is missing the trillion dollars of corporate debt that the fed is now engaging in purchasing. Correction: in terms of direct corporate debt purchase, they have currently committed to less than half a trillion dollars of purchases independent of the CARES act. But the breakdown is also missing $210 billion of reduced corporate taxes! The CARES act is a good attempt at providing fair outcomes for everyon…

> These wealth gaps historically lead to populism, which is how we ended up with our current president. Yet our current president is presiding over exactly what you’re describing. Also, as the other commenter explained, there are several problems with your understanding of the Fed’s operations and what they mean in terms of long-term budget. It’s not correct to compare cash payments to individuals with counter-cyclic…

Can you clarify why it's not a valid comparison?

My lay understanding is that if you recycle your debt at 3%, and now you can recycle it at 1%, that is a 2% "bailout". You quite literally have a lower cost of funds (cost of doing business), and it is artificially low due to government intervention.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#134

Post by mrep »

throwaway_USD wrote: post #94
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and estimated $300B to the people ($1,200) stimulus checks It’s not correct to say that people only received $1200. Everyone qualified for that stimulus (depending on income thresholds, it was phased out for higher incomes), regardless of job loss. Unemployed people receive an additional $600/week from the late-March COVID relief bill through July 31. There are additional measures to extend the duration of regular…

Fine if you want to add the amount for subsidizing the Unemployment Insurance from the CARES Act the numbers again: $4T to the FED to prop up the stock market $700B in forgivable loans to small businesses (PPP program) $300B in taxpayer stimulus checks $260B in Unemployment Insurance subsidies >suggesting that we could all have received $18K is disingenuous. Proper response should be targeted where needed It is not d…

The FED has only bought around 3 trillion dollars worth of assets and basically all of that is being used to buy our own governments debt (the same debt used to fund the CARES act) and US mortgage backed securities, not the stock market as you can see from their balance sheet [0].

[0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#135

Post by [deleted] »

mrep wrote: post #111
gregwebs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That breakdown is missing the trillion dollars of corporate debt that the fed is now engaging in purchasing. Correction: in terms of direct corporate debt purchase, they have currently committed to less than half a trillion dollars of purchases independent of the CARES act. But the breakdown is also missing $210 billion of reduced corporate taxes! The CARES act is a good attempt at providing fair outcomes for everyon…

They have not bought anywhere close to trillion dollars worth of corporate debt. As you can see in the breakdown [0], most of what they are buying is our own governments debt (the same debt used to fund the CARES act) and US mortgage backed securities. [0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm

[deleted]

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#136

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

infinite8s wrote: post #110
eanzenberg wrote: post #40

[flagged]

It's funny how everyone always misses the point Marx was making, in that he was thinking about post-capitalism, not a replacement for capitalism. There are 3 components to the economy (simplifying a bit) - labor, capital, and resources. What does society look like when the ongoing cost of labor nears 0 and so requires minimal human participation. He was just a century or two before that would be technologically possi…

I'm just not sure the ideas you're reading into Marx are ideas he would have recognized. His visions of post-capitalist life consistently included people performing productive labor - "from each according to his ability" and all that.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#137

Post by gen3 »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #129
packetlost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because bailouts (usually) make the government money in the long run. They're in the form of low-interest loans, they aren't just handing out money to corporations.

Bailouts usually make the government money in the long run if you ignore the costs. Let's say the market rate for a loan like this is 4% and the government is loaning at .5%. Sure, the government has "made" .5% (less any defaults), but by any realistic understanding of what's going on, they lost 3.5%.

The government goal isn’t to pursue good investments at a market rate. They are trying to prop up companies that investors don’t want to touch because of their current risk of failure. Spending some money now to keep a company in business can pay off in the long run, for example saving money on unemployment.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#138

Post by monocasa »

ceejayoz wrote: post #121
monocasa wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that work? Did they get the nurses they were expecting from that program?

Yes. Travel nursing (high pay, short-term contract) has been a thing for decades.

Just because it's been a thing for decades doesn't mean it instantly fixes demand in this case.

And the fact that a quick google search is showing new travel nurse jobs posted a week ago in new york, despite their curve dropping a couple months ago, is telling. It seems like they were unable to meet demand with that program.

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#139

Post by luckylion »

infinite8s wrote: post #110
eanzenberg wrote: post #40

[flagged]

It's funny how everyone always misses the point Marx was making, in that he was thinking about post-capitalism, not a replacement for capitalism. There are 3 components to the economy (simplifying a bit) - labor, capital, and resources. What does society look like when the ongoing cost of labor nears 0 and so requires minimal human participation. He was just a century or two before that would be technologically possi…

> What does society look like when the ongoing cost of labor nears 0 and so requires minimal human participation.

Honest question: do you believe that we are anywhere close? And does that belief depend on an AI singularity?

Re: Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless

#140

Post by quickthrowman »

panzagl wrote: post #82
dlp211 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to quantify it?

Because we shouldn't spend tax money on solutions that show no gain or make things worse for the country as a whole.

We spend tax money to make the nation worse all the time already, why does it matter now when it’s for helping out poor people?
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