Hazard pay in focus as essential workers earn less than the jobless • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by jschwartzi » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #185

jschwartzi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical insurance is typically really good too. When my fiancé quit her job due to the hazards of working retail it turned out that for only 200 more a month we could retain her insurance and shave 12000 off the cost of having a baby. They pay for IVF too if we need it which is normally a six figure procedure. Having a baby was otherwise so expensive we weren’t sure we could afford it.

IVF shouldn't cost six figures. When we did it, it was about $12K.

That's about what it cost my friends.

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

#212

Post by luckylion » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #156

luckylion wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

That depends... Arguably, we are long past that point, as seen from Marx’ perspective of the 18th century: the entire economy of his time, i. e. agriculture and industrial manufacturing, covering the essentials of life, is today easily accomplished by about 3% of people working in agriculture, and probably a similar number in manufacturing. But so far, we have chosen (and also accomplished ) to reinvest capacities th…

> When driving and accounting and phone centers and retail are all automated, will we, yet again, come up with meaningful roles that are accessible to most everyone, but cannot be performed by such technology?

There's at least some evidence for it, I think. The more time people have (because of less work, primarily), the more they need entertainment, it appears, so we're automating away time consuming labor and adding jobs helping the population kill the time that has been freed.

My impression is that we're far away from anything that comes even close to full automation. Of course, from an 18th century standpoint, we're there and then some, but then again, from an 5th century standpoint, we've been there many times over, I suppose.

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

#213

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #127

pjc50 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, it's only somewhat true; look at this graph https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m0 and note that it's not zero indexed. The raw money supply has doubled .. with surprisingly little effect on prices and wages. Secondly, people get confused between extension of credit and money printing. For that you want the separate measure "M2". Thirdly, the real lesson of the hyperinflation crises of Ge…

> with surprisingly little effect on prices and wages. No one - who's talking at least - seems to understand what's going on with this. It's uncharted territory in a world economic system way more complex than when text books were written. I have to think fundamental reality must catch up sooner or later, possibly unravelling in a sudden crash. Then again, I do not understand this!

Much of economics these days is fatally contaminated with ideology, so it's hard to find good explanations. "MMT" (modern monetary theory) is also ideological but has some interesting ideas that might explain this.

Conventional explanations include "price stickiness": wages and prices don't change overnight, they have to be deliberately changed by individuals in the market. And the more technical "transmission mechanism": just as an automatic transmission doesn't immediately convert faster engine RPM into faster road speed, there is substantial lag in the mechanisms by which money production affects prices.

The reverse process was seen round about the introduction of the Brazilian "Real". People had become used to inflation and re-negotiating prices regularly. Swapping out the name of the currency helped reset that in the minds of the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real

One of the more convincing ideas is that, because fiscal policy is either conservative or only expansionary for high earners, monetary expansion doesn't affect most consumption prices and only affects assets. e.g. house prices and the stock market.

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

#214

Post by SilasX » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #205

SilasX wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there a number for the "real resources" you note? What is the limit and who's keeping track? Why do you ask? I was just making (what should be) an uncontroversial point that there's a bound at all, because someone was dismissing all concerns of affordability of any program on the grounds that: >>>Federal spending doesn't come from money laying around, in the first place, it comes from money the government decides…

I am asking about your note on "real resources" because you seemed to indicate this is a limiting factor, but if you can't quantify or know where the "real resources" limit is, then it's not a very good argument. Like how do we calculate the relationship between the funny money we print and the real resources it's tied to? I don't think they're coupled at all.

Mitigating a real problem requires real resources. Printing money does not give you infinite access to real resources. Thus, there is a bound to what real resources you can apply to a real problem by printing money.

What's so controversial here?

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

#215

Post by Jtsummers » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

infinite8s wrote: post #124

jschwartzi wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want statistics on who’s starving in the US look up the counts for free and reduced lunch at schools in the area. They’re typically means tested and free lunch in particular is only granted to kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the fifty cents a day for reduced price lunch. The USDA sets Income Eligibility Guidelines at the national level for these programs.

New York City has implemented free lunches for all children up to 18, even through the summer. Sometimes means testing cost more than just providing it universally. Correction - they are providing it for anybody in the city: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/food/free-meals

Means testing also creates a barrier because you have to apply. Cultural attitudes towards handouts prevent many people from applying, which hurts their children (in this case). At least some programs stopped doing means testing and made it universal because of that.

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

#216

Post by awinder » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #195

awinder wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This money ends in July (or has to be renegotiated), so the moral hazard maybe could apply to a few weeks during re-opening (a rounding error). Or maybe it saves a ton of money for these businesses if re-opening goes south and we have to retreat. If you care about moral hazard you should be frying bigger fish imho. Also may this finally dispel the myth that servers get made whole with tips. This owner is putting out…

>This money ends in July (or has to be renegotiated), so the moral hazard maybe could apply to a few weeks during re-opening (a rounding error). It applies to the entire time someone could be doing other SIP-compatible work.

Ok so my heart goes out to the 5 possible business owners nationwide who that may have applied to, but that is a completely unserious argument.

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

#217

Post by skwb » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working. The temporary COVID unemployment bill was so rushed that they didn’t index the unemployment to the person’s earnings. If you lost your job or had your hours reduced, you get an extra $600/week on top of state unemployment. About half of people receiving this are receiving more from the combined unemploy…

It's not a bug but a feature! It wasn't just that the policy debating was rushed (it was), but it was also that precisely calculating how much you "should" earn is actually a really hard thing to do.

Do you use this years tax return? What if they haven't filed it yet? Maybe last years? Well what about tipped income? What about seasonal workers? What about people who do not typically qualify for unemployment? etc etc etc.

Frankly, it's just easier (from as administrative stance) to sorta throw money at the problem, and sorta hope it all washes out in the end. And since many states are reimposing shut down, it seems prudent to extend enhanced UI for the time being (at least until we're able to safely reopen). People like to bash against the US for "only" giving a one time payment of $1,200, but to ignore enhanced UI as part of the stimulus is intellectually dishonest.

Will this policy cost us? Sure it will! It will likely mean higher taxes (and not just on wealthy people, but certainly they're the place to start) to maintain a stable GDP/debt ratio in the future. But the cost of not doing so and tanking the US economy is almost certainly worth it.

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

#218

Post by contravariant » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

gerbal wrote: post #132

commandlinefan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Depends how big a deficit you're running each year. But 'catch up' is a really vague term. As long as you can keep borrowing at low interest rates there's no problem, you can just borrow more to pay the interest, but eventually people will start to doubt your ability to pay it all back (yes this is irrelevant if a country exists forever, but infinity is weird like that).

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

#219

Post by frockington1 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #187

andrewmutz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a fair comparison. QE are loans that get paid back, and bailouts are equity purchases. The government makes money on these programs. Stimulus payments are gifts, and the government loses money on them. To be clear, the stimulus payments are essential for helping people and are a great thing for the wider economy. But you can't compare them dollar-for-dollar, as they are not like each other.

Do you think the government will get paid back for buying junk bonds from companies likely to go bankrupt?

Bond holders are high on the ladder in terms of who gets paid if a company defaults. For the few companies that do go completely insolvent they will still receive most of the principal back

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

#220

Post by greedo » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #155

adamsea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Food insecurity is an issue. https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-i... About 1 in 9 people -- in the wealthiest nation that ever existed on earth, which as of 2016 had 540 billionaires living in it with with a combined net worth of about 2.3 trillion (via Forbes from a quick google) -- face food insecurity. Relatedly, access to healthy food (that wont give you diabetes if you eat it all the…

OK, but the definition of "food insecurity" used at that first link includes, at the "low food security level" people whose "quantity of food intake and normal eating patterns were not substantially disturbed". I don't think you're doing any favors to the cause of food security by suggesting that people starving in America is a big issue, or implying that anything like 1 in 9 people are in that situation. I think the…

It's hard to say if people would be starving without food assistance. Hopefully we won't experiment to find out. But just looking at the number of students who get free lunches in the US based upon their income levels is astounding. According to [0], the two main programs feed 32 MILLION free meals a day.

The eligibility requirements for a free meal are [0]https://schoolnutrition.org/aboutschoolmeals/schoolmealtrend...