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

#241

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #207

adamsea wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to nitpick a bit with language I dont think "problem" is the right word. The real problem is that the law lets companies pay so many people so little to begin with. Not saying you necessarily disagree. I think language has a tangible and often unconscious impact on our thought porcess so wanted to point it out. In America, large companies should be required by law to pay their employees a living wage. Its not OK…

> The real problem is that the law lets companies pay so many people so little to begin with. Economists pretty much across the board disagree with you. If you don’t allow companies to pay market rate for low-value labor, they’re simply not going to hire those people at all. They’re not going to lose money paying $15/hr (or whatever) for a job that only nets them half that. All a “minimum wage” law actually does is e…

[deleted]

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

#242

Post by smabie » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:27 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?

Yeah, probably. They won't necessarily get all of the principle, but with the equity holders wiped out, there's probably enough to divy up.

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

#243

Post by throwaway_USD » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #221

throwaway_USD wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Forgiveness of PPP loans is contingent on keeping staff on payroll and salary levels constant. So it's very much targeted at helping main street. Helps main street? Businesses just got free money from taxpayers. Sure for the forgiveness you have to spend 75% on payroll, in many instances what the amounts to is a business owner paying themselves 8 weeks of salary with taxpayer money and then that loan being forgiven.…

> again taxpayers basically just paid for 8 weeks of your payroll Sorry, I don't really understand why this is a problem. The alternative would be laying those people off and paying them via unemployment anyways, right? The idea was to keep people tied to their employers and keep otherwise productive businesses in tact in order to enable a quicker recovery. Digging into today's jobs numbers confirms this was largely…

>Sorry, I don't really understand why this is a problem. The alternative would be laying those people off and paying them via unemployment anyways, right? The idea was to keep people tied to their employers

If the alternative was laying people off, that is the free market at work. And there is no "keeping employee tied to their employers" as you claim, it is just free money to businesses for 8 weeks of payroll (+25% extra for non-payroll expenses like rent - so taxpayer paid rent for businesses, where is the taxpayer paid rent for taxpayers?). There is no promise or guarantee business will keep employees or even remain open beyond that 8 week period.

Finally, and most importantly, you touch on it:

>paying them via unemployment anyways, right?

Yes, this was about: 1) free money to businesses and 2) hiding the real unemployment numbers.

It was not about employees, if it was there are much better ways to go about it. At minimum law makers wouldn't have been allowed to pass the bill, create a brand new business, and obtain PPP loans for these new businesses (which would normally be prohibited, but both law makers and their family were excluded from these prohibitions against conflict of interest)

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

#244

Post by gregwebs » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #177

hobs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Quantitative easing and corporate bailouts are in the trillions, why would we not pay out significantly less for people who are struggling to find jobs? Why does the till start counting when its normal people affected?

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.

QE is much more than loans that get paid back. The fed's balance sheet actually went up by 4 trillion dollars during the 2008 recovery [1], even though the loan program was less than 1 trillion. Much of QE finances government debt. But the fed also still holds more than a trillion dollars of mortgage backed securities.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

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

#245

Post by adamsea » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #207

adamsea wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to nitpick a bit with language I dont think "problem" is the right word. The real problem is that the law lets companies pay so many people so little to begin with. Not saying you necessarily disagree. I think language has a tangible and often unconscious impact on our thought porcess so wanted to point it out. In America, large companies should be required by law to pay their employees a living wage. Its not OK…

> The real problem is that the law lets companies pay so many people so little to begin with. Economists pretty much across the board disagree with you. If you don’t allow companies to pay market rate for low-value labor, they’re simply not going to hire those people at all. They’re not going to lose money paying $15/hr (or whatever) for a job that only nets them half that. All a “minimum wage” law actually does is e…

If you want to ignore the moral implications of my statement, go right ahead.

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

#246

Post by gregwebs » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #23

hobs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Quantitative easing and corporate bailouts are in the trillions, why would we not pay out significantly less for people who are struggling to find jobs? Why does the till start counting when its normal people affected?

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.

Some of the bailout loans might break even, but this is only some of what is going on. The paycheck protection loans get forgiven and are essentially just handing out money (with the caveat that it goes to labor costs). We also handed out $210 billion in tax cuts which is just a handout.

On the whole the fed's balance sheet actually went up by 4 trillion dollars during the 2008 recovery [1] even though the loan program was less than 1 trillion. There is a trillion dollars of mortgage backed security purchases there that are a less visible bailout. The fed has already added 2 trillion this time with more to come.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

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

#247

Post by adamsea » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:38 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…

'"The word "hunger," the panel stated in its final report, "...should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."'

"One in seven households with children were affected by food insecurity in 2018."

"Food insecurity rates are highest for single mother households and households with incomes below poverty line"

"In 2018, 88.9 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the year. The remaining 11.1 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 4.3 percent (5.6 million households) that had very low food security."

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic....

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo....

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

#248

Post by throwaway_USD » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #237

bendergarcia wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you don’t know poor people who don’t have any investment in the stock market. Who absolutely do benefit from the immediate cash. Who drive your Uber, driver your door dash, serve your meal at your restaurant, probably cleaner your house, do you yard work, sell you shoes at the store, check you out at groceries, stock your groceries, serve you drinks at the bar. Stimulating the stock market was not the right move…

> Putting the money in the stock market has only benefited those already in the stock market and those with the money to enter it. Quantitative easing has been shown time and time again to alleviate and avoid economic downturn. Do grocery baggers and bar tenders benefit from an economic depression? Do you think Obama made the right choice to stimulate the economy in 2008? This is exactly the same thing.

>Do grocery baggers and bar tenders benefit from an economic depression?

People need groceries even during a depression. Its often said alcohol is recession proof, in fact alcohol sales seem to thrive even during a pandemic.

I'll tell you what isn't

>Do you think Obama made the right choice to stimulate the economy in 2008? This is exactly the same thing.

Actually Bush took out a Stimulus of ~$800-900B before he left office and then Obama took our another $800-$900B when entering office. And I would say the vast majority of people I speak with would rather have seen the banks fail rather than taxpayers bailing them out (for massive fraud they perpetrated to issue bad loans/mortgages and then package them up and sell them to others knowing they were "toxic assets"). Banks used taxpayer money to buy their competitors to concentrate the market and fund foreclosure litigation to foreclose on the taxpayers that bailed them out. In hindsight most people agree the Bush/Obama bailouts should have gone directly to the homeowners, but it was considered a "moral hazard" encouraging bad behavior in the future, whereas ironically they didn't see the moral hazard in rewarding the banks that bear the most responsibility.

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

#249

Post by adamsea » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

thrill wrote: post #131

adamsea wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> It's less political will than not having simple competence in any arena other than the political that got them there.

The U.S. Census, GAO, and various other bureaucratic organizations (USDR, EPA, etc), all seem to be quite competent when it comes to performing studies and gathering data.

So is the IRS, Department of Defense, etc.

Of course there are lots of problems, but the U.S. Federal Government has plenty of agencies able to competently perform some sort of study.

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

#250

Post by Klinky » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #238

Klinky wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're talking about inflation? I don't think we're near any limits on stimulus as far as inflation is concerned. It does not look like inflation is increasing at the moment, likely decreasing. We could likely continue to push out consumer stimulus until inflation percentage exceeded what we'd consider above normal year over year.

Yes, I am -- that's what happens when you try to use the money printer that currently works and scale it up to unbounded resources (eventually). And again, it sounds like you're agreeing with the point that I'm making. We can disagree about when it will be a problem, but you can't just trivialize the very idea of any mitigation effort being unaffordable because "we just print the money anyway, so affordability is mea…

Has anyone said we needed unbounded stimulus? I don't think so. However, there are certainly economic theories around those ideas though, such as UBI, so I would not say that it's infeasible for a country to continue to run in such a fashion.

That said, given our current economy, inflation is not a concern. If you are concerned about real resources, such as human lives, then that is basically what we're exchanging right now for hypothetical inflation prevention at some unknown point in the future. We have a very real physical threat now versus a potential economic threat in the future. How many lives are worth preventing a few fractional percentage points of inflation?

Also the economy running without restriction right now greatly inflates medical costs, and overwhelms real medical resources. We're kind of in a catch-22, as the medical system cannot keep up in areas that try to fully open the economy, and that just aggravates losses of "real resources"(human lives). The economy is hitting medical limits before inflation is anywhere near a concern.

Affordability and inflation is murky. Even how we measure inflation is iffy. Cost of living varies greatly by region. There are subsidies obfuscating the real cost of goods. Tons of money has been spent on worse things. It just seems penny pinching always comes out when it comes to social programs that help those with the least to gain, and most to lose from the situation.