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

#331

Post by rbrtl » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #259

gregwebs wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 progr…

In 2008, the US Gov't made hundreds of billions on the bailout loans they gave. Let me make that clear. Whenever people say "Wall St was bailed out by the taxpayers", they don't understand finance well enough to know that the taxpayers actually earned a significant PROFIT from that bailout. ...and naturally the media doesn't report on that important detail. "socialize the losses, privatize the gains" is a slogan base…

MIT Distinguished Professor of Finance, Deborah J. Lucas, who is also the director of the Golub Center for Finance and Policy would disagree with you: http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.p...

She's done research and cites evidence. You CAPITALISE basic terminology to patronise people out of wanting to challenge you.

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

#332

Post by rbrtl » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #315

jessaustin wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The firms should have gone bankrupt. In that case, the government or any solvent entity could have benefited by purchasing the assets at market prices. That the firms did not go bankrupt, was a gift to shareholders from taxpayers.

This is a very uneducated point of view, that ignores the facts in my prior comment. In a liquidity crunch, perfectly solvent and functional companies can go bankrupt. ...and indeed those that had balance sheets hopelessly underwater DID go bankrupt (ie Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, as well as dozens of other smaller banks). The fact that the government was able to extend LOANS to other banks is not a "gift" at all…

http://gcfp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BailoutsV12.p...

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

#333

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

gregwebs wrote: post #277

koheripbal wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - and the US government actually MADE money on the MBS it bought. People who are angry seldom take the time to understand how finance works.

That's 1.9 trillion in MBS on the balance sheet now. It seems like you have counted those eggs before they have hatched! If we could really make money on these we would get them off the balance sheet, but that is proving to be impossible to do. I guess you could argue that we're making money, but that's only because we get to print money to buy these for free and de-value everyone else's dollars.

It's not really surprising, that the same dumb accounting mistakes that got all these "2B2F" banks in trouble in the first place, are also made by their ardent fans on HN. GP is the same joker who dismisses people as "angry" and "uneducated" elsewhere ITT, but doesn't actually have any idea what happened. Reading Timmy Geithner's book doesn't help...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2008...

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

#334

Post by centimeter » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #329

centimeter wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the living conditions, healthcare, lifespan, and overall societal contributions of people paid less than minimum wage? You’ve obviously not grasped the point - these people are not paid “less than minimum wage” - they are paid nothing , zero, because well-intentioned but economically clueless people have decided that it’s not morally proper for low-skilled people to make whatever their labor is worth. > Minimum wag…

>they are paid nothing, zero, Incorrect. Disability, social security, etc are payments. Payments that we all bear when people, rightfully, opt out of this oppressive, toxic, dog eat dog workforce. Or worse, when someone's body is sacrificed for the sake of profits. If you're getting rid of minimum wage you should probably get rid of all social safety nets to deal with perverse incentives. >because well-intentioned bu…

This is probably the (unintentionally) funniest comment I’ve ever seen on this site - you don’t have any coherent understanding of the economics of price controls, so you just go on about Communist China and and the Holocaust. Surely at some level you realize this is embarrassing?

> how can we possibly allow these parasites to live on

Private charity is and always has been more effective than government welfare, although the proponents of government welfare would like you to believe otherwise. With the elimination of the rule against perpetuities in the West, the Waqf model would be a superior solution to what we have now.

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

#335

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #334

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they are paid nothing, zero, Incorrect. Disability, social security, etc are payments. Payments that we all bear when people, rightfully, opt out of this oppressive, toxic, dog eat dog workforce. Or worse, when someone's body is sacrificed for the sake of profits. If you're getting rid of minimum wage you should probably get rid of all social safety nets to deal with perverse incentives. >because well-intentioned bu…

This is probably the (unintentionally) funniest comment I’ve ever seen on this site - you don’t have any coherent understanding of the economics of price controls, so you just go on about Communist China and and the Holocaust. Surely at some level you realize this is embarrassing? > how can we possibly allow these parasites to live on Private charity is and always has been more effective than government welfare, alth…

>This is probably the (unintentionally) funniest comment I’ve ever seen on this site -

I'm glad you're having fun. None of these topics are laughing matters, but, like the insults you're throwing, they're not novel either.

>you don’t have any coherent understanding of the economics of price controls

If you had 'coherent arguments' or citations, you would not lower yourself to attacking me instead of my arguments.

>so you just go on about Communist China and and the Holocaust.

If you'd bother to consider my arguments you'll find that my citations are in fact real world examples of what happens when people with ideas like yours take power.

>Surely at some level you realize this is embarrassing?

yawn if I'm wrong, prove it

If you had cogent arguments you would've made them instead of attacking me and moving the goalposts.

>Private charity is and always has been more effective than government welfare, although the proponents of government welfare would like you to believe otherwise. With the elimination of the rule against perpetuities in the West, the Waqf model would be a superior solution to what we have now.

Debunked(1).

Regardless, if you're just going to keep repeating years debunked tea party talking points I'm happy to keep correcting you.

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/private-charity-no...

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

#336

Post by zippy5 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

entropea wrote: post #159

adamsea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all good points but I want to emphasize that the root issue is that US law basically allows companies to exploit workers and not pay them a living wage, and as we are seeing now this does tangible damage to our society as a whole. [EDIT: I encourage downvoters to explain why they downvoted and point out what assertion I make about worker exploitation in the U.S. is not empirically verifiable.]

The Capitalist will always try to cut costs at the benefit of shareholder pockets, especially at a period when workers have the least or close to the least working rights of any western country. The most expensive costs are typically labor. Why do you think they started manufacturing in China? Can anyone explain to me how you get around greed like that in Capitalism?

Why shouldn't the work go to the one who will do it the cheapest? The are billions of people around the world living in poverty, destitution, and with no opportunity. Globalization has been equalizing labor compensation around the globe, which means that Americans as whole have been averaging down but a great many below the global poverty line have been averaging up.

If Americans laborers want to maintain their economic disparity, there are two paths.

One is protectionism. The biggest benefit of maintaining this ”trade war” is not that we will get a better deal, it's that it add enough uncertainty to global labor arbitrage that loss aversion make US workers appear the ”safe bet”.

The other path is higher productivity. In order to pay Americans orders of magnitude more than workers in other countries, they need produce orders of magnitude more. This means, better training and better machines. It's not an accident that computers and networks have both been the dominant machines of the past couple decades and working to create and use them has been accompanied higher compensation.

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

#337

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

gen3 wrote: post #271

andreilys wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies have no penalty for firing people after receiving bailout money.

Well, pretty much all the bailout money requires that the business not fire anyone (or re-higher anyone that they did fire). For example, thats how the small business portion of the CARES Act worked. The recent airline loans/bailouts require maintaining the same staff until September 30th.[1] I would imagine that there will be layoffs once that requirement expires. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/airlines-coronav…

Whether you read the statement as malice cloaked in corporate doublespeak, or simply following the rules that were laid out, there's no need to imagine. United, at least, has already warned that layoffs will happen October 1st.

"""But the challenging economic outlook means we have some tough decisions ahead as we plan for our airline, and our overall workforce, to be smaller than it is today, starting as early as October 1."""

-Oscar Munoz, Chief Executive Officer, and J. Scott Kirby, President,

https://hub.united.com/united-message-munoz-kirby-2645729257...

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

#338

Post by microcolonel » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 11:56 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…

The biggest problem with the check was means testing. The U.S. has extremely progressive income taxes, there's nothing wrong with sending the same amount of money to everyone, and it would solve all of the problems except the one where you have to finally explain how taxes are calculated to the public.

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

#339

Post by adamsea » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

brightball wrote: post #266

adamsea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I believe you have it backwards and the issue needing correcting is this (quoted from article). "Few employers have compensated extra for on-site work amid the health crisis. A recent survey by the Economic Policy Institute found that fewer than a third of people who had to leave their homes to work during the pandemic received additional pay or benefits. As U.S. coronavirus cases persist and some state…

I don't have any issue with hazard pay. The concern is entirely about people being paid more than their jobs to stay home. In some conversations I've had with people, there's an attitude that staying at home is just a giant vacation that they'd like to go on as long as possible. It's an understandable position as well for anybody who won't see much of an impact from the economic side effects. When people begin asking…

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not just hazard pay. So many people in this economy aren’t paid a living wage to begin with.

In an ideal world I would agree with you. In the world we live in my suspicion is that (not saying this is you specifically) calls to “balance” “excessive” (imho a case can be made for unemployment being higher than ones previous pay - parents for example have to home school now in addition to work - they paid taxes for schools but e kids can’t attend them. One theoretical.) unemployment right now are really just political cover for eliminating pandemic-related financial support for citizens from the federal government entirely.

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

#340

Post by adamsea » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:53 AM 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…

1. You talk as if it’s not a single mom making a dirt-low hourly wage at McDonald’s.

2. I’m curious how what you say applies to countries like Sweden, France, Norway, Germany, etc.