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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

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Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#371

Post by pjc50 »

tathougies wrote: post #299
pjc50 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shrug we provided liquidity last time and can do so again. Money printing doesn't kill people, viruses do. The banks are intermediaries. The essential businesses are not affected provided we do not let the banks fail randomly, and there is no need to do that.

Last time we had nowhere near the need for liquidity. There were bad mortgages, but they were the minority. Currency inflation kills. Look at venezuela. You cannot shrug this off. At least consider the effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

> By March 2009, it held $1.75 trillion of bank debt, mortgage-backed securities, and Treasury notes; this amount reached a peak of $2.1 trillion in June 2010.

That feels like a lot of liquidity to me.

Liquidity expansion through loans and purchase of credit and equity instruments simply isn't very inflationary. It can only cause real price inflation if the money starts chasing a shortage of real goods and services - which are currently being dramatically underproduced. If it does start causing inflation, the Fed can and will simply raise interest rates from their current near-zero level. Or fiscal policy can be used.

Venezuela is under sanctions which are intended to exacerbate the situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#372

Post by TeMPOraL »

kirykl wrote: post #354
TeMPOraL wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the consequence of market economy. Everyone is under pressure to "cut out fat", make themselves "lean". That applies everywhere across the supply chain. First thing that goes is every redundancy, buffer and spare capacity - things that would mitigate a crisis like this. It's because the companies that "cut out fat" can grow faster, sell cheaper and profit more, compared to their competitors that have risk h…

The government does have stockpiles for emergencies, mandated buffers will guarantee overproduction and affect market equilibrium

> The government does have stockpiles for emergencies

As you can see now, it doesn't. Neither does any other government.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#373

Post by Dylan16807 »

Retric wrote: post #336
Dylan16807 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country even quarantined everyone coming in on a plane? I might have been unclear, but I was suggesting quarantine for everyone coming in, as an alternative to banning travel forever. Quarantine set up once you already have an outbreak is uh, a different matter.

Internal travel was suspended between several countries, though far to late to make a significant difference. A partial list: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/coronavirus-travel-bans/i... Saying they waited to long is true, but simply means it fails due to politics. Edit: NM, misunderstood what you where referring to.

Yeah, far too late. I mean the equivalent of locking things down in January, not March.

A total travel ban would also fail due to politics, so that's not a really helpful criteria.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#374

Post by TeMPOraL »

zaroth wrote: post #254
TeMPOraL wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the consequence of market economy. Everyone is under pressure to "cut out fat", make themselves "lean". That applies everywhere across the supply chain. First thing that goes is every redundancy, buffer and spare capacity - things that would mitigate a crisis like this. It's because the companies that "cut out fat" can grow faster, sell cheaper and profit more, compared to their competitors that have risk h…

Have you considered what the cost of adding these “mandated buffers and redundancies” to the overall economy? Have you attempted to integrate these costs over time when there isn’t a pandemic going on, and made any attempt to determine the net effect? Have you considered that you can’t start a small business with buffers and redundancies? And that small business accounts for 50% of overall employment?

> Have you attempted to integrate these costs over time when there isn’t a pandemic going on, and made any attempt to determine the net effect?

No, I didn't. I'd actually like to - because it isn't obvious to me that the result would come in favor of minimizing the buffers. Consider that buffers in the supply chain only cost as much as the storage costs. Which may run well into billions over time, sure. But this pandemic has already erased trillions of dollars in the last three weeks, and it isn't showing any sign of stopping any time soon.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#375

Post by seph-reed »

vsareto wrote: post #356
Demiurge wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also completely agree with this sentiment. A gov't form could be an unsightly complex beast that can't be re-architected, sometimes, ever.

They could, they just don't want to pay for it. The government has no interest in being known for easily handling a huge spike of traffic during a crisis. They can just take the lower road and get by with less and saying 'try again later'. There's no repercussions here because it's the government. Hence mainframe maintainers should really move to charging $1 million/year in a decade or two.

So, legitimately, how to we make it so the government does have repercussions? I see a lot of people making jokes about guillotines and nooses, but is there no better way?

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#376

Post by aww_dang »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #245
wyclif wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, setbacks for globalization may very well leave us better off...after all, globalization is one of the main factors why we're experiencing this deadly pandemic now, and have vast swathes of our supply chain for essential pharmaceuticals and medical equipment farmed out to evil, duplicitous regimes like the Chinese state.

Us = the world/humanity, not the USA. China's economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty, and it would not have happened without globalization.

>China's economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty

Starting from the point of the great leap forward, yes there has been an improvement.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#377

Post by saiya-jin »

williamdclt wrote: post #193
big_chungus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. The economy has grown to unsustainable levels based on the economic habits of the average American who can't be bothered to save, hence the crash we're seeing now. At sixty hours a week, that guy should be making six figures, pre-tax. There is zero excuse for not saving. Everyone should save at least six months of salary for emergencies; though a few people legitimately can't, most Americans si…

Americans work sixty hours a week ? Ten hour a day, rest on Sunday?

Welcome to the job of doctor for example. But its true that those are outliers, I would expect average to be closer to 45

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#378

Post by j4kp07 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

> Republicans in particular

It was the Democrats that held this up for carbon emmission and diversity standards and to game the upcoming elections in November.

> I'm not in the US or an American...

Of course.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#379

Post by PaulRobinson »

string wrote: post #369
PaulRobinson wrote: post #23

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…

Can you keep the comments like this on Reddit and away from HN, please? For the non-UK users reading this: almost all of the bullet pointed statements are either incorrect or exaggerated.

[citation needed]

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#380

Post by viklove »

saiya-jin wrote: post #367
mrkramer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany lost 2 World Wars and today it has greater GDP than UK by $1 trillion. It doesn't matter who is hit harder it matters whose economy is more efficient and has more innovations.

Not much comparable. Just a random difference - Germany was quickly rebuilt because allies want it to be rebuilt, and not let impoverished and destroyed like after WWI. We know how that ended... When talking about efficiency, I think China might have the upper hand now - they are much more effective in discipline, they don't mind suffering things that are unacceptable for us, and look where they are with COVID - ahea…

> they don't mind suffering things that are unacceptable for us

When the ruling class exploits the working class and suppresses their access to information and free speech, that doesn't mean they "don't mind suffering," it means one sector of the Chinese population has cannibalized another sector in order to build wealth for themselves. Much like what is happening in the US with the ultra-wealthy. It's not all rainbows and roses in China, in fact if you forgot, there is an active genocide in progress in that country.

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