3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by Theodores » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

shigawire wrote: post #344

scottLobster wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all the "millions of deaths" comes from one model. There are many others and we haven't tested enough to know the true spread or lethality of the virus in a general population. It's quite possible that many people have already had covid-19 and were completely asymptomatic, which would make the death rate look much less scary. Anyone who tells you with certainty that "millions will die" is going off incomplet…

>UK had the best original strategy of locking down the people most at risk, make sure they're taken care of as much as possible, and letting everyone else get herd immunity as quick as possible. The problem in the UK is that they seemed to have no substance to the plan. Yes, hard lock down the people at risk, but where is the government response to make that possible? If they had a well developed plan to carry out th…

They have half a million volunteers. When you sign up you get an idea of what for, delivering food and stuff to the vulnerable is part of it. So the boomer generation can have the millennials delivering them their toilet paper with some goodies to eat.

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

#382

Post by lossolo » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

ian0 wrote: post #85

How is our social system so fragile? I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.

> thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon

Every society is three meals away from chaos.

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

#383

Post by marvin » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #150

toomuchtodo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine those less at risk will eventually give up on confinement and continue on with their lives, forcing those at risk (risk factors, 60+, immunocompromised) to remain confined voluntarily or risk a greater chance of death by venturing out. Those not at risk (younger and healthier) will be prioritized for triage and ventilator access if they do get sick. You can't expect people to shelter in place indefinitely,…

I think the next couple of weeks are going to be eye opening - we're going to get a lot of reports of deaths, even of the young and healthy, which we're already seeing. That should steel the collective resolve to last a while here. People are talking of lifting the restrictions and our collective endurance and things have barely gotten going. It's really complaining about the length of the red light when it's just tu…

The government is passing relief package of 18,000 dollars for every citizen of the USA. That's more than enough money to tide things over if it's distributed well, in a way that incentivizes the right things.

Unforunately, a very small portion of that money will go to individuals who have lost their jobs, and a very large portion will go to companies that were run on razor-thin balance sheets, ready to topple at the first sign of trouble. No incentives to run things properly the next time around, and limited help for regular people. While costing everyone a fortune in the form of inflation the next few years.

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

#384

Post by _ea1k » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #359

luma wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully f…

Somewhere there is an architect saying "I told you so!" I can almost guarantee the requirement was to handle several hundred requests per day, an architect pointed out if we get deluged then we won't be able to handle it, so maybe they were able to get them to allow for one or two thousand requests per day. Now of course we don't know what the architecture of this system is and what the deltas in cost would have been…

I think that is small-think. The technical solution is only part of the problem and scaling up all systems to meet the .1% case seldom makes sense. They were smart to save 5-10%.

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

#385

Post by x0x0 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

devonkim wrote: post #357

dubcanada wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques. You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system…

Yep, USDS and 18F folks would have to agree with you here. The arcane crap that we have to deal with in payment and government information systems is beyond frustrating and makes it extremely tough. I read an article about having to fix a multi-decade Cisco router bug to get CI/CD and automated deployments working after USDS / 18F started setting up faster deployments but still needed to figure out how to deal with l…

The point is that backend pain shouldn't stop you from accepting it on the front end and putting it into a queue. Making the problem of getting the application through backend systems the states' to deal with, not the applicants'.

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

#386

Post by marvin » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

PaulRobinson wrote: post #379

string wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Well, now I'm confused. One of you is wrong. Who is it?

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

#387

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #333

toomuchtodo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They won't take back those jobs, they'll push for agreements that guarantee a safety net. This event forcing America to adopt more progressive policies after experiencing suffering without them wouldn’t be a bad thing. Sometimes things must get worse for them to get better.

> wouldn’t be a bad thing. Well, unless we libertarians were right all along and these progressive policies are unmaintainable over a longer period of time. At this point, I think we're about to find out one way or another.

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

arcadeparade wrote: post #342

Dylan16807 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're worried about the environment you can just add a carbon recapture tax to gas. Banning travel between large areas is ridiculous and wouldn't happen. Especially when a policy of quarantine during outbreaks would be equally effective with a vastly smaller cost.

I think the list of things that people believe are 'ridiculous and would never happen' has greatly reduced in size in the last few weeks. Also, there's a lot more to environmental destruction than excess carbon.

Outside of fuel and labor, the resources spent to enable travel are quite minor. I don't think trying to stop carbon-neutral travel helps the environment in a meaningful way.

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

#389

Post by malandrew » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #54

stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

> This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compound…

> the rise of precarious work

I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is.

Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work.

Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work.

The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.

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

#390

Post by danans » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #366

danans wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's dead from the virus. Nobody murdered him.

He might very well still be alive if the Chinese government hadn't lied about and covered up the existence of the virus.

That's not killing. It's negligent and reprehensible, just like the trivialization of the disease's seriousness by the US president was negligent and reprehensible.

There will be many unnecessary deaths as a result of both leaders' inaction. That doesn't make it murder on either of their parts.

In the US at least, the dismantling of the public health systems in the name of efficiency is something that occurred in several previous administrations of both parties, backed by a public who supported those cuts in order to receive greater investment returns and lower taxes.