Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#381

Post by 7777fps » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #373

7777fps wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. HN is not "an informed audience", it's literally the public. And it's common for software developers to mistake themselves for domain experts on any domain but they aren't. 2. It's not an informed audience if misinformation is not challenged, it's a misinformed audience. 3. The flu is a bad parallel. The flu, while annually killing lots of people, does not overwhelm hospitals like a novel virus does. At best it ma…

Regarding 3, upper estimates for the 2009 swine flu are north of 500k deaths and the 1918 Spanish flu is 50 million. Flus can be very deadly and the poster obviously did not intend to use the word in a diminutive way. You added that interpretation, knowing it is wrong, and then challenged it.

The whole post was playing down the effects of the current pandemic on society. The whole conclusion was that "a flu won't cause [society to break down]".

So yes, the poster was using flu in a diminutive sense. And yes, flu is deadly and a lot worse than a lot of people (who've probably never had flu) realise. But even given that, even recent novel flu strains haven't stressed and shut down the global economy like this pandemic has.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#382

Post by minikites » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

34679 wrote: post #365

minikites wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it only 12.5%? Why not 50%? Or 80%?

2,000,000,000,000 / 250,000,000,000 = 12.5% That's the amount which will be sent out in checks directly to families. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-seeking-85...

Yes, I'm asking why the amount is not larger than that, because it needs to be much larger.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#383

Post by toasterlovin » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

swimfar wrote: post #253

toasterlovin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is $600/week enough to live comfortably in London? It’s not enough to live comfortably in most large cities in the US. Our mortgage payment is $2200/month. And we live in the most affordable large city on the West Coast (Portland, Oregon). LA, SF, and Seattle would all be much more.

If by we, you mean two people, then it's $1200/week for the both of you. So that leaves you $2600/month after housing (maybe not including taxes, utilities, repairs). That doesn't seem too bad. Also, you're talking about a mortgage for a property worth over $400k. It's unreasonable to expect that unemployment would be enough to pay everyone's mortgage, regardless of how much it is.

Yeah, if I were planning for that level of income, then we could probably comfortable cover our bills. My wife would have to already have a job. And we'd have a pretty sizable commute to get to work. So, bills would get covered, but life would be a lot less comfortable (though comfortable when compared to not being able to afford the basics).

But Portland is pretty affordable. $400k doesn't get you much in California (there are foreclosures in South Central listed for that much on Zillow right now).

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#384

Post by themagician » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #337

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many places being unemployed pays more than being employed. You're being downvoted because you overgeneralized ("many places"), but this is actually true in some scenarios. See "Unemployed workers could get more than 100% of their paycheck under the coronavirus bill" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/how-unemployed-workers-could... It's a perverse incentive to getting people back to work, so I expect this loophole…

> It's a perverse incentive to getting people back to work Unemployment isn't forever and the additional $600/week is only for the current pandemic situation and expires as of July 31. This is not a windfall for those who are now suddenly without a job. But more importantly, someone who has just been laid off has close to zero employment options right now. They might be able to find a short-term job at a grocery stor…

People probably haven’t figured it out yet. Why work for $15/hr at a grocery store when you can make $20/hr sitting at home? Sure, not forever. But that grocery store job ain’t forever either. The UI benefits go until at least July 31. That’s probably longer than most of these temp jobs.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#385

Post by throwanem » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #319

MiroF wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our concern is a supply chain meltdown when you have millions infected and sick. This is an absurdist prediction - we are looking at maximum 2 million 75+ year olds dying with some much smaller number of people of different ages. This is the group least likely to be involved in the day-to-day functioning of our supply chains. Honestly, where are people coming up with these doomsday predictions?

Have you watched the supply chains? Spikes in demand followed by demand collapse have already wreaked havoc. From what I read from people from that business, there's total chaos. And even if the elderly bear most of the risk, countries are shutting down completely for their sake - and that means companies stopping operations, leading to further disruptions. Also this article: US already has 10 million unemployed, and…

As isolation habits go, it's slightly safer to overindulge in news than in liquor, but not much less unhealthy.

If you're worried about a real collapse, then do what you can to prepare, sure - ideally remembering that, by all the accounts of people who've been through such collapses and later told the tale, what really gets you through in the long run isn't liquor, smokes, or bullets, but relationships.

You don't need to soak in the news to do that. Indeed, soaking in the news probably makes it harder. Anxiety can get paralyzing, and there's a lot in the news to be anxious about. But it's also worth remembering that what's going to happen is going to happen whether you obsess over it or not. It can't be hurried, helped, or fought. It can only be dealt with as best you can, and from here it seems like you're not really helping yourself by what you're doing just now. So, maybe consider trying doing something else for a while? You know, just to see if it feels any different.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#386

Post by throwanem » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

omilu wrote: post #242

binaryorganic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math doesn't check out. 5% of people that get it (among a wide range of ages) require serious medical care for weeks. And if we send 5% of any population to the hospital in a given month the death rate for ALL diseases goes way up.

>> 5% of people that get it The number of people that have it is under reported, so the death rate and hospitalization rates are exaggerated.

It still sends as many people to the hospitals as it sends to the hospitals, weak epidemiological data or no. If that's more than the hospitals can handle, people start dying who otherwise wouldn't. That, too, is not an indicator subject to measurement bias imposed by lousy testing regimes. It's also a thing that is happening. We will see more of it before we see less.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#387

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #368

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We won't have to provide them health care, food, clothing, and luxury items. With the exception of health care, aren't they buying that stuff from their own savings? Do we hand out luxury items? Am I saving for my retirement for no reason? Are the immune compromised also simply drains?

>With the exception of health care, aren't they buying that stuff from their own savings? How much wheat does your savings grow? How many pairs of pants does it make?

I guess it depend on where my bank currently has the savings invested. That seems to be a pretty common problem with all savings - stock investment at best being an abstraction of a companies value and in no ways actually linked to how much wheat is produced by said company.

Either way, you dodged my question about the immune compromised. If you're trying to sanitize this whole thing as simply economic numbers, where those who take should be removed for those who produce, you're forgetting about those people, as well as all the other producers who will die.

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#388

Post by SilasX » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

stupandaus wrote: post #2

Building on my analysis from last week: 1. This week's 6.6M new jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 2. This is incremental to the 3.3M new jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks. 3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February [1], so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 (~10M incremental j…

To save everyone the search, here's the link to parent's analysis from last week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693012

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#389

Post by tmountain » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #164

Retric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While many people will likely get very sick, they only stay that way for ~2-6 weeks. Further, around half of people below 50 will show minimal if any symptoms. So, while most non essential jobs are shut down we are likely to see a surplus of labor in terms of trucking etc. My guess is plenty of essential jobs will have heavy overtime while many people are unemployed. Simply because the disruptions are going to cascad…

"The economic impact is largely going to be a question of how much do we shut down to save lives?" i think about that a lot. I have so much respect for the task force setup to work on this, but man, i'm glad i'm not on it.

That thinking negates the economic impact that a bunch of people dying is going to have on the economy. There are really two options here.

1) A huge impact on the economy and fewer people die.

2) A huge impact on the economy and lots of people die.

Nobody has the capability to predict the real outcome of one scenario over the other from an economic perspective.

If the US does everything perfectly, we'll probably lose 200k people to COVID-19. If we "reopen the economy" prematurely, the number could easily be 5x to 10x that figure.

Loss of human life has a very tangible impact on the economy, so folks should not be thinking of this as a binary decision ("do we save lives vs do we save the economy").

Re: Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]

#390

Post by throwanem » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

agarden wrote: post #155

adrianN wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. But we don't know the true fatality rate yet and we won't know it before it's way too late to act. I don't think it's okay to literally risk millions of lives on the off chance that we missed 95% of the cases with our testing.

That is a reasonable line of thought, but incomplete. How many lives are we risking by tanking the global economy? That seems like it should be a more quantifiable risk. It becomes a trade-off between the amount of lives we can calculate will be lost via our pandemic-prevention measures (and to what degree of certainty) and the number that might be lost without them (and to what degree of certainty). The trade-off is…

Okay, but you have to look at both sides of it. How many people aren't dying in road traffic accidents that don't happen because of isolation? How many people aren't dying of diseases they won't develop because reduced economic output has also reduced the output of carcinogens and toxins produced by manufacturing that's not being done? And like that - those are just the first two examples off the top of my head; there are more.

I don't see much mention of this among the "back to work at any cost" crowd, and I wonder why. It seems like a pretty obvious consideration.