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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

#401

Post by tathougies »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #318
tathougies wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The authority was never given to the federal government. Key difference. The federal government cannot grant that which it does not have

We're saying the same thing. No need to be pedantic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights

No, it's different. Delegated to the states implies that someone else had the power and gave it to the states. That is not true. The states always had the power, and have had it since they formed, and it was not removed upon admission to the United States.

It's like saying France was delegated the power to enforce a national quarantine. That is simply not the case.

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

#402

Post by tathougies »

pjc50 wrote: post #371
tathougies wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 star…

Yes, quantitative easing is okay. But that is a lot different than the direct money being given to individuals and businesses by Congress. Especially the direct payments to individuals means printing money.

What the fed is doing is printing money now that will be destroyed later, or held in reserve. Either way, it is backed by actual financial instruments (whatever equity or bonds or notes they're buying).

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

#403

Post by vkou »

chatmasta wrote: post #282
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the depression the US emerged as the global hegemon because of major shifts in power that happened as a part of WWII. The US was uniquely adapted to grow to be the global super power at the same time that European nations were taking a huge hit from the war. I suspect this will ultimately lead to China as the new hegemon. We're seeing key advantages to the Chinese state that the US cannot adapt to. Decades of p…

I’m not sure about this. China is, rightfully, being blamed for the initial outbreak of the virus and their failure to contain it. I think when the dust settles, we’re going to see a rapid decoupling from China as countries look inward to strengthen their domestic supply chains. I have a hard time seeing China emerging as a winner from this crisis.

Given how poorly the rest of the world reacted after getting two months of advance warning, I can't think of more than three countries that could have contained this outbreak.

Fingerpointing at China when they reacted far more decisively then the West did seems... A tad off the mark.

If this originated in Milan, Kansas, or Bangalore, we'd all be in the exact same boat today.

Hell, if the outbreak started in Kansas, we would probably have a hundred thousand dead by now, with our supreme leader still insisting that the virus will magically go away in three weeks.

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

#404

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

x0x0 wrote: post #385
devonkim wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

So are you applying for the 44k/yr job to fix it? No, most of are not.

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

#405

Post by tharne »

ithinkinstereo wrote: post #289
csomar wrote: post #146

> A week ago, he said he had “a good middle-class job” which paid him $35.50 an hour plus health care and retirement benefits. Now he is struggling to figure out how he’ll pay a $300 electric bill and $1,000 in rent for his townhouse. He also lost his health insurance. You make $35.5/hour in (I suppose?) a stable job but if the work stops for a week, you struggle with a $300 bill? I know some people are living payche…

I went to my local 7-11 a couple of weeks ago to get some cash at the ATM. Next to it was a garbage bin for throwing away your receipt. Out of curiosity, I went through about a dozen and not a single one had a balance above $1,000. Most were below $500. There is little financial literacy in this country. Basic lessons about opening a bank account, the difference between checkings and savings, etc. is not something th…

That's a pretty biased sample. Most people with financial literacy aren't withdrawing cash at a 7/11. They're doing it at their own bank branch to avoid paying any fees.

The reasoning here is circular. At the ATM in 7/11 that would only be used by people who aren't financially literate enough to absorb excessive fees, we find evidence of poor finances and poor financial literacy.

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

#406

Post by jrumbut »

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…

This reminds me of an old story about an engineer who took initiative and automated the accounts receivable process at his company, now they get paid 25% faster! He shows his boss and gets a promotion.

He decides to do it again, this time with accounts payable, and is promptly fired.

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

#407

Post by saiya-jin »

viklove wrote: post #380
saiya-jin wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rainbo…

Genocide or not (nobody knows what is happening in those camps, so I would not use that word unless we have some solid hard evidence), we talk about consequences of covid on societies. And Chinese one seems to be faring much much better than most others.

I just saw how a video of Chinese doctors dressing up for a visit to a covid patient. My doctor wife just stared with open mouth - nothing like that is done here in Switzerland. They use super basic equipment, which is simply not enough to protect long term doctors exposed to patients. We simply don't have the mindset to handle this situation seriously. We will learn eventually, but it will be a painful lesson for our society.

As somebody on HN mentioned a few weeks ago, China defined its bottom with closure and quarantine, and now they are bouncing back. While west is still in free fall.

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

#408

Post by malandrew »

yks wrote: post #348
wmeredith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead Good luck. Their base doesn't care. I was speaking with my father a couple days ago, who is a US Board-Certified surgeon and ran his own practice for 40 years. He's a smart guy, but firmly lives in the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh bubble. He was saying how he was hoping this crisis would put the final nail in the coffin ... for the corrupt democrats.…

what is the reasoning (genuinely curious). Are democrats somehow failing America re: COVID-19?

Not Democrats as a whole. Nancy Pelosi and one or two other congress people in particular. As I understand it from various sources spanning the political spectrum, both the Republicans and Democrats that were in Washington DC had productive bipartisan talks over the weekend and had largely hashed out a bill that both sides agreed on. Then Nancy Pelosi flew back from California and injected several additional things into the bill that were highly partisan and permanent fixtures aligned with policy Democrats had been pushing pre-crisis. This act by Pelosi derailed partisan efforts. Liberal media lauded these additions. Conservative media condemned them. Anything that is added that gets opposite reception by partisan media is pretty much the definition of partisan.

Any bill that is a response to a crisis should short and specific to the crisis at hand with no permanent changes to how business is conducted long term. Politicians taking advantage of a crisis is how we get disastrous policy like the Patriot Act, no-fly lists and FISA courts.

Any long term policy changes should be debated and decided upon months and years after the crisis has been averted.

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

#409

Post by [deleted] »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #257
nck4222 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments…

I'm kind of confused by what it means for a gig worker to become unemployed; specifically the criteria. Is it along the lines of "I normally drive Uber. There are no riders anymore. Therefore, I can't collect income?" I mean, it'd be hard to verify such a statement is fact. A gig worker could just stop logging into Uber, then file an unemployment application. I hope there's an angle to this I'm missing.

[deleted]

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

#410

Post by tstewart161 »

marvin wrote: post #383
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve heard this point made a lot, that these “bailouts” are in any way equivalent to previous bailouts based on poor management and immoral business practices.

These aren’t the same. This shutdown (however justified) is because of the govt. If the government demands you shut down your business, or that you can’t go to work, you deserve to be compensated for that. If the government hadn’t mandated it, young people would still be out working and spending. Those businesses would be fine. If the govt wants to shut everything down, they have to pay people for it.

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