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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

wsj.com

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

#521

Post by jimbokun »

duxup wrote: post #17

Semi tangent, about dealing with mass unemployment. I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work in the US. There's a lot of recrimination, and even self loathing about being poor or out of work in the US. It doesn't seem based in reality and certainly isn't helpful. Perhaps it is time we realize that much like a pandemic things in this world change fast and we need to be able to help…

Reading your post made Andrew Yang's voice pop into my head:

"And do you know what would really help those people while they retrain for new jobs? A thousand bucks a month!"

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

#522

Post by bigbob2 »

tstewart161 wrote: post #410
marvin wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

The alternative seems to be to let millions get sick en masse, potentially leading to similar shutdowns for longer time periods (i.e. failing to "flatten the curve"). I don't think you can claim those businesses would be fine unless you define a timeline to go with your assertion; say, "those businesses would be fine for n weeks."

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

#523

Post by chrisjc »

tonyhb wrote: post #319
zaroth wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. His point is that game theory and economic principles favour the leaner, therefore every company moves to max. efficiency with JIT supply chains and max leverage. The only way around this is regulation if we want to be able to withstand crises _without_ bailouts. That's currently not the situation, which is why bailouts happen.

Agree with you completely, but how can we regulate domestically and expect companies to survive when the external competition doesn't have to abide by the same kinds of regulations.

Edit: the obvious answer is tariffs, etc... but we haven't seen any real action like this until recently

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

#524

Post by jshevek »

cultus wrote: post #519
jshevek wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"sacrificing millions for the sake of the market" This is an unfair way to characterize this difficult issue.

No it is exactly how the issue should be characterized. Besides, it is a false dichotomy. There will be an economic collapse either way.

> Besides, it is a false dichotomy. There will be an economic collapse either way.

In what way is the fact that there will be two different levels of economic costs in two scenarios a 'false dichotomy'?

Edit: I think this is worth clarifying. I may misunderstand you, but it looks like there are two errors in your post. The first is treating differing scenarios with differing outcomes as if they were the same, simply because they have some facet in common.

The second is a mis-use of the term 'false dichotomy'. If you believe that a choice between two options will have the same outcome, that is not a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy, a special case of the fallacy of exhaustive hypothesis. Here, one wrongly assumes that there are only two possible choices and uses this assumption to arrive at some seemingly logically derived conclusion.

My apologies if I've misunderstood your intended meaning from your short post.

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

#525

Post by lgleason »

ss2003 wrote: post #173
big_chungus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst-case projection is 1.7 million: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-est... . If the media hadn't spent weeks fearmongering and spinning this as some killer exotic plague (rather than something that hits at-risk populations much harder but is survivable for most others). Only a few percent of younger people have needed intensive care. It won't make too much of a difference anyway; we'll…

We should be cutting the bloated military budget not entitlements.

So far, if the 3rd bill makes it into law, we will be at well over 2 trillion dollars trying to keep the economy from imploding. Many say that it won't be enough and we will be looking at more bills and A LOT more spending. Yearly military expenditures are at 700 billion a year.

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

#526

Post by RHSeeger »

marmaduke wrote: post #492
taylodl wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes but for every architect there's an antiarchitect saying YAGNI!!1

You spelled pragmatist wrong.

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

#527

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

luckylion wrote: post #495
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is this is a good pandemic to practice on. We are very very lucky, to even be debating the economy right now. If this virus was far deadlier and affected young people, I think the tone on this very site would change in a heartbeat.

Sure, it's great practice, but practice that comes with heavy costs. And who knows when/where/if the next pandemic hits. If it's not within the next 10 years, the lessons may have been forgotten and the practice was expensive and useless.

A lot of things come with heavy costs - the US military is funded billions upon billions year after year for a threat that may never come. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan probably at this point are more costly than the bailout we are giving to the economy.

In fact, most of the hard problems the world faces will require investments that take longer than 10 years to return on.

The economy is important - but maybe our economy needs to be a little less growth oriented and a little more resilient.

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

#528

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

cheeze wrote: post #438
dpcan wrote: post #223

Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Thankfully my wife is still working - but she's an administrator at a Nursing Home and people there are starting to get tested - and she's panicking. They are days from having no nurses. She's worried about cleaning crews being sick. S…

> Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Please don't take this as me being captain hindsight here, but I think that this pandemic has reallllly shown the need for an emergency fund. IMO if you're sole prop or contractor, you owe it to yourself to have a bigger emergency fu…

perhaps having better social safety nets like 90% of the developed world would be better, no?

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

#529

Post by [deleted] »

jrumbut wrote: post #406
taylodl wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#530

Post by Pfhreak »

cheeze wrote: post #438
dpcan wrote: post #223

Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Thankfully my wife is still working - but she's an administrator at a Nursing Home and people there are starting to get tested - and she's panicking. They are days from having no nurses. She's worried about cleaning crews being sick. S…

> Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Please don't take this as me being captain hindsight here, but I think that this pandemic has reallllly shown the need for an emergency fund. IMO if you're sole prop or contractor, you owe it to yourself to have a bigger emergency fu…

In an country with healthy safety nets and an economy that fairly pays everyone, sure, I'd say maybe they should have saved more.

We're not that economy, and we're not that country, and it's totally unreasonable to expect that everyone can put aside months of emergency funds.

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