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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

#571

Post by dwaltrip »

sodafountan wrote: post #520
tharne wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uhm, what? Or maybe they're just doing it out of convenience? Have you never payed a fee for convenience? Have you tipped in a restaurant? Have you taken the highway instead of the back roads and payed a toll? Have you ever had food delivered to you? Congrats you're doing the same thing people who pull money out of an ATM are doing you financially illiterate rube.

FYI, I liked the points you made. However, personal insults ruin discussion and lower the quality of the forum, so I downvoted this comment.

I can certainly relate to getting fired up at foolish comments on the internet! It's tough sometimes... heh. Cheers, I hope you have a good day.

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

#572

Post by refurb »

mdarens wrote: post #557
refurb wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only time the welfare state in the US has actually gotten smaller was Clinton's welfare reform in the 1990's. That was easily offset by things like Medicare Part D in the 2000's. People keep talking about "stripping away the safety net", but when I look at entitlement spending, it just keeps getting bigger.

clinton's slashing of the welfare state is a matter of degree, not the only instance of purported beneficiaries losing benefits. medicare part d doesn't allow the government to negotiate prices and thus functions more as a subsidy for the pharmaceutical industry than people for whom it is ostensibly intended to prescription access. lots of games can be played with budgets (such as block grants, one notorious example…

medicare part d doesn't allow the government to negotiate prices

The gov't can't negotiate prices, but the private insurers who manage Part D plans absolutely can.

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

#573

Post by ars »

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…

If those companies go under they take a lot of jobs with them. It seems more efficient to prop them up instead of making direct payments to the employees who would have lots their jobs.

Especially since a lot of the companies are only asking for loans, not handouts.

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

#574

Post by tuna-piano »

rubber_duck wrote: post #35

And this is just the start. While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts. In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the…

I think this is a false choice.

As Bill gates said, we can't say- "Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts"

The truth is that it seems our choice is relatively simple:

1) Allow the virus to spread rapidly, overload the health system, kill many people, until herd immunity is reached.

2)Do partial shut down measures, some partial efforts at testing and contact tracing, let the virus continue for a long time, and more slowly reach option 1.

3)Do strong shut down measures until the virus is able to be controlled by a strong testing+contact tracing regime.

Iran (seems to have?) chosen option 1.

Italy started with option 2, and will hopefully move into option 3.

Option 3 is the only acceptable option that doesn't destroy the economy and health systems.

Unchecked, 10 cases of this virus will turn into 100s of thousands. That is the same with 10 cases in March, or 10 cases in May or 10 cases in any month.

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

#575

Post by s1artibartfast »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #464
mrfusion wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mental health too. How many new Alcoholics will this create? How many suicides?

It's interesting that NOW people are concerned with this impact from the economy, yet when people became alcoholics from getting fired when the economy was good, no one seems to care.

A healthy and growing economy with low unemployment is a boon to the poor, sick, and alcoholic. The entire purpose of pursuing a healthy economy is that improves the quality of life for the citizens. Continuing to hold this position now is not hypocritical.

There is always a tradeoff.

The virus will kill X and reduce the quality of life for Y people. The economic disruption will kill Z people and reduce the quality of life for Z2.

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

#576

Post by bigbob2 »

steveeq1 wrote: post #295
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that black and white reasoning is that on some level "the market" represents people's livelihoods and eventually there comes a point where it's reasonable to say "X people should die to prevent Y amount of hardship for Z people".

I agree. It's easy to fall in the trap of "human life above all else", but there comes a time where tradeoffs become reasonable. Society already does this with the automobile. 36,000 people die every year for the convenience of driving, which I feel is a completely reasonable tradeoff, and this is not a controversy, at least in the united states.

That seems to only include the accident mortality rate. It would likely be even higher if you included deaths from automobile air pollution.

Unrelated but curious, why do you feel it's a completely reasonable tradeoff? In my mind, automobiles have led to a class (and historically race) divide which further segregates and polarizes sects of society.

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

#577

Post by 0xFFC »

saiya-jin wrote: post #407
viklove wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Solzhenitsyn predicted this like 30 years ago.

Not having tolerance for suffering. Lack of courage, destruction of masculinity.

P.S. people can downvote me as much as they want. But that is not going to change the facts.

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

#578

Post by Dylan16807 »

GordonS wrote: post #532
Dylan16807 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's a much simpler problem that they didn't make it semi-fast because it didn't need to be semi-fast. When "hundreds of times the usual level" is still only 50 page loads per second, and 10 milliseconds of CPU per page would be extreme overkill for anything written in a reasonable way, it actually is straightforward.

It's not just CPU though, but IO - I've worked with horrible enterprise systems before that had response times measured in seconds .

Even 5 seconds will work if the actions can overlap. If it can't do things in parallel then we have issues much more fundamental than "performance", and there's no defending it as a competent system.

(That is not to say it's necessarily the devs' fault.)

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

#579

Post by GordonS »

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?

I'm British, but used to work with a lot of Americans, all white-collar workers in the oil and gas industry, across a few different companies.

It seemed to me that the US has a toxic overtime culture, where your perceived value to the company was based in large part by how much time you were at your desk. And of course, you didn't get paid for that overtime. I don't think I met a single person who worked less than 50+ hours a week, every week.

I did ask about this, and was always told it was "normal".

Also, and I might be remembering this wrongly, I think employees only got ten days annual leave.

This was all in a single industry, in a single state, so I don't know how well the observation extrapolates, but it was my perception at the time.

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

#580

Post by zaroth »

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.

It’s not just game theory, it’s actual real world efficiency. Which translates into jobs and salaries. Reducing baseline capital efficiency drives up all baseline costs. These costs are passed on to consumers and act as a drag on the economy.

It would make no sense to do that in response to a black swan event.

Let’s say small business has to keep 6 months of expenses in reserve instead of the typical 3 months rule of thumb. For the same amount of cash on hand that means you can afford half the monthly expenses.

It’s not just a matter of “hoard more cash”. That cash had to come from prior quarter’s net income. Revenue you don’t invest drags down growth (a.k.a hiring). Revenue you don’t spend is also taxed, adding further drag on the business.

Basically what this proposal is suggesting is to drastically reduce the “money multiplier”. This shrinks GDP.

If the government forces your company to shut down for weeks, I expect them to pay for it. It doesn’t make any sense for small businesses to self-insure against government mandated shutdowns. That would simply be a recipe for destroying small business.

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