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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

#601

Post by rubber_duck »

tuna-piano wrote: post #574
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…

You can also collect data on the risk groups during the current shutdown period, provide the infrastructure for isolating the risk groups (ie. setup delivery services, organise isolated accommodation, etc.), triage appropriately in the case of spikes and then transition in to plan 2.

Considering the numbers of infected people confirmed alone and the percentage of asymptomatic cases contact tracing and testing sounds about as realistic as waiting on a cure.

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

#602

Post by cvlasdkv »

dragonwriter wrote: post #508
danharaj wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords. They are the very same buzzwords that were used to justify the cuts to our supplies and offshoring of our supply chains that led in part to this crisis. It is absurd on its face to summarize Germany's ascendancy to "efficiency" and "innovation" when, you know, complicated geopolitics is a thing. It is literally fluffy propaganda.

> "efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords. No, efficiency and innovation are real things. Neoliberals tend to think that they are areas that neoliberal policy produces better outcomes on, and in the case of efficiency at least there is a strong theoretical case that this is true in a very narrow range of hyper-idealized conditions. People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovati…

> People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important (though perhaps not of as paramount importance as neoliberals tend to portray them), but often disagree with neoliberals as to the optimality of neoliberal policies at producing them outside of the kind of simplified conditions that dominate the first couple weeks of undergraduate economics classes.

People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important _up to the point where needs are met for all_. No leftist uses efficiency/innovation as a target (and if they do chase it for the sake of productivity they are by definition not left of capital).

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

#603

Post by cvlasdkv »

brightball wrote: post #562
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…

The issue on the framing of this topic also boils down to who asks it. I often hear it framed as: "How much is a person's life worth?" or some general reference to stock values. But when people say "economy" this is what it really means: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734 Cash flow, supply chains, jobs, bankruptcy, debt, poverty, famine and more than likely families breaking up (financial stress is th…

We should not pretend like we understand the "economic fallout", and that operating under the current "rules" is the only mode of existence. Economics and capitalism are social constructs after all. _Nobody_ understands economics well enough to make statements with any certainty. At least epidemiology is better understood.

Not to mention what happens when you take into account the positive effects a recession and drop in production has to: air quality, worker health, general mortality, and climate change?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00210-0

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

#604

Post by cvlasdkv »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #598
ImaCake wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they do. But they were just way to small.

They used to be bigger. Now they're Lean, and exist for the sake of ticking a checkbox.

Privatization and "efficiency" on all things of national interest do that. It is why deficit hawks are misleading their constituents with every sentence.

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

#606

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

cloverich wrote: post #243
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…

Frankly we have a formal education system that is actively hostile to training people to do jobs, and instead teaches "fundamentals" and "how to learn". There's tremendous support for those concepts, though I personally consider them bogus. If we truly want cross trained people, the education system is the one that needs to change. Otherwise the funding and time that could be used for jobs training will always be soa…

> If we truly want cross trained people, the education system is the one that needs to change.

Absolutely and it goes beyond the profiteering that people typically rant about. The barriers to obtaining a degree for the sake of obtaining a degree are high in itself. Then we add bureaucracy and a bottom-up approach to teaching that I think excludes a good amount of potentially qualified people that would otherwise do great.

Software development is a great example of highly successful people that either dropped out of high school or college because they discovered a top-down approach can lead to the same outcome as a bottom-up academic one. Top-down example being: you want to build an app, you learn only what you need to build it (e.g. html, css, and javascript) then with continued years of applying that experience in related areas you naturally acquire more of the fundamentals of computer science.

I don't think it's appreciated here on HN because a good chunk of the members have higher education degrees and can't see past their own bias, hence the down-votes and lack of actual responses. I've seen this topic appear before and with it comes condescending responses towards those that don't hold a degree. This was especially evident on the HN platform when people learned Edward Snowden was a drop-out.

The current attitude towards this is well rooted in society and still a hard one to break. Thankfully tech companies are starting to come around to the idea.

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

#608

Post by jshevek »

cultus wrote: post #597
jshevek wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hospitals will be overwhelmed much more, and there will be far more deaths if we don't "flatten the curve." In addition, workers will stay home anyway (which many are already doing), collapsing the economy regardless. It is indeed a false dichotomy. If anything, just irresponsibly letting nature run its course will be worse. Besides, recessions have been consistently associated with decreases of death rates. There is…

> It is indeed a false dichotomy

What do you think 'false dichotomy' means? How does it apply, here?

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

#609

Post by brightball »

cvlasdkv wrote: post #603
brightball wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue on the framing of this topic also boils down to who asks it. I often hear it framed as: "How much is a person's life worth?" or some general reference to stock values. But when people say "economy" this is what it really means: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734 Cash flow, supply chains, jobs, bankruptcy, debt, poverty, famine and more than likely families breaking up (financial stress is th…

We should not pretend like we understand the "economic fallout", and that operating under the current "rules" is the only mode of existence. Economics and capitalism are social constructs after all. _Nobody_ understands economics well enough to make statements with any certainty. At least epidemiology is better understood. Not to mention what happens when you take into account the positive effects a recession and dro…

That's fair. It's a lot of moving parts to the system.

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

#610

Post by mdarens »

refurb wrote: post #572
mdarens wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and what effect has that had on drug prices in the us compared to other countries?
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