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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

#661

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

luckylion wrote: post #559
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US military isn't funded to respond to potential threats, it's funded to be a threat. It's like Google giving Android away, they'll make that money back multiple times on other deals. > The economy is important - but maybe our economy needs to be a little less growth oriented and a little more resilient. I absolutely agree, but I also believe that's not going to happen. And it's not because there's some cabal tha…

> The US military isn't funded to respond to potential threats, it's funded to be a threat.

This is pointless, circular logic. It is funded to be a threat to defend its interests, from threats, that may never materialize.

It will change in the right circumstances. We may be closer to them than most think.

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

#662

Post by __s »

threatofrain wrote: post #212
minikites wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There a lot of well paid individuals who have the job of convincing regular people that climate change is a hoax and lots of regular people believe them.

Are these regular people citizens of a democracy? Then the chain of responsibility stops there. No greater entity will swoop in to help if the citizens of a democracy can’t be trusted to make the kinds of decisions confronting them. It’s only a democracy if you can keep it.

Global warming being a serious issue has widespread support. Unfortunately a democracy which is asked "Trump or Biden?" isn't really asking the population an important question

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

#663

Post by s1artibartfast »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #660
s1artibartfast wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Quality of life is not a defined term. There is a difference between trading my life, or trading a new laptop now instead of saving for it. That is what we are looking at here. So even if my quality of life goes down, food/health/shelter contributes the majority to that, probably 85%. The rest is all worthless junk. If the economy is failing to the extent that food is in short supply - that is different. There is no…

Ignoring quality of life, there is still a death tradeoff to be considered.

Economic conditions have real and immediate health consequences too. For example, in 2010 US unemployment briefly grew about 6% to a total of 10% in the US and there were 40,000 additional deaths from cancer alone[1]. When you consider heart disease, other indications, drug abuse, and suicide, the numbers are much greater. The often cited number of 40k for each percent unemployment may not be far off if these factors are taken together.

This trend also holds true in the OECD where social programs are more common because there are still budgetary constraints on centralized healthcare.

[1]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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

#664

Post by ImaCake »

irq11 wrote: post #652
ImaCake wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People just dont get exponentials. They don't understand that if you get a total of a million cases in a week's time, most of those cases appear on day 6. They can't see how 1/7th of those cases turns into a million. Every country should be hoping that whoever calls the shots understands math.

People just don’t get sigmoids. They don’t understand that herd immunity quickly starts to slow the local spread of a virus in a region, and that you can’t model the entire population of a country like bouncy balls in a box. Every country should be hoping that whomever calls the shots understands math better than the average HN commenter.

This might be a logistic curve in the long term. But if this runs wild it will look like an exponential for a while longer. If your doubling time is 3 and a bit days. You can't just sit back saying "the inflexion point is coming any day now!". You need to do something yesterday.

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

#665

Post by mikorym »

rdslw wrote: post #590
cloverich wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most businesses do not have capacity to pay workers and rather than hold out, some are terminating immediately so their employees can claim unemployment benefits. I know for example of Dental offices (which in Texas are mandated closed until April 21st I believe) are doing this, but have every intention of re-hiring the same staff the moment they are allowed to re-open. I'm not sure this is the typical case, but its…

I have to say, agressiveness of USA capitalism is shocking to watch. moral bonus: ability to 'explain' it that is just because you can claim unemployment benefit.

Just my personal opinion here, but one should be careful to view the pandemic through the socialism vs. capitalism lens. I think it's better to focus on the particulars of events rather classifying them as in on of the two camps.

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

#666

Post by Melting_Harps »

josephorjoe wrote: post #487
MattSayar wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround. >IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because of the high volume of claims, we are asking that you help us help you and our greater community. >If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter A - M, file a claim on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or after 12 noon on Saturday. >If you need to file an un…

Ooooh, like gas rationing in the 70s.

> Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround.

> Ooooh, like gas rationing in the 70s.

I wasn't born back then, but I heard about that being based on License plates at a few car meetups by the older guys in the group and I had the same thought when I heard that on CPR.

Odd, but it could work if you have total compliance; lets see how that pans out.

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

#667

Post by yellowapple »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #404
x0x0 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recall that looking like a fortune last time I was laid off. I would've applied for that in a heartbeat.

Now, not so much, but if my circumstances change, then who knows?

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

#668

Post by cko »

jachee wrote: post #452
tibbydudeza wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the knockon effect on landlords ... many bossiness want some sort of rental relief or those with limited cash flow are saying they are not going to pay.

Good. Screw the landlords. Let them liquidate and bring the market back down to earth a bit.

Do landlords drive up prices? I know for residential properties, homeowners are willing to pay way higher prices than what makes sense for landlords.

I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords. Do people get angry at the bank for lending money so they can buy a house?

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

#669

Post by luckylion »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #661
luckylion wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military isn't funded to respond to potential threats, it's funded to be a threat. It's like Google giving Android away, they'll make that money back multiple times on other deals. > The economy is important - but maybe our economy needs to be a little less growth oriented and a little more resilient. I absolutely agree, but I also believe that's not going to happen. And it's not because there's some cabal tha…

> The US military isn't funded to respond to potential threats, it's funded to be a threat. This is pointless, circular logic. It is funded to be a threat to defend its interests, from threats, that may never materialize. It will change in the right circumstances. We may be closer to them than most think.

The point of being the guy with the largest stick is primarily that everybody has to do what you say. A secondary function that emerges after you do that is to ensure that those with the smaller sticks don't gang up on you and pay you back. My point is that "defend its interest" isn't it, it's "advance its interest". The US wouldn't be where they are today if there was no military on earth, their huge success is based on the military being there to bully other countries to comply with political demands, or to simply regime change if they don't.

That sure might change, and it won't be pretty for US citizens, but it will be great for plenty of countries. Until they get under China's rule, of course.

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

#670

Post by yellowapple »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #606
cloverich wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> 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.

Ding ding ding. I've gotten my share of flak on a couple occasions for working in IT without a degree.

These people looking down on me are probably right that they're smarter than me and more knowledgeable than me and could probably code circles around me. I know I ain't getting a FAANG job any time soon. I know full well that there are gaps in my knowledge that someday I'd be interested in filling once I've got enough saved up to try college again. Doesn't mean I can't be productive, too, nor does it mean I can't teach myself what I need to know to get the job done. Maybe duct-taping systems together with MSSQL sprocs and proprietary programming languages/runtimes and shell scripts and CSVs ain't the most glamorous work compared to playing around with blockchains and neural nets and Jupyter notebooks, but it's work that needs done regardless, and I ain't too proud to do it, even if it's putting grey hairs on my head decades before they've got any business being there.

"Top-down" v. "bottom-up" is definitely a good way of putting it. The code I write ain't pretty, but it's gonna do exactly what I need it to do to solve the user's problem, and chances are it's solving problems for which there are no elegant solutions. It ain't gonna run like a Lamborghini, but that's okay; I just need it to run like a Tacoma.

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