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U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#71

Post by jfengel »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #41
surge wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, SS is already in a risky position, most millenials question if it'll even be standing when it comes to their turn (especially if population drops since they're having less children who will pay in), what they're suggesting would make it worse.

Yeah, except that’s not true at all. SS is not in a risky position. The worst that can happen to it is current SS receipts do not pay out enough money for the current SS recipients to live a reasonable quality of life. SS is a transfer of funds from current earners to current retirees. People trying to scare people about SS talk about the trust fund depleting, but the trust fund is simply a bonus that was created to…

"Set aside" is a funny way to put it. They "set it aside" in US Treasury bonds, causing a massive growth in the US government -- who still managed to run a deficit on top of that because they also cut taxes. That artificially boosted the GDP in a way that made a few people much richer while leaving everybody else flat at best. Now, their children inherit an oversized government that they must either cut or pay for with a big tax hike.

The people who pocketed that money have resisted any attempt to put the tax burden on them, and indeed, have demanded more and more tax cuts. The next generation is thus not only paying for their parents' retirements, as per the Social Security social contract, but also financing their parents' massive debt. The Social Security Trust Fund helped enable that by making a massive government debt seem smaller than it would otherwise have been.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#72

Post by SilasX »

nostrademons wrote: post #58
kortilla wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically lowering the SS age doesn't cost any money either. The government controls the money supply; they could just print money and hand it out. The government doesn’t do this though. That’s why there is confidence in the USD.

The government does, actually: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power "to collect taxes; to coin money and regulate its value; provide for punishment for counterfeiting", among other powers. It's just that Congress has delegated this to multiple independent organizations within the government. The U.S. Mint makes physical coins and paper money. The U.S. Treasury issues gover…

Parent meant the government has a credible policy of not printing away obligations like that, not that the government doesn't have the authority to do so.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#73

Post by claudeganon »

kortilla wrote: post #38
claudeganon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just like how poor people can get 1.5 trillion in subsidized payday loans to cover the gap between pay checks...oh wait. It’s absolutely a bailout.

If a payday loan required full collateral this comparison would make sense.

Title loans on cars and second mortgages do just that, yet the people borrowing never get bailed out the same way by the fed.

And guess what, medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US, insurance companies are refusing to guarantee coverage for Coronavirus treatment, and the Trump administration just blocked states expanding Medicaid to do the same.

Might need to think about systemic risk a little differently.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#75

Post by vsareto »

throw51319 wrote: post #61
vsareto wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I had just switched to pentesting, was eager to get started. Killed some passion. Believe me, I'd still be collecting it if I knew this was going to happen. >But do you think tech hiring will really slow down? We should be good but these are extraordinary times.

Did you have a solid safety net when you bailed? I considered doing the same a year or so ago. I don't think this is a systemic problem like 2008... so I don't see how it kills off viable tech projects. If you are top 20% skills you will be fine. It's just going to kill off overleveraged entities, and also kill off non-viable business models.

>Did you have a solid safety net when you bailed?

Yeah, took cash positions before leaving.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#76

Post by AnthonyMouse »

refurb wrote: post #66
black_puppydog wrote: post #39

One of my podcasts recently said something that I found very fitting: Americans really love themselves some socialism when they get it.

I don't think there are any humans alive on this earth that won't happily accept free money.

Especially when it's free money. One of the worst things the government does is take your own money only to give it back with strings attached or in the form of programs they paid more for than it would have cost you to buy in the market.

If all they were doing is giving people cash then you could just as easily call it a tax cut. And nobody turns those down either.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#77

Post by djsumdog »

black_puppydog wrote: post #39

One of my podcasts recently said something that I found very fitting: Americans really love themselves some socialism when they get it.

Most people don't even remotely understand what socialism is. Every public road, every interstate, every subsidized city train/bus system, every public park, every police department, every fire department, the CDC, the FDA, the EPA .. they are ALL examples of socialism.

You cannot have a high income country without a high level of socialism. Socialism is simply the State providing services for its people.

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#78

Post by majos »

zaroth wrote: post #52
ohithereyou wrote: post #28

If COVID-19 digs in deep in the US then there is going to be a transformational change in how US citizens think about work, travel, entertainment, security, and the relationship between US citizens and their government. All of these aspects are intertwined: Work: More people will work more time from home and many firms will switch to virtually full time remote with limited physical gathering. This will decrease the c…

I understand everything that you wrote is just speculation starting from the conditional, “If COVID-19 digs in deep in the US then...” but I just don’t follow the logic. It’s not our first pandemic. It won’t be the last. And I don’t see any reason at all to think why people won’t go back to living their lives at the first possible opportunity. But what does “dig in deep” even mean? In the vast majority of cases it’s…

> It’s not our first pandemic. It won’t be the last.

As far as I can tell, for almost all Americans, this is our first pandemic. The closest analogue might be polio in the 1950s, but maybe 10% of the population remembers that.

Going down the list, none of the remaining pandemics within living memory seem to have made a large impact on life in the US [1].

It’s not crazy to imagine changes from this event. There doesn’t seem to be much precedent here for it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#79

Post by black_puppydog »

djsumdog wrote: post #77
black_puppydog wrote: post #39

One of my podcasts recently said something that I found very fitting: Americans really love themselves some socialism when they get it.

Most people don't even remotely understand what socialism is. Every public road, every interstate, every subsidized city train/bus system, every public park, every police department, every fire department, the CDC, the FDA, the EPA .. they are ALL examples of socialism. You cannot have a high income country without a high level of socialism. Socialism is simply the State providing services for its people.

oh, just in case that wasn't clear: I'm all for having public infrastructure and healthcare and such largely non-market organized. I just find it funny (in a currently rather sad way) that the debate about socialist ideas in the US is largely avoided by making the debate center about worst cases, and mostly really about the word socialism iteself...

Re: U.S. Labor Department allows unemployment benefits for coronavirus

#80

Post by grecy »

ohithereyou wrote: post #28

If COVID-19 digs in deep in the US then there is going to be a transformational change in how US citizens think about work, travel, entertainment, security, and the relationship between US citizens and their government. All of these aspects are intertwined: Work: More people will work more time from home and many firms will switch to virtually full time remote with limited physical gathering. This will decrease the c…

> If COVID-19 digs in deep in the US then there is going to be a transformational change in how US citizens think ...... All of these tie into how US citizens see their relationship with their government, and what they demand from it.

I certainly hope you are right, but unfortunately I suspect the companies making billions of dollars will do absolutely everything in their power to make sure those changes don't happen.

Because there is so much money tied up in the current way things are done Americans have decades of fighting the power structure before they can expect to change their relationship with their government. If only they knew what Europeans get for their tax dollars.

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