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The General [Coronavirus] Discussion Thread 4.0
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"Human capital stock"
But seriously, how can they think this won’t backfire? Who in their right mind wants to go to Florida in the midst of one of the most severe outbreak locations on the planet, let alone the country?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Every other idiot in the country that doesn’t wear a mask or thinks it’s a hoax, and so on. Tourism will flow fine, and even better self select for those who give less of a shit about the virus. Good times.
A quibble on flu numbers: CDC estimates 24k -50k as the US yearly flu figure, and an entire year hasn't passed yet. Which means flu deaths could potentially be on the low end, we don't know since that's an *estimate*. Also, since we're only halfway through the year, rather than an entire 12 months, the number shown on the chart seems reasonable.
That aside, their choices for death types on the cart do seem odd. I thought heart disease was a major killer, but maybe that only applies to industrialized nations?
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Opening schools is dumb.
That being said expecting parents to stay home while the kids are remote learning is also dumb. We've built a society where dual-income parents are the norm, not the exceptions.
If you want remote learning there has to be some monetary support for parents or the whole thing collapses.
At least they're requiring customers to wear masks. *cough*cough* BEST BUY *cough*cough*
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
“The whole thing collapses” seems to be the direction of the United States in multiple spheres. This isn’t too shocking, since the U.S. has basically operated at a crisis pitch for years in staffing/terms of hours worked, expenses/debt-to-income ratios, stress levels, political rhetoric, and worker share of productivity versus profits/taxes. We have been pressed to the limit to meet the ever-increasing demands of the wealthy, and there is very little margin left to handle a real crisis.
And since the political response from both parties in power to this has been either to cut back assistance or call out the racist police and military to quell dissent, I wouldn’t expect much help from that quarter.
Disney has always reminded me of a bit of cult.
Megacorp who feels sacrifices are worth it.
Also hemorrhaging a ton of money with their shit closed.
Still considering both Florida and Cali are not in great spots this is a terrible idea for Disney. Unless it is the Disney quarantine vacation. Be locked in your hotel for 14 days with robot delivered food in the shape of mickey mouse.
This idiocy is why McConnell's tactics work.
Selected global causes of death. It's still a small share of the communicable diseases pie which itself is a small share of total deaths
His tactics work because an 18th century framework designed by slavers to protect their property does not serve the needs of a 21st century democracy.
Also true, but for silly geese on the left like you, it's always the Democrats' fault because you care more about thinking they're evil than the actual fucking truth. The House passed a three trillion dollar stimulus package, greatly expanding public benefits. Hell, they even forced through Mitch this UI extension that made poverty rates go down in the middle of a god damn pandemic/recession. Schumer and the rest of his caucus are out there arguing to extend it and include permanent automatic stabilizers so we don't have to fucking do this every time we have a recession. But no, the response from "both parties" has definitely been to fucking cut back assistance.
By spreading this complete bullshit narrative, people like you increase cynicism about politics, drive down engagement, and assist Republicans to win elections. It's fucking nonsense and you need to stop.
Things would certainly be Less Bad with Majority Leader Schumer but that doesn't mean the Dem response is above criticism!
For example, the current Schumer proposal in the Senate wants to phase out the increased unemployment benefit in states whose unemployment rate drops below 11%, so if you lose your job but too many other poor assholes get forced back into theirs to get sick and die because their shitty governor said so, you (the person still without a job!) now receive less money. I think that idea sucks and we should be comfortable saying so without acting like it's an endorsement of Mitch McConnell who obviously sucks even more.
What’s more cynical, discussing the issues as they stand and pointing toward the need to broad system reform outside the box of a limited political framework or throwing insults and acting like the only solutions are those found by focusing on what’s happening in D.C.?
Covid-19 is pointing at widespread political issues that are crippling the ability of the U.S. response, and you want to obsess over what the catfight between a couple old men in Congress.
No one outside of political junkies care much about what is happening in Congress. The Executive branch is extremely important due to its command and control of the federal agencies like the CDC and FEMA and the military.
Congress has been irrelevant in this. When Biden takes over, I expect that they will remain so since the institution is increasingly gridlocked, and the actual response will be through the executive negotiating with governors and using the military.
So stop screaming at those having real conversations. Fixating on the D.C. soap opera is only going to make you more angry and miss the actual political dynamics involved.
I didn't say you can't criticize Democrats. I said don't criticize Dems by lying about them.
Also you're not really getting the point of automatic stabilizers but that's a different discussion.
is there a point to them that somehow means the amount of money sent to people collecting unemployment insurance doesn't actually go down? happy to be missing something in this proposal where somehow we actually don't start reducing the amount of money being sent to people who lose their jobs
So the idea of all stimulus is fundamentally counter-cyclical, right? People lose their jobs -> people have less money to spend -> people spend less money -> more people lost their jobs -> etc. The way we do it now is each time there's a crisis we craft legislation to intervene and then it has an expiration date where congress has to either extend the UI benefits or they don't. So the status quo is like what we're seeing at the end of July, where all the extended benefits will be cut off.
The point of automatic stabilizers is to make it so that the UI extension isn't subject to the whims of Congress, but instead to economic conditions on the ground. So as things get bad, UI extensions/increased generosity happen automatically and then as conditions improve the benefits become less drastic. And they stay generous until things are improving and hopefully people can find work and not need the UI.
You are correct in saying that for some individuals, the reduction in benefits as economic conditions improve would happen. But it would be better than what happens now. And the entire UI extension is far more generous than what we had six months ago. So again: better than it used to be. For some individuals who don't get work, slightly worse than what they're getting now.
I suspect you would advocate a flat UBI and want the Democrats to push for that, which is definitely a reasonable position to hold.
The point of automatic stabilizers is to prevent a self-reinforcing spiral into recession. The economy starts looking bad -> people cut back on spending for fear they might lose their job or because their companies already let them go because they fear the economy is getting bad -> this makes the economy worse -> more people lose their jobs and cut back on spending even more -> the economy gets worse -> more people lose their jobs and cut back on spending even more -> the economy gets worse -> etc, etc, etc.
Automatic stabilizers are designed to stop the spiral by just jamming a ton of money into people's pockets. This works by giving people money to spend but also works (and in many ways more importantly) by helping to prevent people from cutting back on spending or firms from cutting jobs based on the expectation that spending will be going down.
Which is all to say, to the larger point, that the idea that neither party is trying to do anything about this situation is absurd. One party is actively trying to push legislation to help. The other doesn't want to because Trump has taken the position that they must all pretend the crisis is over and they are all following along behind him.
You can absolutely criticize the plan the Dems put forward but a) it is a plan and b) it would help.
Would it help enough? Maybe, maybe not. That's a good thing to argue about, maybe in the economics thread, depending on your focus. But both sidesing the issue is not accurate
Here's the original argument. Which was that there is a crisis of collapse in the US and that we can't expect help from the political sphere because both parties are interested in cutting back assistance, or quell dissent with physical force.
When challenged that no, in fact, this is not true, the argument shifts to this nonsense about how politics is actually meaningless and we should be focused on the people having real conversations, which is meant to imply the poster and his ideological allies. It's an incredible Gish Gallop. And I'm tired of it, because this happens all the time. And it's always the same people.
So yeah I do understand all of that and agree again that it is better than nothing!
I don't know, I don't really have the energy for a fight here. I definitely am not a "both sides are the same" person, I'm just so tired of having no choice but to give Democrats credit for barely clearing the bar of merely proposing "better than nothing" policies that they are even then powerless to enact. You've outlined how this UI proposal is worse than what people are getting now and we all know it's not even going to be up for a vote anyway, why even put in the parts where people get less money?! Poverty went down, you said so yourself, and Dem leadership's aspirational goal legislation is one that wants to chip away at that effect?
I just think they could do a lot better than this.
Then say that. Make an actual argument of why the current proposal passed by the House is insufficient. Don't go for this subCNN both sides bullshit.
Because if the people that want better proposals just cast a pox on both houses, the ones that like the current proposal will have their ideas heard more clearly.
okay okay okay okay okay but
the Dem proposal literally does cut back assistance!
yes yes yes not as much of a cut back as what the GOP wants to do but it is still cutting back on arguably the most important part of the only federal response we somehow managed to enact
Nah, you're cool KP and arguing in good faith. I have no problem with what you've posted.
I do think we're treating status quo as two different things though. I'm treating it as February 2020 or as they'll be on August 1, while you're treating it as the literal status quo at literally this moment. Which is technically correct in a Hermes Conrad sense.
Automatic stabilizers don't chip away at unemployment benefits. They are an improvement over current systems, which is why people have been pushing them a lot recently, before this pandemic even hit. The proposal extends them indefinitely as long as certain conditions are met. The idea is to remove the lag created by the political process and also the shitty behaviour of some legislaters (usually on the right). Because the faster and more likely the benefits are to go out, the more effective they are because of expectations. The expectations involved are in many ways the most important thing.
And of course, the actual benefits are just expiring period for everyone, regardless of the situation. That's the actual baseline against which this proposal is working: literally doing nothing. Because that's what the Republican party actually wants to do. Nothing.
please can we all just agree that is fucking stupid? I'll go away if everyone just agrees that's dumb
Which is weird, because it would probably help the GOP a lot in November!
Nah, what's tiring is the active lying about what the various parts of the federal government are trying to do about the pandemic.
Like, I know this is the discussion thread and not the update thread, but I think we should still take a dim view of people spreading false information about pandemic-related topics.