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You can't end with "this isn't the time for ideology" after three paragraphs of YOUR ideology.

For some restaurants, takeout is easy and they can make it work! For others, it really really isn't. What about bars, where most money is made on alcohol?

You got it backward. These restaurants all presumably paid taxes and employed people, some for literally a century. Why do you expect them right now, when they're suffering the most, to "give something back" if they don't want to die?

Why should we not expect organizations to give something back?

I answered that already.

Because they paid taxes and employed people. It's like an insurance company that drops you as soon as you file a claim... you pay into a pool, expecting it to be there when you need it.

This is an unheard of situation, don't forget. The government (rightfully so, in my opinion) is forcing these restaurants to shut down dining. It's not like they're shutting down because they're "lazy".

Businesses don't pay taxes or employ people in the expectation of being bailed out, they pay taxes (like everyone else) in the expectation of goods and services from the Government. You may expect bailouts for restaurants as a Government service, but the vast majority of people do not.

As a business owner in a 1st world country, for paying taxes I expect infrastructure, security and a functioning legal system.

Security is much more than safety from invasions from other nations. It is a guaranteed safety net for when things go wrong; this covers everything from health care, to unemployment, to services for the homeless, and yes it includes helping businesses that collectively employ tens of thousands of people in times of crisis.

What do you think restaurants are for?

It sounds like you think they’re a scam.

For providing food? I'm not sure what you are asking here, I can't imagine how a restaurant could be a scam.

You suggested they should give something back. Which implies that they aren’t already giving something back that is worth keeping on its own merits.

Which is a pretty dim view of both the service industry and third places like restaurants.

So I ask again, what do you think restaurants are for, since they aren’t, in your opinion, doing anything that is already worth preserving?

You're mixing up different points in time.

Normally restaurants provide food for customer money, and that is fine.

The suggestion is that if they get bailout money while not providing food then there is an unmet need for them to "give back".

Exactly my point, thanks for clarifying.

I am not mixing up different points in time.

You are considering the past and the present. The bailout is solving a problem in the present that, if not solved, guarantees they have no future.

You want guarantees and there aren’t any. If you three want cover for yourself or policy makers, that’s fine. We can tweak the rules a bit to avoid some bad press. We market it as a prorated, forgivable loan if they continue to operate for a year after this is over. That should cull the dozens of restaurants that were likely already about to close before this all happened, who see the handout as a way to avoid bankruptcy.

Enough of the rest have a future we get to look forward to.

> I am not mixing up different points in time.

Well you're mixing up something if you have to ask "what do you think restaurants are for". They are for providing food. The thing they are currently failing to give back is... providing food.

You might disagree with that idea but you shouldn't be confused by it.

Your accusation of a "pretty dim view" sounds like you think the claim is that restaurants never give back. But that's not it at all.

> You want guarantees and there aren’t any.

What? "make them provide food" has nothing to do with "guarantees", and also this is not my opinion that I am explaining for you.

BTW, why do you send such a hostile response without trying to answer my question? I genuinely just wanted to understand the Parent.

Frustration in a time of triage. You don’t discuss Philosophy or process while a patient is bleeding out in the table. We should be copycatting solutions we’ve already hashed out before.

As others have also asked, why are we discussing this now instead of six months ago? If we had anyone with any leadership in either the Legislative or Executive Branch of the Federal government, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

These are state issues, not federal issues. Other states have handled things differently, with different results. NYC chose a different path from e.g. Florida (which is closer to the 'Swedish' approach) which has led to a different outcome.

I can understand the frustration, but not the tone. We are discussing this here today because it arrived on the front page of HN today. We are not a triage team - we are a bunch of people trying to understand the world better. Kindness goes a long way to understanding - if you want people to see things from your side, I suggest not attacking their questions but instead question their views.

> We need to be pragmatic and get our people and economy through this crisis

OK, tax the rich. PS: It was the winning strategy before the crisis too.

It was a winning strategy after the Spanish flu too.

What income do you consider the rich? I thought we were all in agreement, but I recently saw some Pew research that had me surprised.

We should just use the same objective approach as we use for classifying other drivers: anyone going faster than me is a dangerous asshole and anyone going slower than me is a dangerous idiot.

But with salary instead of speed, I guess.

Link to the Pew research?

It reminds me of way back in 2000 when the NDP Party of Canada (left wing) said "we need to tax the rich way more" and a reporter finally asks "what do you mean by rich?" and the NDP leader inferred "a family of four making more than $60,000".[1]

That turned some heads, especially among the labor unions who typically vote NDP and typically make more than that.

[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/income-over-60-000-qualifies-...

> https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/most-americans-sa...

Namely what stood out,

> Among Americans with the highest incomes – a subset of upper income adults who are in the top 7% of the sample’s adjusted income distribution – about a third (34%) of those who say there’s too much economic inequality say the government should raise taxes on people like them to deal with this, while 64% say this should not be done.

This surprised me. So I'm curious, for those who are making in the top 7% and believe there is too much income inequality (over about ~$145,000/yr) -- and I do suspect there are a few of us here, you don't think that a plan to reduce income inequality involves taxation on that level of income?

When someone proposes to address a problem by giving the government lots of money, I'm always skeptical. Why should we expect them to spend that money wisely? I'm not opposed to raising taxes if there's something important to spend the money on, but the words "income inequality!" aren't IMO a sufficient description.

Large amounts of government money go towards discretionary transfers like medicare, medicaid, social security, SNAP, etc. Is your claim that you think vast amounts of that money don't get to where they're supposed to go?

I think most of these programs are characterized by extremely low administration costs as a percentage of budget.

My claim is that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence. The poll question is like asking "should the federal government expand its office space to deal with income inequality" - how's anyone supposed to know without an explanation of what it'll be used for?

> that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence.

Raising taxes on rich people changes the post-tax distribution to have less inequality, so it does literally bring into place a program to "fight income inequality." Given the fact that most government revenue goes towards social security, medicare, medicaid, you already know what it will be spent on and there already are effective programs.

How would taxing the rich more and spending it on Medicare reduce income inequality? The low income might get better/more healthcare, but they don't get any more income from that spending.

> The low income might get better/more healthcare

It was a pedantic point - but taxing the rich intrinsically reduces the inequality of the post-tax income distribution because the difference between the top and the bottom is less.

> The low income might get better/more healthcare, but they don't get any more income from that spending

Lots of reasons - one is expenditures on healthcare by the employer, another is lost income due to injury/illness that preventative care could have prevented and that's before you start looking at medical expenses.

When people discuss fighting income inequality, they're generally referring to structural obstacles, not the precise dollar amounts of the post-tax income distribution. If we increase Social Security funding by 10% with a haircut to all incomes above $100k, but don't change the underlying division between rich professionals who choose whichever job most satisfies them and poor millennials who never expect to achieve career satisfaction, I don't think we've successfully fought income inequality.

> they're generally referring to structural obstacles,

I agree, and I'm not saying that 10% increase to social security fundamentally changes the underlying division. I think more drastic action is needed. But I wouldn't fight against a haircut on incomes over $100k that expanded the lower limits on medicaid (which many poor millennials take advantage of), even if income inequality still existed at the end.

Are rich, left-leaning professionals really under the illusion that the sort of policy change needed to fight structural inequality will lead to no change in their own relative purchasing power because there are even richer baddies out there to tax?

Again, the fundamental question is whether structural inequality is indeed a problem that can be solved by government spending, and I don't think it is.

One of the reasons, I assume, is that plenty of those making >$145,000 live in HCOL areas and after paying for housing, childcare expenses, etc, they don't feel very "rich". So they likely agree the rich should pay more, they just think they are one of them.

> So they likely agree the rich should pay more, they just think they are one of them.

1. Pew adjusts for COL in its income distribution, so no. 2. HCOL are HCOL because they are desirable. It's not just a higher cost of living for the exact same quality of life.

> they don't feel very "rich"

I think the point is that there is a psychological phenomenon where objectively very high-income people don't "feel" rich. Even after "housing, childcare expenses, etc," six figures is relatively affluent in my book. Also this was $145,000 for a single person, so I'm not sure childcare would factor in for most people.

Well shit, that's what I get for skimming the report.

I don't disagree with you at all. It's not reasonable to say "the middle class have a single family home in the mid-west, so if I don't have a single family home in SF, then I don't even have a middle class lifestyle".

And yes, a single person in a HCOL area making >$145,000 per year, is well off. It's just that well off in a HCOL area means owning living in a 2-bedroom apartment, rather than a 3,000 sq ft home.

Don't tax the high income bracket, tax the rentier bracket.

But what about the overlap? And tax the rentier bracket's what?

The reality is that that professional/managerial bracket has a large proportion of both the wealth and income in America, just because there are so many compared to the extremely wealthy large-scale owner class.

Tax the rentier bracket's rent income. The overlap need not be considered.

> The reality is that that professional/managerial bracket has a large proportion of both the wealth and income in America

This is irrelevant. Tax policy should not be judged by what proportion of total wealth or income it collects, but by the economic incentives it creates and the externalities it offsets.

Actions should be judged by their consequences. Size of the resource collected impacts the impact of the consequence.

> Actions should be judged by their consequences

I agree, we just have different perspectives on which consequences are relevant, and on which timescales.

Optimizing for "size of resource collected" at time 0 affects the system and each agent's incentives within that system, usually leading to the kind of adversarial loophole-chasing/closing we see with income tax and tax havens.

Optimizing for economically sound incentives will lead to higher "impact" (by my definition, reduction of externalities, inefficiency, and inequality) in the long run for a dynamic system, imho.

The commonly used definition, even among non-economists, comes from the OECD and Eurostat. You are rich if your equivalised household income is over 150% of the median.

> even among non-economists

Definitely not the definition that people with household income over 150% of the median seem to be using.

Many restaurants are actually very inefficient food producers, and specialize in providing a nice setting for a date or other dining experience. Other restaurants specialize in providing a place for people to hang out with colleagues after work, or a place for recreational sports teams to have a meal after the game. These business models have been destroyed, and nobody will pay for the 'services' which cannot be delivered.

Government mandated closure is hardly a description of "creative destruction".

While restaurants provide food, they may not necessarily be providing quality food. Quarantine has caused some to take a hard look at their diet, and learn to prepare healthy meals at home, and reduce consumption of processed foods. Restaurant food tastes good, but is often excessive in things like sodium. Dietary recommendations likely wouldn't support eating restaurant food regularly, as people have done without questioning it.