77 karma · joined October 12, 2019
> It's not hard, we just have a weird culture in America that couples all these basic human essentials to your work.
The requests for these things have already been made and are not reasonably being acted on.
In a recent press conference, New York Governor Cuomo failed to provide any reasonable response to a reporter when asked about someone in a very similar situation (the person qualified for benefits, but checks have not arrived).
What is to happen to these people? Is the lockdown to protect them from something truly worse than not being able to buy food?
Anyone care to address this single point without going off-topic?
Life is suffering.
Which supports the point that the lockdowns do not need to be in place because people can take care of themselves.
> There are essential parts of the economy and non-essential parts of the economy and they can certainly exist without each other. In fact, they did when society’s first formed. Then, they focused on a different level of the hierarchy of needs but it was still an economy. Food was produced and houses were built before cars, cell phones, and video streaming ever existed.
> I skipped the last part because while it is true that those things lead to “civil unrest”, you haven’t proved that we meet your own conditionals. What is “some percentage”? What is “actively blocked”?
> For example, I see government subsidies all over the place. To the tune of $2 trillion so far with almost certainly more to come.
You have demonstrated a very poor understanding of economics. Chiefly, you appear to believe you understand everything in the economy since you feel some parts of the economy may be declared as essential or non-essential. This differentiation is impossible, best demonstrated in the I, Pencil[1] essay by Leonard Reed. The economy is more complex than anyone can comprehend.
As far as ancient man, you can, at this moment, give up all the luxuries of modern life and live in the mountains, but if everyone did that there would not be enough food.
The people currently forced out of work were producing things that increased our standard living and contributed to the wealth of civilization. This wealth makes its way, through various and complex ways, to nearly every corner of the economy. You will not be able to be certain there is enough food production or adequate health care without these people taking a part in the productive economy. The longer we go with parts the economy locked down, the more likely that very serious problems arise, such as empty grocery store shelves and hospital closures.
The government subsidies to retail consumers will result in increased consumer price inflation. This was last experienced in the U.S. in the 70s as a result of the "guns and butter" policies of the 60s, which the butter being what lead to the consumer price inflation. The same inflation has not arrived now because the increase in the money supply has been in financial instruments, which causes other problems but hasn't appreciably increased consumer price inflation.
Once higher rates (say, >10%) of consumer price inflation get going, it becomes extremely difficult to arrest. The usual way this is managed is either by increasing interest through Federal Reserve policies, which peaked at around 20% to take care of the inflation of the 70s, or through hyperinflation followed by the issuance of a new currency, which occurs after the value of every single asset has been completely wiped out, with examples if you want to know more being Weimar Republic Germany or Revolutionary War Continental Dollar. Note that interest rates held at less than 3% are still yielding percent of national budget in service to debt at I believe 5%, so if we have the problem of consumer price inflation hitting higher interest rates, the percentage in service to the debt is going to go up very quickly, though not instantly because the bonds have to expire.
Also of note is that a lot of people are complaining that the checks from the government are not arriving, as was popularly demonstrated in a recent clip of New York Governor Cuomo attempting to respond to a reporter asking him about what people who have not received their checks should do. New York is not the only state where there are reports of this problem.
Those things cannot make up the entire economy because people end up starving to death. Thus, at some point there is no other option but to reopen.
It is notable how you reinterpret my comment:
> The economy does things like bring us food and pay for the health care that is supposed to save us from the virus. Without the economy, we don't have food and we don't have health care.
You also seem to ignore other parts:
> If some percentage of the population is actively blocked from having jobs while having no income, no government subsidies, and no savings, then "civil unrest" becomes reality. This is historically true.
Sure, but is it possible to posit that, or to at least discuss, some nuance of at least some variance of some sort:
A. Demand is going to be decreased, and a bunch of people are going to starve to death (or, more likely, take to the streets with their pitch forks and torches).
B. Demand is going to be decreased, and recovery will be difficult.
"This sentence" = "This sentence is false."
[This sentence is false] is false.
"This sentence" = "This sentence is false is false."
[This sentence is false is false] is false.
"This sentence" = "This sentence is false is false is false."
[This sentence is false is false is false] is false.
...
This perfectly demonstrates my point.
I also don't see any mention of the myriad studies published demonstrating how mortality rates increase in many different ways during periods of economic decline.
Interesting that you have changed the topic. This is indicative of a broad problem that I am observing: nobody wants to discuss economic consequences and even mentioning this will result in either very heavy down-voting or outright deplatforming[1].
My question is rather specific to how long the economy can last while held in lockdown and whether the Times has ever reported such concerns.
The economy does things like bring us food and pay for the health care that is supposed to save us from the virus. Without the economy, we don't have food and we don't have health care.
If some percentage of the population is actively blocked from having jobs while having no income, no government subsidies, and no savings, then "civil unrest" becomes reality. This is historically true.
[1] If you think that discussion of the economy is somehow a hidden message about 5G, anti-vaxx, NWO, etc., then you really need to take some time to learn economics, and I would also suggest some critical thinking, philosophy, and reading comprehension review.
I don't pay attention to the NY Times, but have they had any opinion pieces suggesting that maybe the destruction of the economy is also a bad thing? And, maybe, someone besides a reporter or "health expert" should make some kind of attempt to determine if it is even possible to sustain these policies?
I really feel like I'm in a Tales from Dark Side episode.
What I vaguely recall from stats is that even a small sample size that is really far off from the larger sample is statistically nearly impossible. This means something is amiss, so I defer to my lyin' eyes. I know my eyes, don't know the authors.
What about more bicyclists treating roads as an exercise machine? It may be uncomfortable to consider that perhaps going 5 mph up a hill that cars are going 35 mph on a narrow two-lane road is eventually going to end up with dead bicyclists.
How is your experience so far with inboxing while using Mail In A Box?
> When someone says something you agree with (say, we need testing) then you automatically think of all the reasons you believe it and fill in the gaps in reasoning. If someone says something you do not agree with (we need more testing), you automatically summon the counter arguments to each point the person has laid out, and you roll your virtual eyes at this person for not thinking through "basic" things you feel you know.
> In short, none of our intuitions on what constitutes reasonable or reasoned are innocent.
I find an additional issue related to this is when attempting a meta-discussion on controversial topics are down-voting heavily. In the rare event that a reply is left, it usually suggests a belief that the purpose of the meta-discussion is to favor one of the positions in the topic. As if the purpose of having a meta-discussion can only be to cleverly sew seeds of doubt against or in favor a position, as if analyzing the question of "why are we asking this question" is never relevant.
I have a greater issue when a well-written, even if brief, comment gets down-voted heavily and nobody leaves a reply to explain why than when someone down-votes for disagreeing.
> And before you accuse me of being upper class, I grew up on food stamps, didn't complete college because I was working full-time to pay my way through it and it just didn't work out, and I worked plenty of terrible, low-skill jobs before I landed a job in tech.
There is no judgment in my statement, and from being the person who interviewed them and looked at their work histories, I can tell you that they are not what you think they are. They have a lot of problems. A lot of the people we hired not only because we needed the entry-level bodies and they were all that were applying, but also because we hoped they would turn a new leaf.
You have inserted some long rant that is hard for me to consider as having anything to do with my statements, as I made no claims about humans being lazy. Some people, say in their 30s and even 40s, born in the U.S., graduated high school, have kids, can't hold a steady job, can't show up to work on time, always take long breaks, disappear and no one can find them for hours, mess around on their cell phone all the time, never get the job done right, show up to work not more than 3 consecutive days, take too long to get the job not done right, and it's got nothing to do with religion or other countries.
If you haven't managed a business that relies on entry level employees, then I'm not clear you have the perspective, regardless of your other work experiences.
As a side note, the mention of Amish seems rather silly, given that anyone who doesn't want to be Amish can leave, and anyone who wants to be Amish can join. So everyone there is where they want to be.
The pure drag of having to deal with this, especially when it comes to all of the paperwork required, by law, to be completed with every single new hire makes this alone a huge expense.
The vast majority of those employees left of their own will, not because they were fired. Usually when the leave, there is no notice. They just don't show up leaving management short handed and wondering whether the employee will show up the next day. Consequently, the policy can be to over-staff so that whenever some percentage isn't showing up the employer can still meet production needs.
The employer cannot simply increase prices and pay people better. For the most part, employers already have prices at the highest their customers are willing to pay. Setting prices higher will result in loss of customers, less profit, then layoffs or business closure.
Employees at this level are astoundingly uninterested in performing well, or, in other words, there is a reason they are working entry-level positions. This makes management yet more difficult because managers may have to become near micro-managers of cat herds trying to get the company to produce whatever it is supposed to produce.
Does anyone remember Hunter S. Thompson?