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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off.

But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things?

I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the <$200/mo I currently pay.

Yet when I read Redditors talk about quarantine, you'd think everyone in the world was getting paid time off to play Animal Crossing at home or they live at mom's house rent-free. And it seems like it's this crowd that's likely to be pushing for staying in lockdown with no end in sight.

View on HN

My friend who works at the airport in the Galapagos (GPS) was telling me that no one has gotten paid since the tourism stopped. Luckily she can work on farm, but many can't. The local animal shelter there is now out of food, and the dogs will starve if they don't somehow raise money in the next 3 days or so (@patitasgalapaguenas on instagram, you can donate here [0]).

The US is struggling in many ways, but I can't help but think many other less fortunate nations are struggling even more. But the US doesn't show international news so you wouldn't really know unless you go looking for it.

[0]: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&busines...

Donated. Cute doggies. Hope your friend and her coworkers are safe.

Thank you so much! They are staying safe but I heard the government is only paying the police there right now, everyone else is on their own right now

This is not at all different from what's going on across the US for anyone who works in a service role, and most people still haven't had their UI claims processed / payments made.

> This is not at all different from what's going on across the US for anyone who works in a service role, and most people still haven't had their UI claims processed / payments made.

Exactly. Most of my old team is simply floating on what savings they had, partner's salaries and any money from the family funds we are offered (small grants of $1200 depending on need and availability for FT employees). Some don't qualify for unemployment, as they're just furloughed waiting for a re-open date, or are still dependents and got screwed out of the $1200 checks sent out.

I stepped down from my role as a chef in late January to focus on SpaceX interview(s) and had budgeted accordingly and was ok with passive income sources, but those dried up as the Market tanked, so I had to get really creative this month to make ends-meet because I thought after my interview in February I'd be employed by May. My landlord has made it clear he still expects payment on the 1st, which made me ask serious questions about my current situation.

Ultimately, I have realized I have to go back to tech now as these past years in culinary to get to this point have been incredibly financially precarious, so I took some refresher classes on Coursera and sent out some CVs.

I've heard back from one potential employer so hopefully that pans out as our stay at home requirement is being lifted at the end of this month in CO. My family in CA is still required to stay at home and less than half can work remotely so its putting a strain on things.

I suspect credit cards are serving as the “safety net” for many American families right now.

This is very true. And OPs point is good: the HN/millennial technorati is really out of touch with how much pain will is and will be descending upon the world.

Source for “most people?” As of April 11, 71% of people who have applied have received benefits: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/coronavirus-unemplo.... And state’s have geared up processing since then. (Maryland launched new computer system last week.)

Al Jazeera is always a good source for news ignored by the rest of the world. Here's social distancing in a prison in El Salvador -- not sure those masks will help much.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/el-salvador-inmates-c...

In India in particular, the lockdown has so far caused more misery than the virus itself:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/india-covid-19-lockdo...

...although it's an impossible equation, because letting it turn rampant would also cause death and destruction.

> In India in particular, the lockdown has so far caused more misery than the virus itself...

I mean, that's the point, right?

Heart surgery hurts more than chest pain, but it's intended to prevent the heart attack.

Sure, but the implementation was still absurdly bad. For example, by imposing a harsh lockdown on cities with no plan for migrant workers, the only thing they could do was head home to their villages, ensuring the virus would be distributed widely across the country.

Can't say I'm surprised though. When and where do governments ever treat migrant workers as humans?

Where do the migrant workers normally sleep?

Answer: In the cities they chose to leave.

"Chose"? Most of them live a hand to mouth existence: if they can't work, they don't eat.

That’s the rational calculus, yes. But humans have a really hard time balancing suffering today against hypothetical suffering tomorrow, especially when successful intervention makes it appear like the problem was never there in the first place.

That's an interesting presupposition, entirely unconfirmed by data.

I don't know enough about psychology to Google the exact term, but let's not be so pedantic as to pretend it is not at least a plausible assumption.

No, this is a stance that's completely unsubstantiated, with the obvious tie in to COVID-19 that's also unsubstantiated.

Can you point to a study about this? In Bayesian terms most people would put the prior probability in favor of his common sense hypothesis. And you just have to Google for "psychology of risk perception" to get a few more studies in favor of it.

It's true almost by definition. Actions sufficient to mitigate a low-probability, high-impact event will seem like complete overreaction for people who can't do this calculation - which is most of them. After all, lots of effort and sacrifice happened, and there was no damage!

Well yes, of course it's rational. Tautologically, hypothetical suffering tomorrow might not happen whereas suffering today actually is happening - in this case we have only the words of essentially discredited 'experts' (epidemiologists), many of whom are constantly bickering in public and pronouncing each others models useless or broken.

And the idea that mass lockdowns can stop the spread of virus is itself a radical, new idea that's never been tried, and which has its own cadre of experts saying it hasn't been working or is making little difference.

Given what we know now, extending a shelter-in-place order through all of May is catastrophic. It will likely trigger mass civil unrest. The virus just isn't that dangerous.

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

> And the idea that mass lockdowns can stop the spread of virus is itself a radical, new idea that's never been tried, and which has its own cadre of experts saying it hasn't been working or is making little difference.

You probably could say "has not been tried recently", but mass quarantines has been tried since time immemorial.

No. Preventative mass global quarantine has never been tried anywhere. Even quarantines in classical times were used for the already infected and known to be infectious, not everyone at once. What's being done now has no precedent.

Global quarantine has never been tried just because there was (almost) no global travel or communication.

And I think your second statement is false, preventive isolation en masse was practiced (to the extent possible) during bubonic plague.

The name quarantine itself comes from a preventative isolation practice.

But lockdowns during pandemics have been practiced occasionally, but always at the city level, due to the nature of governance during past pandemics. Famously Newton and Shakespeare did work during London lockdowns, and some Italian city states distributed fixed rations to peasants to help them stay at home.

What’s new isn’t preventative quarantines, what’s new is global travel and communication.

If that's your comparison, the lockdown has been an outstanding failure because the virus is still spreading widely and pending to go exponential any day the lockdown is slightly relaxed. Heart surgery that can't prevent the heart attack.

If we're going to abuse the analogy into irrelevance:

The heart surgeon is booked out for a few months. Avoid strenuous exercise until they're available to fix you.

Al Jazeera is simply Qatari government propaganda. If they're reporting it and it was 'ignored by the rest of the world', it's certainly only reported for the benefit of the Qatari government.

Also donated. Hopefully the shelter gets some visibility with your post :)

Thank you so much, stay safe!

donated, thanks

I'm gonna be that guy... given that people are starving, isn't immoral to ask that money be donated to keep shelter dogs alive?

Surely they should just be put to sleep, no?

It's only immoral to question the validity of a good cause on the pretense that there's something worse happening out there somewhere...

Hint: there is always something worse somewhere.

There are as many "worst things" as there are people.

There are many bad things happening everywhere. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and stack-rank them, in order to allocate funds effectively. There's diminishing returns to everything[0]. As you throw money at problem #1, it becomes more and more expensive to make a marginal improvement, so eventually, it swaps places with some other problem in the ranking.

There are many criteria you could use for making such ranking of problems (a popular one is minimizing dollars per lives saved, or dollars per QALY added). Living in a free society means people are free to decide how much (if anything all) they want to spend on charitable causes, and on which ones. But in one's individual spending, it's worth to think about how to get maximum "bang for your buck", in terms of alleviating suffering.

---

[0] - By coincidence, this is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486.

It's a question of scale, and balance. Yes, I think it is ridiculous to ask for donations to keep unwanted dogs alive when there are people on the same island who are suffering.

You have extremely misguided logic.

By extension of your statement: Given that there are always people starving somewhere on Earth at all other points in time too, isn't it immoral to feed pets at all? They should be put down and that food should go to people! Dog food in general is immoral, because it could instead be given to someone starving somewhere.

That's not as ridiculous as you think.

It varies a little bit from culture to culture, but for the most part no, it isn’t moral to kill dogs just because human beings are struggling too.

That's just how rich people are. "Cute" gets help, "not cute" doesn't matter. And humans are, for these most part, "not cute".

No. It just isn't following the "whataboutism" logic.

Following this we could say: As there are always young able people in need, why care for old or disabled people who doo not contribute to society and only cost society's money?

Why "donate" taxes for care facilities and such unnecessary stuff?

You're taking this too far. Stop trying to do that.

There is an island on which there are hungry people and hungry dogs. There is a limited pool of donor funds.

The fact that there are people asking for money for the dogs before all the people on that little island have full bellies is just sad.

The dogs will feel no pain from being put to sleep.

Nobody can, will, or wants to even suggest that the children be put to sleep. We will let the children suffer horrible pain before we ever even consider suggesting such a thing.

So every dollar spent on the starving dogs is a dollar that could have prevented some pain for the humans there. It would cost no money and no pain to put the dogs to sleep and ease the pain of some children.

So stop trying to bring the rest of the world into this to win the argument. This is a localised problem on one island, and every dollar spent there should be spent on reducing harm.

You might enjoy reading the utilitarian philosophy work of Peter Singer [1]

A lot of charity donation is based on feelings rather than calculations about saved lives. Otherwise there would only be one charity, and it'd be distributing malaria nets and deworming tablets in Africa.

In my experience, if someone donates $20 to animals in response to lowpro's post, that's not money subtracted from their fixed charity budget that would otherwise have gone to humans. That's money subtracted from their household budget, that otherwise would have been spent on hobbies and bills. People who have fixed charity budgets simply don't donate from them in response to social media posts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save

I may get downvoted for this and I would not advocate this under normal circumstances. But dogs are a source of protein that would be a shame to put to waste given that people are starving otherwise.

> The dogs will feel no pain from being put to sleep.

> Nobody can, will, or wants to even suggest that the children be put to sleep. We will let the children suffer horrible pain before we ever even consider suggesting such a thing.

Sounds like the proper solution is to convince people that putting kits to sleep is OK, then...

(Not really, but it does seem to follow from your statements)

> The fact that there are people asking for money for the dogs before all the people on that little island have full bellies is just sad.

You're operating on the assumption that the people with the means to donate prioritize human life over a dog's life, which isn't always the case.

I'm surprised to learn that animals like dogs (and I presume cats) are allowed on the Galapagos since there is so much at-risk fauna that is unique to those islands.

I was surprised when I first went, the people that live there are allowed on 5 of the islands, with the largest island hosting the town of puerto ayora. The town has 10,000 people, and total population of the Galapagos is 30,000 and growing. It’s an interesting place as people move there from the mainland because of the money you can make in tourism, but immigration is tightly controlled due to the negative effect on nature as the towns expand.

People first started living in the Galapagos a long time ago, in the 1950s they consolidated everyone into the islands they live today. Interesting history for a place that you’d think was purely natural, but human civilization finds a way I suppose.

Probably it's my first reply on HN but dontated!

Thank you so much!

Donated. Is there a way to make that link followable from IG?

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by followable?

Donated, thanks. Maybe they should set up a GoFundMe page? Would seem more legitimate than a "random" PayPal link.

I’ll bring it up to them!

Donated as I know how hard it is for animal protection efforts to raise money right now (we are a foster home for cats from three protection societies).

I also forwarded it to my network - maybe this helps at least a little bit more in terms of donations.

I've donated and shared the link with others, best of wishes <3

Thank you so much! Stay safe out there <3

Donated. Good luck to the doggies.

It's a class divide, unfortunately. The people who are getting hit hardest are the people who were already getting hit hardest. Most of those don't frequent the same internet forums we do.

Any suggestions on which they do frequent?

facebook

yes, FB is poor man's internet.

Reddit. My state's subreddit has a massive discussion about how the unemployment system is failing, completely unable to handle the enormous number of people trying to file claims. There's a lot of desperation in those threads.

They have a great opportunity to make things better come Nov now that they've been affected by the failling.

Many of those people will have already been evicted by February.

If the US evicts its 6 million unemployed, then treats them as it does its pre-existing homeless, there will be riots.

I'd say that Reddit's demographics still skew more towards the "young, white, middle class male".

We have many discussions on our forum https://www.city-data.com/forum/

Some politicians have pointed out that some lower income people are getting paid more to _not_ work now, due to unemployment benefits and the CARES Act.

I'm not saying that I agree with those politicians.

It seems like the concern for lower income people runs the gamut from them not being able to make it to them living high on the benefits hog.

Edit: It's not just politicians-- similar stories are on CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/she-got-a-paycheck-protectio...

Well, there's a very real systems level concern there. There are anecdotes - just anecdotes, but it'll already be a disaster if we start getting data - of workers yelling at business owners for securing the PPP funds to save their jobs.

Why would you not agree? It’s simple math. In most states, your weekly unemployment is half your salary, up to a cap. Under the CARES Act, you then add $600/week. So if that extra $600 is more than half your weekly paycheck, you earn more on unemployment. It works out to everyone earning less than about $62,000, which is more than half of people in most of the country.

Pointing out that this creates a disincentive to return to work isn’t accusing anyone of “living high in the benefits hog.” It’s not that we’re talking about a ton of money. It’s that we do need most of the country to return to work eventually. And if even white collar workers making $60,000 a year are getting paid more in unemployment, that is a pickle we’re going to have to resolve at some point.

But is anyone seriously advocating keeping a $600/week around after the quarantine? If we can get out the other side without millions of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and evictions, certainly that will contribute to a faster economic recovery. Sure, some white collar workers will be disincentivized from working... as long as the CARES act stays in effect. And you don't get unemployment if you quit, so no one will actively leave their jobs under this scheme.

> But is anyone seriously advocating keeping a $600/week around after the quarantine?

Yes. Or something close to it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-would-receive-2000...

"The Emergency Money for the People Act, introduced by Reps. Tim Ryan and Ro Khanna, would give $2,000 a month to Americans over the age of 16 who make less than $130,000 a year."

"The payments would continue for at least six months and would last until unemployment falls to pre-coronavirus levels."

That would probably only cost a few trillion dollars. It'll take a decade to get back to pre-virus unemployment levels, and they know that. It took nearly a decade to get to those super low unemployment levels after the great recession, which was not nearly so bad as this situation.

Actually, the payments (because they would encourage marginally employable people to stay out of the labor force and thus out of the divisor for unemployment) would radically accelerate the (brief) return to pre-crisis unemployment. Of course, once they were withdrawn, the unemployment number would shoot back up, but that has no effect on the duration of the payments.

It’s either they pay for everyone’s lost salary or people will just disregard the stay home orders and go back to work.

> That would probably only cost a few trillion dollars. It'll take a decade to get back to pre-virus unemployment levels, and they know that. It took nearly a decade to get to those super low unemployment levels after the great recession, which was not nearly so bad as this situation.

Well, it was a horrible way for the US to get to experiment with a wide-scale UBI system and create a viable model. One that was previously thought to be unfathomable, but honestly I'll take it.

And maybe because of my age, but 2008 was way worse than this. This doesn't seem like it will create waves of lost generations, for startes no one is being evicted from their Homes (yet) and no eviction systems are in place in many parts of the US.

> The bill comes as the IRS is about to begin mailing out checks approved by the recent COVID-19 relief package. Those will come printed with President Donald Trump's name on them, it was revealed this week.

Lets see what we learn from this, I'm personally cautiously optimistic on a Human level if this is the step being proposed. I'm just having a hard time internalizing how this is all being done while a clown like Trump is in office... I mean if this Andrew Yang, of course, maybe even Sanders, but Trump?!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't unemployment benefits temporary? Are these any different? I was reading through the tangled web of information at the DOL[0] and did not come away feeling certain one way or another.

Do you really think not enough people working belongs near the top of our list of concerns at the moment? I have heard this line from every conservative I've talked to about this, and it just seems like missing the forest for the trees. On the long list of systemic problems this period and our response to it is in danger of creating, this seems like it belongs on the list, but not close enough to the top to be worth the time discussing it. I'm a lot more worried about the incentives we're manipulating for businesses and investors than for unemployed people.

[0]: https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/unemployment-insurance

Yes, they're temporary. The concern is that if the shut down ends soon (seems unlikely but who knows) then it will delay an economic recovery until the temporary benefits expire. For a faster economic recovery we would want as many people getting back to work as possible. If you make more money not working, the rational choice is to wait for the temporary benefits to expire and then go back to work.

Again, unemployment requires you to actively search for work and accept offered employment or you lose benefits. Higher benefits don't create an incentive to voluntarily stay out of work since you can't have them if you do that.

The requirement to be actively searching for work has actually been temporarily paused in many states, including eg/ CA https://www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/eligibility.htm. Presumably that provision will be removed along with the SIPs, but just figured it was worth being precise here.

That seems to rely on an assumption that there's no variation in amount or quality of job searching effort, above the minimum required, which might be influenced. It also assumes inability to fake a job search, or sabotage an otherwise legitimate one, which might let an individual so intending to fall below the required minimum. The latter seems questionable, the first seems wrong.

I feel like there's a lot of pedantry in this thread and this topic in general. The point is that people not wanting to work is just so very far from our problem that it is ridiculous to see people harping on it so much. People aren't working because they were furloughed or laid off because aggregate demand is way down, it has nothing to do with the unemployment benefits they're getting. The vast vast majority of those people just want their boss to call them and say "good news! our customers are back! see you tomorrow!".

Of course we are all speculating on what people want or will do in this situation.

But take a hypothetical continuum of unemployment benefits. At which point will your thesis that "people want to work but are unable" switch to "people aren't working because they're being paid way more to not work? The switch will probably be binary at the individual level but will look like a continuum when looking at the population level.

Individuals will of course respond differently depend on the specific contexts of their life. I think in the end a quantity that will matter will be the ratio of unemployment benefits to old job salary. Other factors such as job satisfaction in previous job will contribute to the variance.

My actual point is that this is an ideologically driven distraction, not a real policy debate.

I was speaking just to the argument made by dragonwriter that, because something is banned, the possibility has no impact. If you think this was motivated by an ideological objection to government assistance... well, you're mistaken, because I don't have one of those. I can't speak to anything up-thread.

Ok you're right, maybe I have two points: I think this distraction is driven by ideology and partly maintained by (or taking advantage of) pedantry. It is far too tempting for logically-minded pedants to say "but you can clearly see what the numbers show", which is true, but is not a useful point except as further fuel for the distraction.

The real problem we're going to have is people struggling to find jobs as demand ramps back up slowly in fits and starts. This whole conversation is an attempt to portray those struggling people as the problem. It is indirection, like in a magic trick. And the pedantic "well actually"s are falling for the trap.

It's a real bummer because it's definitely going to work, which is going to cause us to underinvest in unemployment insurance over time, which is going to make this even more painful than it was already going to be. It would just be nice if people could see that they're being played.

Calling out significant flaws is not pedantry. Defending arguments because they are "on your side", irrespective of merit, is destructive to the kind of reasoned discussion I value on this site (certainly it's not always available, but let's aim for more of it, yeah?). And I actually think that repeating obviously flawed arguments does the other side's work, turning away the undecided - especially on a site like this.

For some topics that are intended purely as distractions, the whole goal is just to get people talking about it. So mission accomplished.

Cura te ipsum, but if that's your remaining issue I won't distract further.

Indeed you're right! Plus I enjoyed looking that up :)

The CARES Act extends unemployment benefits through the end of 2020 delegates to the states what the job search requirement means. States have a strong incentive to interpret it loosely because the federal government is footing the bill. Additionally, the “offered employment” thing is not hard and fast line. Restrictions will be lifted incrementally—there will be no “everyone back to work moment.” Businesses with furloughed employees will want to call them back up sooner rather than later, but workers earning more on unemployment have an incentive to not come back to work as soon as they could. Businesses, particularly smaller ones, aren’t going to be in a position to say “come back or you’re fired.” (Can you imagine the liability?) It’s during that transition period when the incentives could slow down the recovery.

Businesses are going to have trouble finding enough customers to support the staff they do hire, not this fantasy problem of having trouble finding staff.

> Pointing out that this creates a disincentive to return to work isn’t accusing anyone of “living high in the benefits hog.”

Sure it is, plus it's a lie since unemployment requires active job search and taking offered employment, except for temporary layoff where you position is retained, where it still requires return to work when the employer ends the temporary layoff. You cannot choose to stay out of work and draw unemployment, so it cannot create incentives to do so.

Is there a single state in the US that has not waived the “active job search” requirement for unemployment benefits at this point?

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/employers-and-workers-i... Says most states. Without much searching I found at least 3 (AK,WA and CA).

CA is currently requiring the unemployed to be actively seeking work to receive benefits? That can’t be right.

Yeah, it's not right. As a CA resident who has looked into it, their unemployment website specifically says that requirement is waved

Not Washington:

https://esd.wa.gov/newsroom/job-search-requirement-now-optio...

I think you're being extraordinarily generous in your assumption that people wont just apply to jobs in bad faith. There are myriad opportunities to present yourself as a person that shouldn't be hired that occur between applying and getting an offer.

Im a proponent of UBI, but we don't do ourselves any favors by insisting that the current system isnt exploitable.

That seems incorrect based on a couple of important points. A job is an ongoing relationship that can yield years of income and marketable experience. A fraction of a year of unemployment is not really comparable. Jobs and careers are anything but simple math. Furthermore the recent Pew study indicates that only 29% of unemployed in March collected benefits, largely because systems for distributing benefits are slow and typically service numbers several orders of magnitude smaller. Even in the best of times unemployment insurance has a failure rate of around 15% give or take depending on the state. If a system for distributing benefits is slow, significantly dysfunctional, and prone to cutting people off for a range of reasons then it is unlikely to compete with employment as a source of money, satisfaction, or resume enhancement.

In my state, unemployment maxes out at $400/week, not half my salary. So with CARES, I would get an additional $600 for a total of $1k/week. This doesn't last indefinitely, only 26 weeks. Also, unemployment isn't immediate; in my state (prior to the huge backlog) it could take up to 21 days to get paid. Now I assume it's longer.

So someone on unemployment is only "making" up to $26K, then they're SOL.

> disincentive to return to work

Arguably, this is a positive unintended consequence of the act in this situation.

It’s not a positive consequence. Contrary to popular notions of “bullshit jobs” our economy actually needs all these people to work to maintain our standard of living.

Those increased unemployment benefits are very unlikely to last as long as widespread unemployment.

Yes, and that's a GOOD thing. If their job really is that essential then it's on the employer to pay them enough to make it worth it. No one should have to risk their lives (and that of their loved ones, and really everyone's) to put food on the table.

Most states are still dreadfully far behind processing unemployment insurance claims. A lot of people who should be getting slightly bigger checks haven’t yet seen a dime of their unemployment insurance.

Yup, my sister said she is making two times as much here in MO. She was blown away. Honestly I thought it was a mistake in her favor until I read this.

This is why "We're in this together" is just not true.

Oprah has it better than me right now. But we both have it way better than my hairdresser (who knows if her salon will survive). And all three of us have it better than a Silicon Valley janitor.

I'm filled every day with deep, deep sadness for everyone whose refrigerators are running out with their bank account at zero.

Not to be pedantic but "Silicon Valley janitor" (at least if it's for a big enough tech co) _might_ be doing OK. Various tech companies have publicly committed to paying their own hourly staff and subcontracted workers like food service / janitorial at full standard pre-shutdown rates: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/big-tech-commits-to-paying...

(Though I have no insight into whether or not they've actually followed through on these public commitments).

I talk to the janitor that services our offices at a really high end space near the Moscone. No way dude, those poor people are contracted by a bigger firm, they lost all sources of income over a month ago.

  Various tech companies

I don't know of a single SV tech company that employs any janitorial staff directly.

Microsoft, Google, and Twitter at least (and I believe Facebook and others as well) committed to paying their vendor staff for their normally expected hours: https://www.axios.com/tech-giants-promise-to-pay-hourly-work...

As did non tech companies like Nike. Nike is affording it by not giving a cost-of-living increase this year to the full-time employees. I wonder if there is a list somewhere of all the companies that are continuing to pay their vendor staff.

This is true. I work for a unicorn and we've committed to paying all of our contract staff until the office reopens. This includes making special payments to the caterer, even though we've cancelled regular lunch and dinner meal service, just to pass through to their employees so that they can shelter in place and not have to be at risk of either getting sick or not being employed.

It also includes all reception and building security staff, even though they are employees of the building management, and not employed by us.

I hope more people know that SV startups, and especially unicorns, are really leading by example in their treatment of the low-wage service workers and contractors that work in their offices.

How much do you trust the contracting companies to forward the payments to their workers? Bet they've all been furlough a while ago.

"We're all in this together" is more of an aspirational phrase, meant to motivate the better-off to contribute. When it doesn't work, the people who aren't better off will of course be reminded every time they hear it that the system is failing them.

It's one more of those meaningless demonstrations of support that social media has generalized.

Communicating that "we're all in this together" is as effective as a giving "like" to the Facebook page of a person dying from cancer raising money for their treatment.

The person who hits that "like" surely feels better about themselves and sees social media as a facilitator of this effortless moral redemption.

PS: The individuals building these systems are aware of this.

Have to say the "We're all in this together" rings hollow for me, even irks me - especially when it's some wealthy celebrity saying it. That said, I feel blessed that (so far) I still have my paycheck working remotely and my wife has her's as a teacher. We decided to keep paying for a number of services (local small gym, house cleaner, gardener) we aren't using - I guess partly motivated by a sense of "we're all in this together" and "it's the right thing to do", etc. But there is a still a lot of risk that I could eventually lose my job depending where all this ends up and with two kids heading to college, a mortgage, retirement coming sooner than later - It's not stress free by any means.

I don’t see hairdressers as a trade no longer viable, after all they were considered medical experts until late 19th/early 20th century.

Also sector divide. Small business owners are getting killed. PPP and EIDL will be a drop in the bucket. Mass conglomerations are coming and in 12 months we'll wonder why Amazon and Walmart and other multinational corps bought everything up.

You're right. Another issue is the age divide. Younger people: harder hit economically, less so by the virus; older people: harder hit by the virus, less so economically. This can only worsen the class fissure which had already developed along generational lines.

Median age of death is well over 70 years of age. It's obvious who this virus strikes.

Yes, that's partly what I meant to say.

Younger people are less likely to die as quickly from acute respiratory failure from the virus, but if the indications of various delayed and lasting effects are at all accurate, probably are, on average, losing more QALYs to the virus, and so are arguably harder, if less obviously so, hit.

Could you link to some studies or articles about this? I've heard speculations, but haven't seen evidence to back it up.

I haven;t seen any non sensationalized evidence regarding long term effects of this virus (health, economically this will permanently cripple many nations). Can you link some health articles?

Sector, yes, but I'd think businesses in similar industries with similar cash on hand for their size would do similarly well, regardless of size. As ancestor said, it's a class divide, but it's by sector and cash-on-hand, not so much by size. E.g. J.C. Penney is big-ish, but struggling because of store closures and cash-on-hand.

It's an incredible class divide:

* Essential workers (who make less) required to work and get infected at higher rates, both at work and from their essential worker housemates.

* We permit anyone (even non-essential workers) to hire a nanny, but let no one drop their kid off at a friend's house.

* Deep pocketed businesses like Broadcom can just declare themselves an essential business and mandate employees perfectly capable of working from home come into the office.

> * We permit anyone (even non-essential workers) to hire a nanny, but let no one drop their kid off at a friend's house.

This is hyperbole. The KGB isn't going to come and arrest you if you do so.

Legal enforcement is weak but it is absolutely against the rules (I actually verified this with the health office) and social pressure (neighbors, each other) encourages parents to comply.

> Essential workers (who make less) required to work and get infected at higher rates

Honest question: has anyone published infection rates by occupation? Obviously medical staff reusing face masks in NYC are more likely to contract it, but I'm not as sure about grocery store workers, delivery drivers, pickers at Amazon, etc. Some essential workers in food production (think farmers) are probably pretty low-risk.

Not to play devil's advocate too far, but falling behind in the semiconductor industry is death. If they shut down and others don't, they lose.

I have two commercial leases. Neither landlord is offering a break. Construction is stopped due to government mandate. There is no bailout from the state due to this intervention. There is a high liklihood of mass layoffs and potential bankruptcy.

I'm past the point of annoyance or despair. I've gotten used to the fact that not only do governments do whatever they want, but people like authoritarian action and don't care about externalities.

I don't know how the details will actually shake out but the Canadian government this week announced a commercial rent program that seems to make sense. If I understand it correctly basically you pay 25%, your landlord eats 25%, and the remaining 50% is split somehow between federal and provincial funds.

It will be interesting to see how it actually plays out (and now long it lasts) but it seems pretty practical, given the situation.

My first tenant's mum was one of the first wave effected in China. He broke his lease to go back and be with her. I then leased to another person, small buisness owner, who was shut down the week she moved in. I let her break her lease.

The best i can do in this situation is get a loan holiday for my mortage from my bank. But i dont get anything for free, i will need to pay it back, plus interest.

The small and medium guys are taking the big hits. The big guys are liquidating to protect investors. And everyone in between is fighting over the scraps.

I believe in karma. When i say we are in this all together, i mean from a civilization perspective, if only 5% of the worlds population has cash at the end of this, that cash wont mean much. Entire nations wont just fade away. Something has to give.

Can you lay out the chain of events you imagine (or have been told ) will occur for refusing to pay your leases, or at least pay in full? I’m genuinely curious what would happen if you say, “sorry, not paying.” beyond an eviction. It seems like if eviction is the only consequence, it may be worth considering a partial payment as I’d imagine the prospects of replacing you as a tenant are near zero in the short term. (Obviously I’ve never signed a commercial lease so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the terms)

Eviction and destruction of credit history and them coming after my house since the leases are personally guaranteed (which might happen anyway).

I also run a business in Seattle. Finding a new tenant will be no sweat at all even during the COVID times.

It's scary. I was laid-off this month due to COVID-19. Luckily, I am getting paid for one more month because of the WARN Act. I've been looking, but it has been difficult since I'm competing with all the more senior co-workers and peers who were also laid-off.

So how is my budget?

* I know that there will be a time gap between being able to apply for unemployment and receiving it. The unemployment systems in the US are still overwhelmed.

* Since my wife is on my health insurance plan, COBRA is going to be very expensive.

* We moved recently for my job, so a lot of the savings we had are already gone.

We have some runway, but no where near enough to feel safe. We are one of those edge cases where we took a risk, it paid off and life was great, but it didn't last long enough for us save up again so things are looking grim. So finally...

> Yet when I read Redditors talk about quarantine, you'd think everyone in the world was getting paid time off to play Animal Crossing at home or they live at mom's house rent-free. And it seems like it's this crowd that's likely to be pushing for staying in lockdown with no end in sight.

We both still are 100% for maintaining the quarantine. No we are not living some relaxing lifestyle at home. I've been quite stressed out. However, I also know that I would never forgive myself if I contributed to breaking quarantine early and that caused a chain reaction of hospitals to be overrun again and leading to my parents, a relative, or an old friend to die because they could not get the proper treatment.

There is a lot I want to rant about, but rather than that, I would like to leave these thoughts:

Stop thinking of the solution as being so black and white. Lifting the quarantine isn't the only way to help everyone who has been impacted. For example, why not have the same government bodies that enacted the quarantine do something just as drastic to save those who were impacted? What other solutions are out there?

Also, if lifting the quarantine leads to more deaths, then remember that there is an economic impact there too. Have you ever paid for a funeral? I have and at a young age too. It burned a hole in my savings. That set me back several years in saving and investing in myself. Imagine doing the same to the generation of young adults whose parents are in the risk factor group. Far too many of the comments I read, even on HN, are seeing things only through the lens of what politicians say. Outside of compiling raw statistics, I've seen very little independent thought on how to solve the current problems in society.

Since my wife is on my health insurance plan, COBRA is going to be very expensive.

Instead of COBRA, can you get on an Obamacare ACA plan? That might be much cheaper.

you don't have to pay for cobra until you need it though, so you could get out spending $0, iirc.

At least in CA, if you opt out of COBRA, you can't opt back in later.

Hum. In IL and IN you have either 45 or 60 days to accept or decline coverage (don’t quote me on exact number, do the research). It made the optimal short term insurance policy to be:

Don’t fill out cobra paperwork to day 59

If not sick or total bills less than 2 months cobra payments, decline cobra.

If sick and total bills > 2 months cobra payments, decide to accept coverage.

Used this for like 5 job hops. Never had to opt in, but it seemed fine. Confirmed with HR several times that it would work as I said.

After 2 months it starts to get gross. Likely want to get an emergency only plan.

It's the same in CA in my experience. I guess people don't think about it b/c we're used to pre-paying for insurance and with COBRA there's a decent period of time to make a decision and you also pay for insurance the following month instead of paying for it prior to/during the month.

I think your heuristics change if you happen to have an ongoing condition or family needing coverage (who may also happen to have costly out-of-coverage costs).

This is the kind of mental gymnastics that would be completely avoided if we had even the most basic of universal coverage.

There is a grace period before you have to start paying, and the dates should be on the letter you receive when you leave your employer. The grace period does not last forever, and when it's almost up, you need to pay several months at once to get coverage. (another comment suggests these rules might vary somewhat by state, and I'm sure that is also possible)

For ACA, policies, the grace period is forever. Job loss is a "life event" that lets you jump in any time, not just an arbitrary open enrollment window.

The grace period to start paying for a plan under the ACA is 60 days, not "forever." It's true that you don't need to wait for open enrollment, a special enrollment period opens for you when you lose your job.

edit: I'm not sure there's any grace period at all with the ACA. You have 60 days to sign up, but unlike COBRA, I don't see any evidence you can start using the insurance without paying for it first, which is the nice thing about the COBRA grace period.

https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage-outside-open-enrollment/...

I was talking about California. CA has no such limitation right now.

https://www.coveredca.com/individuals-and-families/getting-c...

  I don't see any evidence you can start using the insurance without paying for it first,

Because there's no limitation on pre existing conditions, it's effectively the same. You can sign up the day you get sick and have a free ride until then. That's why the CBO scoring was all bullshit.

> Because there's no limitation on pre existing conditions, it's effectively the same. You can sign up the day you get sick and have a free ride until then.

How does that work if you've suffered a catastrophic injury and you're not well enough to sign up until after you've been treated in the hospital for several days?

It's similar, but it doesn't sound like the COBRA thing, where you have the option to retroactively extend your employer's coverage, or not, for a couple of months and you can still visit the hospital the same as you always did (or not) because of the payment and notification grace period. If it turns out you didn't need the insurance, you don't need to pay for it.

My wife is a certified social worker and knows just about everything there is about that. It’ll be cheaper but far worse in terms of coverage and deductibles. So it’s an option for stretching budget, but it’s not a good solution if anything significant happens. I’ll ask her if she knows what’s changed with regards to COVID-19 related cases, but my guess is that nothing in terms of coverage has changed. So given the current world circumstances, switching would be akin to taking a giant gamble on your health.

An equivalent plan in my state (MO) is 2.5x more expensive (monthly), with a higher deductible and fewer available in-network providers :(

Is medicaid a good option? I think you should qualify in California. Also, I don't know your situation, but has your health needs changed recently? I know Kaiser is trying to limit unnecessary office visits.

In California, Obamacare IS Medical (aka Medicaid). I signed up once. I couldn't get my Vyvanse for my ADHD because it's a controlled substance, and the Medical doctor wouldn't touch a prescription for it.

Pro-tip:. If you pay out of pocket for your regular doctor (maybe tell then your situation and work out a deal), you can get Medical to pay for the prescription (verify before trying).

  Obamacare IS Medical (aka Medicaid)

No, Obamacare is Covered CA.

Medicaid is called MediCal, except persons in the US illegally can get it, too.

  If you pay out of pocket for your regular doctor... you can get Medical to pay for the prescription

That's a felony.

Unless you have pre-existing conditions or very expensive and rare prescriptions, it's probably worth the gamble to go to something like a silver plan at this point. How many months of COBRA would you pay until you reach the max out of pocket payout for the silver plan is some math you should do. You can scale that based on your risk tolerance.

On my California Kaiser plan, COBRA was about 35% cheaper than the equivalent Covered California offering.

If your wife is working and has health insurance, you probably both qualify for special enrollment onto hers. And as a neighbor said, Covered California (ie CA's Obamacare) will enroll you. The other thing that may help is you have 60 days to enroll into cobra. You can wait until eg day 55 before seeing if you used it, as long as you have the cash to float if something happens and you end up needing to enroll.

FWIW, SF Fire CU in the bay area has credit cards that charge 7.5% rather than the 25%-ish at Capital One or Citi.

Hope this helps in some tiny way.

If you enroll in COBRA within 60 days, you can retroactively claim coverage. If you have current cashflow issues but have only minor healthcare expenses, you can wait to see if you need it.

Of course before going this route, check with a reputable source.

Note: This was back when I lived in NY and I know this differs by state, so this is not all around advice.

I’ve been on COBRA twice before using the 60 day “trick” due to recession related lay-offs. Luckily, the previous times I didn’t have cash flow issues, but I did learn that to get reimbursed once you opt-in and pay those back months can take many, many weeks. So while it may seem like you possibly extending your cash flow, you are actually playing a risky game of chance. Cash flow will end up being far worse off if you get unlucky.

I know I’ve replied more than once in this thread shooting down suggestions, but do know that I appreciate the advice. I’ve just lived life having quite a few unlucky events at bad times, so I’ve learned to always consider how worse off things can be for others.

What I was hoping for with my post was to solicit actual introspection and suggestions for alternative fixes that the HN community could iterate on. So please, I hope people will focus on that instead of my situation. Thank you.

Perhaps a nit, but COBRA is always retroactive

https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-and-Initiatives/Other-Ins...

Thank you for putting into words precisely how I'm feeling about this situation. The goal was to flatten the curve, not protect every single person from getting exposed which is impossible and seems to be what those who are not suffering economic hardship from this (yet) are now asking for.

What gives you that impression? What do you think would be the result if we removed lockdowns on Friday?

There does seem to be a fundamental misunderstanding about how we are tackling this pandemic. We are not trying to prevent infection because we don't want any new infections. We are only trying to keep the rate of new infections low enough as to not overwhelm healthcare capacity. More people getting infected everyday is part of the plan.

In many parts of the US it is time to start cautiously reopening more parts of the economy, exactly as is occurring now in a dozen European countries. The main impediment to that is our testing rate, which still lags other Western nations that are easing lockdowns.

In the US, the third category is being furloughed and collecting unemployment. Here in Maryland, anyone making $55,000 or below collects as much in unemployment (with the $600/week federal supplement) than they did while employed. The IT systems have done a bad job handling some new categories of claimants (people who couldn’t collect unemployment before but were allowed to under the CARES Act). So some people are waiting for checks. But others are relatively unaffected: when the stay at home orders end, they expect to get called back to their jobs.

Just a mathematical nit; Maryland caps unemployment at $430 per week. So adding CARES bumps that to $1030/week. It's only lasts 26 weeks, so it's worth $26780. I'm not sure if you have to pay income tax on any of this.

Unemployment benefits are taxable income.

It’s the equivalent of a $53,500 annualized salary in terms of weekly paychecks. Also, CARES Act extends unemployment through the end of the year (39 weeks). A recent U of Wash study projected states could start easing restrictions in late May to early June. But it’s going to be a slow reopening. The concern is that if the federal government is bankrolling things, the reopening will be slower than necessary.

First of all, you pay income taxes on unemployment income. The additional $600 per week as part of the CARES act is only through July 31st. Then it reverts to just the ase amount - which is whatever percentage of your income (until it reaches a capped amount) that unemployment insurance pays out, which varies by state.

It’s a little scary.

I was laid off last year from a non-tech job and at the time, had savings and unemployment to not worry about paying $1800 for rent plus reduced additional expenses for a respectable while (without losing everything) but it's a very different story now.

Since COVID, my landlord said he could let me defer payments for a few months, but honestly that’s not helpful at all since I’ll have to pay in full eventually.

I previously felt relatively comfortable with my opportunities to find new employment in marketing or a career switch to product management. But now, cash is low and what few jobs are available are flooded with applications and high competition from all the layoffs. I can't even get a food delivery gig because they have so many applications.

It could be worse, but my wallet and savings are taking a serious beating and probably will for quite a while.

So if anyone has ANY marketing or PM needs or questions......... Say hi, email in bio! Happy to connect at the very least.

Get off reddit, you won't regret it or miss it at all tbh.

Reddit sure aint what it used to be.

I remember RON PAUL 2008 and the unironic fedora wearing and I don't miss what it used to be.

I remember pun threads and intelligent discourse - prior to the ron paul days (post-digg).

Digg was around and bigger than Reddit until 2010.

I feel a strong division of producer/corporate vs consumer in Reddit today. Every sub is more or less a “fan community” defined by something external, something its userbase only communicate with over the counter, and that doesn’t happen elsewhere.

> Yet when I read Redditors talk about quarantine, you'd think everyone in the world was getting paid time off to play Animal Crossing at home or they live at mom's house rent-free

Wouldn't this be a self-selecting population? or is everyone whether rich or poor, good circumstances or bad online?

Yea I am wondering the same thing. I am REALLY lucky to have saved a lot and be in a good living situation where I can quarantine comfortably. But what the hell are people doing who were paycheck to paycheck? I would not blame them if they had to start stealing from supermarkets

REALLY lucky to have saved a lot

Luck might play a role in whether you got a good job, but saving money is mostly a product of willpower.

I would not blame them if they had to start stealing from supermarkets

Would you blame them if they stole $15/pound steak instead of $0.20/pound bags of flour? Because few people steal bags of flour--that is, few people steal food for purposes of preventing starvation. It's mostly driven by the same impulse as any other form of stealing.

Desperation?

People dont do bad things because they want to be bad or lazy. Thats Nixon era properganda used marginalise the anti-war hippies in favour of the Military Industrial Complex.

Conversatives will trumpet this till the cows come home while simultatiously gouging the govenrment with there large businiess for subsidies, discounts, monopolistic laws, on everything they do.

You could pay entire swaths of your population unemployment, or you could subsidies the creation of a new oil processing facility and let that company then employ the population. When you subsidise big buisness, that money goes straight into family trusts. When you subsidise people directly, that money goes straight back into the community.

As soon as u pay people a basic income, they have the chance todo what they want in life. People dont want to steal. They only start doing that once they are disenfrancised and already marginalised.

CA unemployment is near $1000 a week with the federal stimulus.

It’s naive to think this works for everyone. Independent contractors are getting screwed. Small businesses are getting screwed. Sure, there are some solutions on paper, but for a lot of people they have not come to fruition yet.

Edit: People downvoting me are proving my point about being naive. I’m giving my input as someone who is in a much different position than most of the privileged commenters here. Feel free to ignore it, it just grows my disdain for the stereotypical tech worker, a well-paid sheep that’s never faced any kind of hardship yet thinks he knows what’s best for people who have.

Not everyone fits into a perfect little box of “job” or “no job.” I personally am an independent contractor who’s been burning through (minimal) savings while building a startup that doesn’t exist yet. I’m eligible for the $1200 check, but I have no idea where it is and the IRS website is a blackhole. I haven’t tried for the PPP loan yet but it’s not helpful.

Independent contractor, self employed, and gig workers can get unemployment now because of the stimulus bill even though they aren't normally be eligible. If you are making substantially less than before you can get partial unemployment, and it could make sense to quit working and quarantine given the benefits and your economic prospects. I agree that this won't work for everyone though. The bay area specifically has more people with jumbo loans, and these are not federally backed and part of the forbearance program. The cost of living in the bay area is higher, so this stimulus will not go as far as many places. The cost of healthcare is still a concern if you get sick, even with insurance.

The amount of unemployment benefit scales with income, and $450/wk (plus $600 from the stimulus) is the maximum, to be clear. A full time worker paid $15/hour would receive $300+1000 per week.

UI benefits table https://www.edd.ca.gov/pdf_pub_ctr/de1101bt5.pdf

Your math is a bit off. $15/hour fulltime is $7650 gross per quarter. According to the EDD PDF you linked, that would qualify for $295/week in unemployment plus $600 from the Feds for a total of $895. No one is going to get more than $1050 combined in California.

They’re complaining loudly, begging to go back to work. And they’re being shamed for it by people who are in a position like yours.

There are lots of food pantries in the US and in many of the cities the schools are using the school lunch program money to package food that parents can pick up from the school. There are many avenues for honest people before they have to resort to stealing from a grocery store.

In the old days people were part of families which were part of communities and they would all take care of each other if something like this happened. We've obviously gone far far away from that. I wonder if we will start moving back toward that sort of society?

As Margaret Thatcher said - there is no such thing as society, there are only individual people.

Seems like over last 50 years many people had been brainwashed to believe it is so.

But people are not the largest, quickest or most dangareous species on the planet. Our strongest point had been communicating and working together toward common goals, creating the society and taking care of each other.

Saddly in last 50 years this darwinistic vision of getting ahead at all cost at the expense of the others prevailed.

We keep in touch with our old nanny from a couple years back who became close with our family — just spoke to her and while they’re doing alright for now, it’s an uncertain and scary time for them. Same for friends and family in service and manufacturing. Some have lost jobs and are in limbo. Older relatives are relying on a network of friends to figure out groceries in areas without delivery.

We’ve continued paying our housekeepers and Montessori throughout all of this; it sounds like most of our community has been doing the same, based on emails from management, and chatter on Nextdoor. But this will vary widely depending on the particular community. Just like when a storm hits, the communities which are already less fortunate will typically get hit the hardest.

And then of course, the local businesses. When the tide recedes, I really don’t know how many of our favorite shops and cafes will still be there. Those folks are sitting on edge right now.

The social media feeds are going to be self-selecting for bored, single, young people. Anyone taking care of young kids at home are too busy looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop” to be posting very much right now.

There's another political solution that would maintain the lockdown while preventing thousands of people from dying by reopening the economy: cancel rent. In NJ, they canceled mortgages but not rent, so the landlords get a free ride. In theory rents are "frozen" but they'll become due in September with back rent owed.

No free ride for the landlord class. Cancel rent!

>In NJ, they canceled mortgages but not rent

This is not true:

https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/covid/mortgagerelief.html

>Do I still need to pay my mortgage?

>Yes.

>Will I have to make up the mortgage payments at the end of the 90-day grace period?

>Yes, these mortgage payments will need to be made up by consumers. The Department has requested that forbearance payments be added to and made at the end of the life of the loan. However, consumers should contact the institution that services their home loan to understand the specific programs and terms available to them.

I don't know the NJ specifics, but if they are like anywhere else on the world, mortgages weren't cancelled, just the time not paid added to the end of the term. Sure if you have 20 years left, 20 years + 4 months isn't a big change, but you still have to pay the amount owned. For landlords is the same, except it is in a shorter time period (but then again, not a lot of people rent the same place for 20+ years)

They will do the same thing homeowners will do; not pay. I hope nobody on here owns munis or bank stocks. Or REITs.

The munis and banks all have a direct IV funding line from the Federal Reserve, they mostly have absolutely nothing to worry about. The gloves are entirely off for this one, the Fed can snap up trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages if needed, they've got the greenlight across the board for any and all actions.

The Fed keeps lowering the thresholds (and they'll end up doing a lot more than that in the coming months; most of this won't be short-term credit, they'll switch it to long-term out of necessity):

"Fed expands muni-debt program to cover smaller cities, counties"

"The Federal Reserve expanded the scope and duration of the Municipal Liquidity Facility, a $500 billion emergency lending program aimed at providing short-term credit to state and local governments as they endure the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. central bank lowered the population thresholds under which counties and cities would be eligible to sell short-term debt to the facility. The new levels are at least 500,000 for counties and 250,000 for cities, down from 2 million and 1 million."

https://www.bondbuyer.com/articles/fed-expands-muni-debt-pro...

I work for a fortune 500 financial institution. After what happened during the last crash we had a policy of 365 days of liquidity. So far this time we haven't used the Fed firehose of $, but according to our CEO the Fed has asked us to start using it. I don't understand why the Fed would ask us to use something we don't need.

So that companies that need to use it don't feel stigmatized, and subsequently punished by the market.

I'm pretty worried about my family. My dad barely survived 2008.

My extended family is heavily dependent on commercial real estate. My dad is the least (relatively) successful/smallest of the family. He's an agent (and small owner). At the end of 2019 helped facilitate a HUGE __ insert a top firm __ reit deal; $10 digits in a small ish state. Literally the top of the market. There's a reason his friend who sold that insane Sq Ft was already super wealthy. The small buildings my dad owns sounds like many can't pay rent.

I personally hedged a bit and including put REIT exposure. But despite having a super pessimistic view on the economy, seeing losses now is scary and I'm thinking about closing (i did move my main savings into much safer territory before the biggest drop and govt said they will buy unlimited bonds/debt..). That idiom the market can remain irrational longer comes to mind

It depends on your risk tolerance. If you're hedged with a long put on a decent time horizon, I don't think you have much to worry about, as you're locking in a price in case the REIT falls significantly. Your max loss is capped at the premium+commission you paid for the long put. It helps to have some physical precious metals, as paper precious metals are risky and I don't think COMEX can enforce their futures contracts effectively. This is to hedge against currency risk.

Depends on the REIT. Some do malls, some do apartments, some do hospitals. I'd expect a residential REIT to see a one to two quarter drop in dividends by maybe 25%. I'm having a hard time justifying a longer term dividend drop or valuation drop because there's still a housing shortage in the US. Unless more people move in with their parents, or something...

>> I'm having a hard time justifying a longer term dividend drop or valuation drop because there's still a housing shortage in the US

Real estate is all about location.

Major cities have a housing shortage and will continue to be able to find some tenants. Rent is likely to go down or stabilize for some time.

Small town will be decimated. All the jobs that are disappearing are not coming back, people will have no money for rent and there are no other tenants immigrating in.

I am in Germany and am lucky working remote for my local company.

I talked to my neighbor on Sunday. She is a cleaner working for a subcontractor cleaning schools. She wasn't able to work for 9 weeks (first there were holidays, then Corona stay at home rules). She isn't being paid and her boss does not go through the official process of getting government subsidiaries for her. She is just being left hanging.

Yeah her boss is an ale. It would cost a little bit of time and get all his employees 60% of their net income. He just isn't doing it.

Her sons earn okayish - so they help her out. And we do neighborly community help. Non the less. People left and right are being left behind. Even with government interventions in place.

Alameda county flat out does not allow evictions for non payment of rent for covid-19 related reasons. The landlords can get back rent on a 12 month payment plan, and they can pursue small claims court if this is not paid.

Does this include commercial leases or just residential?

It looks like just residential. Here is a link to the order. http://www.acgov.org/board/bos_calendar/documents/DocsAgenda...

But commercial evictions are still done judicially in CA unlike some other places, and at least in Alameda county the ability of the business to repay is factored in

Where on earth are you paying $200/mo for rent?

Eastern Europe? Asia?

Even in large parts of the US, you could get away with $200/mo with roommates.

I know that for my oklahoma college friends they often had rent around 250/month for a room in the oklahoma city metro area (norman specifically). 200/month in some small oklahoma town is probably doable for a room.

It's been a decade, but a friend in a college town just north of Dallas had an off campus apt for $300 a month. I had an off campus apt much closer to everything for under $500, similarly a friend even closer had an apt for $500.

The prices are a lot cheaper in a lot of US metros than the tech centers.

I lived in Puryear, Tennessee for about a year. One-bedroom apartment/1000 square feet was $325 a month.

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