The government has spent $10,000 per US resident propping up banks, hedge funds, dog-shit junk-grade corporate debt, etc.
Do you think that money was well spent propping up braindead investment funds, or would you have used it better?
We are at ridiculously high unemployment numbers, so whether people are "incentivized" to work or not doesn't mean much.
Not sure it's the right term to use for people, since as you say, the jobs aren't there. But for state governments, for sure.
This causes the states' perverse incentives that you mentioned. Many people believe a big push to reopen has been motivated by states trying to get people off unemployment as they know some workers would rather stay safe at home and lose unemployment benefits than return to work in an unsafe environment.
>Certainly there will be some people who do it, but you would basically have to commit fraud to do it.
Also the extra unemployment benefits expired so anyone still doing this is not making more than they would at their job. Their only incentive to continue this fraud is for their own personal safety. You can't call a preference for one's own personal safety "perverse".
Maybe then it says more about our current economic system as a whole.
But my point was it seems like if $600 / week is enough for folks to choose not to work, that says more about the work not being meaningful or the employer being unable to (or choosing not to) pay the worker well.
If $600/wk is enough not to work, then it can also speak to the quality of the worker and their lack of skills. Spending time complaining about how hard life is, rather than doing something about it. Not everyone is like that, and not no-one is like that either.
Severance is counted against eligibility for unemployment in most states.
Source; had a friend not understand this, to wonder where their unemployment was, to get their first check after their severance ran out.
two of your three examples are plague-pit jobs that will involve the employee interfacing with the public and getting sick, probably bankrupting themselves with medical bills. that's the real problem.
it's a free market, and if you can't retain employees that's because you're not offering enough. Offer someone $1m a year to work in your casino, they'll take it (even during a pandemic) and you know it. Now we're just negotiating over the price.
Start offering $60k, maybe $70k, and full health coverage to balance out, you know, risking your life and long term financial health so Karen can get her gyro, and people will take it.
The real underlying problem is that a lot of these businesses are essentially bankrupt already, they are the walking dead, their business model will no longer work due to the pandemic (they relied on not paying for their employees' health care and that's no longer a viable scheme with the pandemic on) and they're demanding what amount to subsidies (artificial reductions on the cost of labor, for which the clearing price has risen due to increased personal risk) in order to stay afloat.
taking away unemployment benefits isn't going to bring customers back to your subway, it's over for a significant number of businesses and the owners are pleading to delay the inevitable. This is the economic impact that people wanted to pretend didn't exist, there is no reason the stock market should be bouncing against an all-time high when our economy dived 33% annualized rate this quarter and the pandemic is spreading faster than ever.
You're looking at a crashing economy and suggesting that the real problem is the only brace still propping it up, and suggesting that we knock it out.
Many of these businesses are going to die regardless, because of the failed pandemic response, the failure to enact a sufficient degree of stimulus, and because these businesses are no longer viable with an ongoing pandemic.
And yes, I said plague pit. How in the world do you think it's reasonable for an employee that is not provided with any health insurance (or a bronze plan or whatever) to risk an infection that can stick you with a $1.1m bill, for $7.50 an hour? Employees are, shall we say, not going to respond to that economic incentive, that's not a reasonable trade from any perspective.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/breaking-down-this-miracle...
Instead, they will stay at home, and 33% of renters are going to miss their payment this month, just as the article says. As they said in 2008: if you don't pay your mortgage this month, you have a problem. If 33% of people don't pay their mortgage this month... the bank has a problem.
The reality is that businesses that require interfacing with the public are going to see a downturn in customers no matter what, and are going to have to start paying for their employees' health care, no matter what. You can't expect people to take on a near-certainty of an extraordinarily expensive hospital stay for $7.50 per hour. People won't do that, and customers aren't coming into the business at the same rate they used to anyway. Those businesses are walking dead and forcing employees to accept sub-market wages to get them back to work won't help that.
The drive to work can get you a $500k doctor bill, and at similar risks for Covid $500k doctor bill. Both of which these demographics will not pay at all. They will either just leave it in collections or use bankruptcy to eliminate it.
It's how business owners paying minimum wage want the market to work, but it's not how it does. Shit, a lot of businesses aren't even trying to mitigate the risks, not providing PPE, etc - they just expect minimum-wage workers to absorb all that risk and cost if they don't want to die.
2. It's not just you, you could infect your friends and family and children.
3. If someone actually compared the actual odds (i.e. real numbers) of getting in a card accident with getting Covid-19 working in one of these public-facing jobs we are discussing, under current conditions, then we'd be able to tell if the comparison you're proposing is reasonable or not.
Everyone is talking about the employees not wanting to go back to work, but as far as I can tell, I don't think the customers want to go to the businesses either.
I still personally think the crux is lack of demand. I don't think the customers exist anymore that would be willing to pay enough to account for the extra cost of the business given Covid. And one of those cost include safety precautions to their employees.
As an example, Amazon was able to hire 175000 additional workers through the pandemic, even though they were getting unemployment checks.
So I think it's naive to think that removing unemployment is what will save those business. But I'm not a zealot on this, that's just my current rationale. I'm welcoming counter points.
I recall (long time ago) that Germany's unemployment included a list that employers could use to find workers. If an unemployed person was offered a job, they were cut from unemployment. Our current system has people claiming unemployment, getting more money that working. This created a situation that employer could complain to the government, but then the employee feels "cheated" and brings those negative feelings back to work... not exactly a good situation.
The current system has all sorts of moral hazard and unintended consequences. I could provide a policy recommendation, but that's really out of scope for a small discussion forum.
I do appreciate your discussion though!
The US has a very good level of testing/mask usage. And, to be blunt, just wear a mask and wash your hands...you will be okay. I understand why some groups of people are very worried: if you are obese, if you are over 60, if you work in a hospital/care home...but if you work in an office, it isn't a "Hunger Games" situation.
I don't think furlough/unemployment schemes necessarily created that incentive though. People in some places are clearly being very cautious (I am in the UK, people aren't wearing masks and not being cautious at all...I have seen larger crowds at pubs than ever...no masks) anyway.
So I think the solution to the unemployment problem is a change in message from govt. If you take precautions, you will be okay (again, where I am the message was very urgent and serious...this worked at first but some people are ignoring totally and others are staying at home terrified of their own shadow...so who knows? But I think it would have success generally).
If this is true, why is the outbreak here so much worse than basically any of our peer countries?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/05/8993658...
And looking in the last 3 days is misleading since we know the pandemic hits in waves, at different times, across different countries.
The problem is we aren't at the end yet. Any time frame you use is therefore going to give you an incomplete picture. I used the last three days because it shows that the US is clearly in a worse current position. That means we will continue creeping up that initial per capita list you linked. Maybe the UK, Spain, France, or Italy experience a second wave at some point down the line, but at least they have gotten past the first wave that the US still hasn't been able to stop.
Instead of saying "better" I should have said "has fewer per capita deaths so far".
But as you said in your other reply, we understand Covid to be a regional disease that comes in waves, washing over a region and then subsiding. For smaller, denser countries in Europe, it is easier for this disease to reach all regions. America is vast with a much lower population density, and the virus is taking its time finding its way around.
However, if you break the US down into regions you can see how bad it is. NY state has a comparable population density to Italy (162 vs 200 for Italy), and both were hard hit at the beginning of this thing. New York state suffered 1,687 deaths per million, while Italy only suffered 582 deaths per million so far. This I think provides a more nuanced picture rather than just looking at deaths per million by country. Population density is really a factor here.
That assumes that the masks are as effective as claimed, that mass enforcement is even feasible, and that the Federal govt. has the right to create such a mandate. I don't believe we have enough data to know the efficacy of masks, especially handmade masks out in the field. Mass enforcement of mask wearing, even if it was somehow cost affordable to task law enforcement with, would likely be met with heavy protest or open revolt in the United States by various civil rights groups.
There's nothing wrong with being concerned about safety, especially these days. However, it's not so simple as 'pass a mask law', and if you really think about it ... there's a silver lining there. Do you want to be ruled by a government who can tell you what to wear, when to wear it, how to wear it — even if you dissent? Once there is a precedent for a national mask law, the Federal government can use that to push for further loss of freedoms for individuals and states. I'm not saying the mask law concept is intentionally being pushed to erode freedoms, rather, that it has the potential to do so.
Businesses can already refuse service for any reason not protected by Federal/State law. That's plenty of grounds to kick out a non mask wearer. I don't see the need for additional laws, enforcement, or government spending. Let businesses and employees decide the level of risk they are willing to take.
And you want a national mandate to wear masks but you said that people wearing them got infected. Interesting take.
[1] https://www.bryanhealth.com/app/files/public/4953/wear-a-mas...
you'd need to take an unnecessary risk like eating lunch in a group to create a significant exposure in that environment.
I'm... not sure... whether the science on this holds up, but it struck me as a good compromise. People expressed concern that wearing a mask for nine hours straight, without any breaks, would become very uncomfortable.
Politicians like Ocasio-Cortez actively told people they shouldn't go back to work even as places open back up. This is problematic because if enough people believe that, there is a risk of shortages for things like food. We over produce quite a bit in America, farms are heavily subsidized, and it's mostly school/restaurant food chain products that are being dumped right now (and many Americans are realizing for the first time we get totally different qualities of products than restaurants do), so it's not affecting us too badly yet.
Hopefully it won't, but there needs to be a balance between any proposal for UBI or continued unemployment and restarting production systems that produce domestic goods we need to survive.
This is interesting, can you clarify what you mean?
This is one of the tricky things about economic policy. If you are proposing UBI, you are likely to be the worst person possible to implement it. All the proponents see are upsides without the deep understanding of the downsides.
A country which manages this well is Denmark. They have high levels of union membership, they have a true contributory unemployment insurance scheme that functions like UBI but they are also very savvy about capitalism/markets, and have one of the most flexible labour markets in the world (one of the few places on par with the US, maybe even ahead of). They understand that capitalism is the way you pay for all this stuff, it is the solution, not the problem. Very few political systems can make this leap.
The same applies to the discussion around restarting. Lots of countries went hard on the lockdown rhetoric...and now, it is pretty hard to roll back.
It is very concerning though. I don't think this is going to be some huge decade long disaster, things will get better. But there is a real possibility that a lot of supply gets destroyed in the meantime as the middle-class cocoons themselves at home out of fear.
If the benefits were instead given to everyone, then you wouldn't lose money by getting a job.
The argument against generous "unemployment insurance" vs. "UBI" is valid enough. But it's based on an assumption of near-full employment that doesn't hold right now.
Basically: this is not the time to have that argument.
Broadly: I think this is mostly spin, and would want to see a real study instead of anecdotes from friends.
Do agree on unemployment though. The overhead of administering the program is nonsensical. Florida purposefully designed its systems to deny as many claims as possible. The idea of designing government systems as terribly as possible so that people hate the government is holding us back in times of crisis.
UBI payments simplify the whole thing.
Trickle up economics!
I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre.
What's the alternative though?
Because the edge cases often take more than ten minutes to reveal themselves?
See: "Tough on crime/drugs" policies, lead in gasoline and paint, etc.
The point of "hidden complexity" is that it's hidden. Talking to an expert in public policy in the specific area in question might well reveal the "glaring flaw" is actually a known thing, with a good but counter-intuitive reason behind it.
I've seen precisely that in software; big precautionary comments in code that say "this seems weird, but here's why it exists; you can try and fix it, but you'll just increment the 'leave this code alone' counter again".
Simply put, you can make better decisions because you don't have to negotiate.
However, it also appears to me to be objectively better for society at large, in as much as I'm able to be objective.
Yes.
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
I certainly have. It usually leads to 3-4 wasted years of dev time on the brand new architecture that will never match all the features of the old stack, and during that time the old stack has fewer and fewer resources and the tech debt piles up.
It is absurdly easy to come up with a better plan in 10 minutes if you have absolutely no idea how it really works or how complicated it really is.
However, I don't accept this answer. I think most of the time the government's plan is so bad, so glaringly flawed, that even from my position of ignorance, I'm confident I can beat it without hardly trying.
the problem is that one of the political parties has it as an ideological point that government doesn't and can't work, and sets out to sabotage everything to prove that they're right. Like how florida deliberately makes it impossible to get your unemployment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
There is, unfortunately, not a good fix for this, as similar parties exist worldwide. But banning Murdoch media and de-consolidating media control in general (returning local stations to local management, etc) would be a good start.
Cause right now this is your local news station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
A large part of the problem of "why doesn't government produce good outcomes" is exactly this - people who have a vested personal interest in producing bad outcomes, because that's what they run on.
How do you fix it? Not easy obviously, but certain propaganda networks are a large chunk of the problem. Murdoch's networks specifically, and Sinclair's network controlling local broadcasting.
Because your plan doesn't please campaign funds, interest groups, and voters in a bicameral legislature and a long electoral college selected President .... and skate past 200 years of federal and state laws.
There's a reason why Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin were able to achieve things quickly.
Authoritarianism is fast and exceptional, because only everyone that matters gets a voice.
Problem is that fast ‘large decisions’ can be catastrophic, and those without a voice eventually rise up...
Decide minimum wage, then give UBI to adults based on that.
If $15 per hr is minimum wage, UBI should be $2600 per month.
Once someone is getting this UBI, it should be legal to have jobs that pay $1 per hr or $0.5 per hr.
Right now there is an incredible power imbalance between employers and employees, where for the employer it's an inconvenience if they lose the employee, while for the employee it's loss of access to food, shelter and medicine if they lose their employer.
This means that the employer can squeeze the employee, allowing them to pile on with abusive working conditions, bad pay, and poor compensation. Lots of workplaces outright steal out of the paychecks for the employees in plain daylight and get away with it because the employee knows that if they raise a fuss they might get fired.
Nobody would work for 1 dollar an hour, as you say. So companies will have to offer more to attract workers. And the workers have the option of saying "no" if what they offer just isn't good enough. So they would be two equal parties, bargaining over what the labor is worth, without neither having a gun pushed against their head if they say "no".
Weirdly, a lot of people seem to think things are as they should be. People should starve and be homeless if they aren't willing to work under unsafe condition, or being blackmailed into working for bottom wages just to have food to eat tomorrow. I'm not a fan of that sort of Social Darwinism though.
Yes, if it prepared you for better jobs. Low wage dead-end jobs might not exist (then again, they might, different people have different utility functions), but low-wage on-ramp jobs that cannot exist now certainly would.
Yes, people are generally good and want to do meaningful things and contribute to society. But we're also lazy, selfish, and good at convincing ourselves to make short-term choices with poor long-term consequences.
I think with UBI, there would be a whole lot of couch potatoes. I don't think that's necessarily morally a bad thing, but if the ratio of couch potatoes to people producing economic activity that pays into the UBI fund is bad enough, it can make UBI simply economically unsustainable whether you think it's a moral good or not.
So there is a balance between:
A. Keeping UBI low enough to incentivize people to produce labor such that UBI is financial self-sustaining.
B. Keeping UBI high enough that people who do not work are not destitute.
I think fans of UBI have a tacit assumption that A is well above B, but I am not so certain.
Hell, in a world of UBI, I'd anticipate volunteer organizations to flourish.
Opponents of UBI often ignore the word BASIC.
Next would be, are they up for removal of all subsidies / free programs (e.g., SNAP / food stamps)?
How can health care costs be addressed with fixed UBI?
I can see UBI succeeding or at least not failing in countries like Canada since healthcare costs are zero for individuals, no matter how poor or moneyless they are.
Without having a similar Healthcare system, how can UBI be even implemented?
Ps: I’m neither strongly for/against UBI yet, but curious to see how it can solve the problem. I just have a lot of unanswered questions when asking them to UBI supporters.
Change always seems fast and overwhelming until it’s done, then we realize that support for it had been growing bit by bit, and all that was left was that final leap.
Even if the UBI is impossible to attain tomorrow, we should still lobby for it so it will be attainable someday.
Did the U.S. not send $1200 to every citizen (under a means test) in May?
And several European nations.
A big argument _against_ UBI is that "people wont work, and won't do productive things". This unemployment is actually worse than that; the fact that it "all goes away" when you exceed your state weekly income cap means that people can't do safe, productive "work", even if they want to. If your passion is selling art, and you sell a painting for $200, you most likely just excluded yourself from ~800$ in unemployment that week.
This isn't even touching on the difference in social-economic situation impacting ones ability to even apply/qualify for unemployment benefits in the first place, and fact that many state unemployment systems are designed to prevent people from actually being able to collect.
The way that the $600/week is talked about it completely ignores everyone (a substantial amount) of people who fell through the cracks. The unemployment system is not designed for distributing catastrophe-relief, and it's a disservice to literally everyone involve by pretending it is.
I see. On that I agree with you. Replacing the $600/week with something better - yes!
That sounds like a great idea until UBI is treated like a driver's license...something that can be taken away...if you, for example, are seen at a "riot", or "interfere" with law enforcement, or stay out past 10pm.
It won't start with protestors though, but with people who owe child support, or who are convicted of drunk driving or drug offenses.
I'm an advocate for a UBI, and I'd use it to shift from working 5 days/week to 4 or 3 days/week. A move that many argue wouldn't effect the economy's output much at all, considering other countries economies do fine with less average working hours.
Additionally, a UBI would let more people participate in the economy and increase purchasing power of the less wealthy, which would help the economy.
So now I usually just work to pay bills and spending money, stashing away for a rainy day, etc. Most of it goes to taxes.
Given UBI, I probably wouldn't even need to bother.
(to paraphrase)