Coronavirus Could Push More Than 1B People to Extreme Poverty
nationalinterest.org
nationalinterest.org
But the opposite has happened, apparently _a lot_ of people decided now is the time to remodel/improve their home, and the family business is booked _months_ in advance. Furthermore, customers also assume that business must be low, and are aghast when we tell them that "No, work cannot start next week, does late February work?". At the moment their biggest issue is finding enough skilled labor to meet demand, and excruciatingly slow permitting process.
We're still extremely wary with how this economy is playing out, and continue to plan for the worst. I still worry for them a lot because, well Covid, but safety protocols and N95 masks were the norm before the virus took hold.
We're no different, my wife completely redecorated the main level of our home. It was all things we wanted to do but were putting off. I guess being home 24/7 pushed us to action to improve the space.
Which makes sense. Many people still have their jobs and income. But now are spending more time than ever inside their own houses. Not traveling, and for the most part, not dining out or otherwise spending money elsewhere.
So it makes sense that, if you are in the home remodeling business, you are seeing lots of activity. Also why USPS, UPS and Fedex are overloaded. And the reason PC parts are rarer than gold. TVs flew off the (virtual) shelves on Black Friday. And so on.
The problem is: many people did lose their income. So on one hand you see an incredible influx of customers remodeling homes and spending money on superfluous things, on the other hand you see people becoming homeless, or relying on food banks for the first time in their lives.
This is not like a recession. Some activities have essentially stopped, other are on overdrive. This will create an enormous imbalance, which could bring a recession (long predicted) even after COVID is done. Assuming we can get rid of it.
But if I've learned anything this year is that the market (and worse yet, the stock market) tends to overcorrect.
In the particular case of the US, interest rates can't really get much lower, and they have been low for years. Not many levers left to pull.
I'm seeing a lot of municipal and state services and even private sector license-like approvals exacerbating the demand for people that are already approved.
Yeah it is really hard to see what the market is really signaling, because the market can't correct itself with more entrants because pandemic restrictives absolutely have slowed down the gatekeepers.
But yeah, after a certain while you can't put your life on hold. Look up the top killers in the 1600s, all sorts of phantom and misnamed ailments that could get you at any time! Note, this isn't a post about ignoring the pandemic, only that the idea of people being poor and twiddling thumbs in their homes until the bread line opens up again is just completely wrong.
Lumber costs are sky high. Most other subs (plumbing, roofing, siding etc.) are booked beyond what they can handle.
We had our best year at our business in it's 21 year existence.
Can confirm. Was going to do a little DIY job at home and went to go price out some wood and dry wall. Just about had a heart attack when I saw 2x4's were now $6 a pop!!
I know this has been a double edge sword since demand is sky high but a lot of the supply side suppliers are relying on China and they've all but stopped shipping a LOT of stuff from a myriad of regions. So yeah, demand is high but I've also heard the supply side issues with China are compounding the issue.
Are you seeing/having any issues on the supply side yet?
Supply side issues are mostly logistical in nature:
- low low low supply of containers
- lower than normal vessels on the water
- getting container bookings is 3-4-5 weeks out.
- factory workers testing COVID positive = random shutdowns, therefore random delays
Most notably these are all high dollar jobs so it may be different on the low end.
Edit: the underlying UN study actually states 251 million additional people in poverty. Not sure where that 207 number in the article and many others coming from.
That is also the worst case scenario. The expected case is 44 million. It’s a tragedy regardless, but the headline is inaccurate clickbait
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-ke...
* The "I was broke once and I made it" crowd. They made it out so everyone else should be able to. This creates a predictable argument of one side asserting privilege is a thing and the other side taking it as an insult to their self-worth and industriousness. Both are right, both are wrong, nobody learns anything.
* The "Policy" or "Solutioning" threads. Usually started with little nuance or specifics, or with an idea that is so large you'll have to go 10 replies deep to have a chance to get down to anyone's personal beliefs or life experiences as to why they believe how they do.
* The "I myself am doing badly because I can't afford a 7 figure home in silicon valley" threads. The arguments are one side saying they're out of touch with "real" people and the other empathizing with the lack of security that comes with not owning a home. Housing discussions follow which I would've hoped are as boring to others as they are by now to me.
Were we to emphasise having productive or at least different conversations, we might try for what I call the "missing" threads, IE the ones that don't happen but should. Threads from:
* People who had to go to a food bank lately.
* People on SNAP, Social Security, Disability.
* People currently or in the past outside the western world who have experience with poverty.
This may not be the demographic that goes to HN, but if you take time to listen to people trapped in poverty for even 10 minutes and BELIEVE them, you might learn something really interesting.
Go give $100 to a local or international food bank now. They need it desperately. Instead of discussing policy on here go look at the lines of people who are currently hungry in the first world:
https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/long-lines-at-food-bank...
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/527462-long-lines-form-at...
You, on hacker news, can afford it.
Thank you for the reminder about this simple action for good. It was trivial to find my local food banks, and took only a couple minutes to give.
(I used charitynavigator.org to decide between a couple of local options.)
I understand where what's underlying this sentiment, but "you don't get to talk about this subject unless you've personally experienced it" is ultimately unproductive at best.
If for nothing else, when it comes to poverty in particular it's worth keeping in mind that educated people earning middle or higher incomes make up the most generous and most frequent donors to charity. "Shut up but pay up" doesn't read all that well.
If you took my post to mean “shut up but pay up” then I don’t really find there’s much point in conversing further.
When people who have never experienced poverty first-hand jump in to the conversation, there is a real danger that they will spout the same unhelpful misconceptions and argue that they are solutions. This can set the conversation back significantly while real lives are at stake.
On that point, I would agree. Such as “Those in poverty just have to work harder”, which IMO is one of the absolute worst and most damaging mindsets.
An old friend wanted help with wordpress (I hate wordpress), but had to take it. I jumped at $30/hour for 5 hours of work, just so we could put gas in the car, and get a few gifts for our toddler's for Christmas.
Not everybody on HN is doing great making 6-7 figure incomes. My best year, I maybe did 70k. My hourly is $40, generally as a freelance dev, even though others get $100, I've not once been able to secure that kind of pay. At 41, I'm getting a bit frustrated with the life, I had dreams of building a SaaS but just getting out of bed is so hard lately.
Or I just want to spend every waking minute w/ my kids, cause I have this dread that Covid will take me, and I'll miss out on valuable moments with them. My wife's never had a depressed day in her life, until this year, she's on anti-depressants now, her mom died in August from cancer. Usually she'd keep me out of my depression, now I have to find a way to pull her out of hers.
I'm sure there's more people in this thread who are in the demographic, than you think are. Lots of people go to HN and Reddit startup threads to get ideas to break out of poverty. (That's why I learned to code in the first place).
FTFY
My prediction is that before this is all said and done, far more people are going to be killed by the economic fallout of bad reactions to Covid than the disease itself.
Many people here are extremely privileged and can work remotely and haven’t been hit by the real despair many families in the real world are feeling. So many people don’t realize that not every job can be done over Zoom.
And it seems destined to get worse as the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mentality is going to go into overdrive next year as elitists around the world are going to try and ram through their power grabs that will make our current dystopia look like the good old days.
Yet, somehow, we all managed to 3. implement half-assed, unenforced stay-at-home "orders" and business closures with tons of exceptions and loopholes. This resulted in both major economic harm and widespread sickness and death. It's almost as if we're trying to make the worst decisions possible.
In addition to this article, UNICEF says[0] up to 132 million people will face starvation related to the lockdowns in 2020.
Just cursory searching yields the current COVID-19 death count at 1.6m[1] (a total which is disputed due to the "died from COVID-19" vs "died with COVID-19" distinction).
It seems like the starvation and poverty numbers from the lockdowns are likely to exceed any potential COVID-19 death count (even with no lockdowns).
And none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides, lack of medical care for existing medical conditions, and other impacts from being isolated or stuck inside.
Is this all emotional/fear-based/CYA decision making? I keep hearing "follow the science", but it doesn't seem like anybody is doing that at a basic life-saving or economic level. It feels like I'm going crazy, because none of the decisions being made make sense to me and are resulting in significant suffering and death.
It would be great to learn more if there are things I am overlooking here, but I've just been baffled lately.
Permitting? What do you propose be done? The economic impacts aren't primarily from civil direction -- there may be a margin that comes from that, but the vast majority of shifted behavior comes because people don't feel safe. You could wave a magic wand and drop ALL restrictions today and the economic gains would be marginal until people do credibly believe their safe.
The basic idea of a dichotomy between economics and epidemic is wrong. Economic impacts are an inevitable part of an uncontrolled epidemic.
> none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides
Are there numbers for lockdown related mental health impacts?
In general, health and well-being don't seem to suffer like you'd expect from economic difficulty:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928172530.h...
https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-economy-life-e...
> lack of medical care for existing medical conditions
This is actually one reason some civil direction to control covid cases is necessary. Having followed family members through multiple non-covid hospitalizations recently, I can tell you that the system isn't keeping margins of unused capacity for covid, it's struggling to keep up with demand imposed by it.
Mailing vitamin D pills to everyone in the country probably would also do more to reduce Covid deaths than the lockdowns (though might not be feasible for logistics/supply chain reasons).
I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
The only meaningful help is broad scale fiscal policy support.
> I'd be willing to pay more taxes to help the economy, but most people are against this
They are against this because paying more taxes does nothing to "help" the economy. Where do you think tax money goes? It doesn't go to people's bank accounts to pay for rent, groceries, car payments, utility bills etc. or any of the places that would directly contribute to the economy.
> In the mean time I do my part by eating out more often and visiting small businesses.
And as already discussed below - you are also screwing over the employees at those businesses. Quite literally costing them money they could make by serving someone who will tip... so they can, you know, pay for rent and contribute to the economy.
Not to open this argument but it's not the patron's job to ensure the staff are paid appropriately. If servers don't want to run the risk of not being paid at least minimum wage, they should ensure their conditions of employment guarantee it and the business should reflect it in their prices.
$30 Hamburger, or $25 Hamburger + $5 tip.
With the latter, you at least get to decide how much to tip - and if you received awful service, you have some recourse/feedback mechanism.
So you're likely hurting both the worker and employer, and making it more complicated for both of them.
Specifics (basic cash wage value, etc) vary by state.
Er, not serve? Or a degraded service which entails what? Begrudging looks?
Always a chuckle to behold America's fetish for tipping.
How it should be and how it is are immensely detached, I think we can all agree on.
Costco's net margin is ~2.6%, so the other 97.4% is leaving Costco for labor (notably well-paid for grocery stores) and whoever their suppliers are. Are they substantially different from your normal grocery store's suppliers? For that matter, is your normal grocery store itself different from Costco in some structural way that is meaningful to you? Perhaps you were previously shopping at a coop like San Francisco's Rainbow Groceries or New York's Park Slope Food Coop?
If you live in the US this is a real jerk move. You're talking about how you're getting richer, but then aren't willing to tip the service worker making less than minimum wage?
Right now I understand that we need to do our part to help small businesses, so I'm making an effort and tricking my brain into eating out by not tipping. This is where I want to put my money: I think it's my responsibility if small businesses are going to survive, I don't think it's my responsibility if workers are not paid well.
This doesn't really make sense. Without tipping (expected nationally), the cost of labor would just have to be priced directly into the food. Instead of a $15 burger, it would be $20.
If you don't like to spend money on dining out, fine, but it has little to do with tipping and more to do with being frugal.
So basically it does make sense because it is easier if the price is the total cost.
Actually, it would cost more than just standard price + tip as you funnel the money into the business first before it hits the employee's bank account.
> Right now I understand that we need to do our part to help small businesses, so I'm making an effort and tricking my brain into eating out by not tipping
This logic is absurd. Both small businesses and employees of small businesses are being crushed right now. Support them both or don't use their services.
You deciding to eat out is consuming time from the wait staff (who often tips out bussers and kitchen staff too). That time could have been spent serving another table that decides to tip.
You are literally taking money away from small business employees by continuing this behavior. You are punishing them for serving you a meal. How is that appropriate?
Rationalize all you want, but you’re acting like a huge asshole.
If you are morally opposed to tipping, eat takeout or at a counter serve restaurant.
1. Standard minimum wage 2. Some value less than minimum wage + tips
If the employee doesn't break minimum wage by adding their wage+tips, the employer has to make them whole. And then likely cut their hours and force them to look for other work.
No they don't, because what are you going to do about it? Hire a lawyer on your minimum wage salary (assuming you even know you're getting cheated)?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Wage_the...
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-th...
To everyone: please tip. It is in fact very likely that any given restaurant is not and would not make up the difference in pay for an under-tipped employee.
Your sources do not support this claim.
>Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been the victims of wage theft.
"Over two-thirds" means you are more likely than not to eat at a restaurant that has cheated its employees.
> "Over two-thirds" means you are more likely than not to eat at a restaurant that has cheated its employees.
No. It doesn't. It means that, in their entire lifetime as employees of any number of employers, two-thirds of employees, at least once, experienced wage theft in some form.
That's a much different statement and says nothing at all about whether those employees were robbed of overtime, asked to work for free, or their employers claimed tip credits for tips the employees didn't receive.
These are all examples of "cheating employees", I'm glad we agree.
You've convinced me that you are trolling. You haven't addressed any arguments or provided any meaningful support to your pretty extreme claims. Your proposed solution, even if it were effective, would exclude large numbers of non-tipped employees.
Even if, as you assert without evidence, the various labor boards around the country are ineffective, providing them with the funding that would otherwise go to tipped employees would be a much better solution than tipping. It would simultaneously remove resources from thieving employers, make them easier to identify, make it harder for them to find labor, and provide greater resources for those trying to stop them.
In fact, here, have some more evidence, I'm eager to find out what's wrong these these sources:
http://wagejustice.org/wage-theft-facts/
https://unprotectedworkers.org/index.php/broken_laws/index
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/18/news/economy/wage-theft-wor...
It’s also not my job to disprove your unsupported claim by scouring sources you’ve just googled. Even if I stipulated that your sources are credible and true, which they may be, you are making massive leaps in logic in order to support your claim and not even attempting to explain how you got there or addressing my very direct criticisms.
That I am “uncomfortable” talking about this is just a lazy and ironic ad hominem argument. I’ve been talking about it. You’ve been avoiding that conversation. I’m fine talking about it. I’m just not willing to talk to you anymore.
Which it won't do as long as people are tipping, in fact, entirely new industries are being created with deliberate, engineered pressure to expand tipping culture into them.
There's a very good argument that if you are opposed to tipping culture, as well as taking every opportunity to oppose public policy which supports and accommodated it, you ought not participate in it, which only reinforces and perpetuates it.
Not gonna be a very popular hill to die on
In places that have mandated tip sharing, the same people tipping the customer-facing workers (and, again, this isn't "small-business" specific; chain restaurants are no different than independents here), in places that don't, no one does. Tipping culture is more industry-focussed than scale-of-business focussed.
Tipping culture exists as an excuse for service workers to not only be grossly underpaid, but also to be compensated unequally in ways that would violate nondiscrimination laws if employers did it directly.
There's nothing special about small business, it's not like big chain corporate table-service restaurants (or, say, massive gig economy firms) don't underpay just as badly as any small business.
Until I visited the US I'd never tipped in my life.
Tipping is a poor substitute for decent wages.
It's also very awkward. I remember going to a wedding with an open bar - drinks were free but then people were getting out cash anyway to tip the bartender even tho no payment was involved? It's very bizarre if you haven't grown up with it.
But if you order some elaborate drink that takes time and skill to craft - you should tip as a way of saying "thanks for the effort". That was the original idea of tipping, after all - ensuring, measuring and providing direct feedback of service quality.
Have you ever stepped back and had a look at some of these paradigms you've been conditioned to adhere to?
The reaction to the virus by the government does that.
It would be more honest if predictions like this were mentioned alongside articles in the press that claim lockdowns are the only option we have.
We’re told all of this is in our best interest by rich people who will not suffer much cost if any - most politicians may come out ahead financially.
Zero government influence in the above paragraph.
Then in November it was visible that without intervention cases would start to pile up and service business were still suffering due to low patronage, there is no way out of this and government intervention vs no intervention isn't the root cause of the downfall for the service industry, it's pretty clear.
What are the other options? For all of humanity's advancements, quarantine-like behavior is our best bet against novel diseases.
In fact, many governments only implemented half-assed "soft" lockdowns. They should have acted immediately and decisively. Lockdown early and hard, at the very first signs that this thing was becoming a pandemic. And don't let go until it's under control.
Instead, we got this lame lockdown-but-not-quite (places of worship open, are you serious?), no mask mandate, nothing. And as soon as things start to look better, reopen. Oops, bad again, close. And now are are only prolonging the suffering.
Developing countries are once again in a bad shape, but richer countries should know better. Treat this as a war, support your citizens. Even though large companies like airlines are important, most of the focus should have been towards small businesses and individuals. Also on PPE at the very beginning.
There is enough money in the developed world to help with the problem. Make some fewer F-35 (at 200M a pop) if need be. That's a lot of food and rent money.
By the time the COVID-19 was recognized as a distinct virus, it was already too late to do anything about it, except to start distributing Vitamin D and other useful nutrient to the vulnerable.
> There is enough money in the developed world to help with the problem
Money is a useful fiction, nothing more. Money allows people to trade their time. Telling large numbers of people they can’t do anything with their time destroys exponentially more wealth than it protects.
And because the virus tends to get more out of control, this change is magnified compared to when the government takes action. Is it really better for the economy over the long term to lockdown or not? I don't think we know the answer one way or the other.
To take the extreme example. China was the epicenter of the pandemic, took the strongest government action and snuffed it out. Now our economy suffers while theirs does much better. Maybe our problem is we couldn't be as extreme as them, we don't have a hope of eliminating it in our countries in the West through lockdowns.
extreme poverty is a well-defined term, it's not emotive language.
Although what motivated me to comment that is the "could" in the headline is a presumption, there are many things that could happen, that's all I mean to say.
Good for you but that's not how you make an equitable society.
Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes
There is no bidirectional trust with corporations: assume you could get fucked at every moment.
When trying to convince a corporation (aka a group of people) to give me money I want to be evaluated on and compensated for my objective impact. Subjective evaluations (which can include bias, even the trendy intentional but liberally acceptable race and gender bias) are toxic and can be gamed.
I was in a rough situation and took it on the chin. I didn’t beg for money, I begged for the chance to work. Very different and represents opposing work ethics.
0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeles...
- Are the results false? Would a country lie on the numbers? It looks like the US estimation was misleading halved in two[1], the real numbers paint a much different picture placing the US much higher than any European countries.
- Are the results misleading? For example, I see that different years are listed for different countries (2012 for France, 2019 for the US), or that Germany's numbers include "around 375,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation".
- Is reality misleading? For example, it could be that homeless in Europe are taken care of and thus you don't see them much, whereas in the US they are all over the streets because there are no aids. Or it could be that most homeless people in Europe don't live in the cities and are thus out of sight.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-06/why-is-ho...
It is a fact that if you grow up near a financial cliff, people will fall off of it. That is not a productive way to conduct a society. It wastes productivity.
[1] This helps me build connections as well. For example, I fixed a doctor's laptop, and she has helped me with various things because of it.
[2] I want to move to another nearby country. Cheaper and nicer apartments, and the pay is the same because I work remotely.
In your world, I should just go fuck myself for having that medical issue though, right? Get off your high horse of toxicity.
Could you afford privatized health care on UBI along with basic living expenses?
If the amount we’re talking is 2k/m and in the USA I bet not.
It is concerning that you feel the need to berate a random person who made a comment you just happen to disagree with or misunderstood.
You don’t know me, but I’ll share an ancedote. I suffered a life changing health problem and the advice that I was given is “two things happen to sick people: they get better or they die”. The responsibility to adapt is on you. Not society
Either way, that being stated, further discussion would most certainly be fruitless.
I can not back such a system as that is tantamount to labor theft and is unethical
Now if you want to base a UBI on something else beside Income based taxation, Such has a Georgist Single land value tax then that would be a more ethical system
Amazon is a perfect example of this, you want to protect Bezos against the workers in shitty conditions that are surveilled and actively antagonized?
Also the idea that current system is " built on theft by the richest" is just asinine and ridiculous
Bezos wealth has doubled during the pandemic. As we discuss the pandemic pushing people into poverty, do you genuinely think it's asinine to judge the current system but not him?
It's an extremely fair system, that does not punish people from making high wages (there is no income tax in Islam), and pushes people to invest into the economy. It also does not inherently cause inflation like today's fiat money. It's quite sad to see that humanity keeps refusing to learn from the past.
They have a massive destabilizing effect on the economy, especially if that wealth is tied up into stock of a company
Take for example the "great evil" of today Amazon and Jeff Bezos. If Bezo's was forced to liquidate say 2% of his ownership in Amazon to satisfy his wealth tax that would send the stock into a free fall wiping out many many times more than that in value. So not only does that make it hard to actually calculate the tax bill, over time that kill most investments, 401K's pensions, etc
Taxes on subjective wealth (i.e totaling all assets up based on "current market value") is a TERRIBLE system, and very unethical far more unethical than income based taxation
> If Bezo's was forced to liquidate say 2% of his ownership in Amazon to satisfy his wealth tax
Except nothing I explained about Islam's Zakat laws force anyone to liquidate in the manner you're describing. Note I said cash money. Stocks are not cash money, and hence will not be taxed in the same way I explained. Ownership in companies is subject to things like debt, which will reduce the amount of money paid out.
Islam's Zakat is different from the wealth tax some leftists are trying to push today as you're describing.
I assure, the UBI is mutable when the people in charge want to change it. Or when we run out of money.
As someone who dislikes fiat currency, but is also in a place to benefit from it, UBI has always seemed bonkers to me. The MMT idea that fiat is infinite seems to only work if foresight is perfect and the ultimate cause of failure is known ahead of time (certainly Weimar Germany and Venezuela didn’t think they would inflate themselves into crisis).
Substantiate this, please.
They're 100% not going to allow class consciousness to form again, as we saw the beginnings of in the Occupy Wall Street era, so there's some risk of them manufacturing further racial grief to keep the plebs at one another's necks but the can't let that escalate to the point where it'd threaten the bottom line either.
So much easier to maintain the strategy of demoralization, distraction and vapid consumerism.
> When that party ends (likely in February/March timeframe)
Well, if you are so confident, you could get rich too. Buy some puts or short stock then.
The reason people in tech still have jobs is that _we can work from home_. As long as work is getting done and stuff is getting shipped, companies are fine. The only that are hurting are the ones where you need people together in some capacity.
Stock market speculation is not even a variable here. Sure it helps their portfolio, but that has little bearing on whether or not we still have jobs.
Grand gestures by politicians seeking re-election and an opportunity to assert their authority is shoving people into poverty and the largest mental health crisis we've ever seen.
In March, lockdowns and temporary restrictions were appropriate because we had no idea of what we were dealing with. I mean cover on, Ford was ready to manufacturer 50k ventilators!
We know who's at risk at this point. Locking down the healthy is not helping the unhealthy (by choice or by no fault of their own, doesn't matter, everyone deserves to live).
Instead of providing assistance to those most at risk, government officials have capitalized on the opportunity to expand their control over individuals not at risk.