OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Part V

[True Blue]

If you open up the economy too soon, unemployment will take an even bigger hit.

The longer you wait, the worse the unemployment. That a fundamental. The Cuomos and Murphys of the world need to roll their plans out.

The federal government had at least 6 weeks to implement the same policies that they put in two months later. The curve would have been flattened sooner, less people would have died, and we would be closer to normal life, today. The countries that reacted quickly and efficiently have done far better than America.

What large countries are doing better? What political party was going to do more, sooner? NO ONE in this country was going to start to do anything sooner.

Now, the government is endorsing rallies to stop the strategies that have been working. These same rallies are not organic. There are organizations behind the rallies that have different goals than keeping Americans alive.

Now we are going to have conspiracy theories that the government is secretly organizing rallies of people who want to go back to work? Did they also secretly organize the people who streamed on the Florida beaches?

 

[True Blue]

That's not good enough.

Far better than anything else out there. And responsible for far more good as opposed to harm than anything else out there.

 

[Machinehead]

Far better than anything else out there. And responsible for far more good as opposed to harm than anything else out there.

Not good enough.

9 million starvation deaths annually, global pandemic, collapsing ecosystem, and nonstop war, and we just throw our hands up and say "well, this is as good as humanity gets and this is the best system we will ever devise, so dems da breaks."

With that attitude, we'd still be drawing on caves.

 

[Machinehead]

I don't think anybody is suggesting radical ideas or that it's feasible to just neglect the economy.

If the idea that we could make things less shitty or that money shouldn't be our sole measure of success is unrealistic, then something is wrong.

 

[True Blue]

Not good enough.

9 million starvation deaths annually, global pandemic, collapsing ecosystem, and nonstop war, and we just throw our hands up and say "well, this is as good as humanity gets and this is the best system we will ever devise, so dems da breaks."

With that attitude, we'd still be drawing on caves.

Plenty good enough. No system is perfect. But as someone who was not born here and whose family experienced the other ism, more than good enough for me. Responsible for more job and wealth creation than any other system.

If not good enough for you, than you can either find a system that works for you or get into politics and try to run the country so that you can try to reshape it in your image. Again, having experienced other, this country with all of its warts and faults is a dream.

I do not know if you have noticed, but we are not living in caves.

If the idea that we could make things less shitty or that money shouldn't be our sole measure of success is unrealistic, then something is wrong.

How did this get to money being the sole measure of success? I certainly didn't make any such claim.

We should always strive to make things better. Also not sure where the belief that anyone has said anything different comes from. But a utopia, you will never get to.

 

[Machinehead]

Plenty good enough. No system is perfect. But as someone who was not born here and whose family experienced the other ism, more than good enough for me. Responsible for more job and wealth creation than any other system.

If not good enough for you, than you can either find a system that works for you or get into politics and try to run the country so that you can try to reshape it in your image. Again, having experienced other, this country with all of its warts and faults is a dream.

I do not know if you have noticed, but we are not living in caves.

I'm glad you feel that way. A lot of people don't. Those people shouldn't be disregarded and the idea that nothing can beat this is insanity.

I am very politically active in my personal life not because I want to run anything, think I'm qualified to do so, or think I have a skeleton key solution. I'm simply coming from a mindset that "oh shucks, warts and faults" just isn't cutting it anymore and let's have a discourse on what we can improve.

Again, if your response to the suggestion that we should take care of people besides billionaires and that maybe we don't need one thousand military bases is "that's just how it works" then I patently reject the notion that this is all we're capable of.

 

[Fireonk]

What large countries are doing better?

Not sure what you consider a large country, but the first few that spring to mind are South Korea, Germany, and Canada.

 

[chosen]

The longer you wait, the worse the unemployment. That a fundamental. The Cuomos and Murphys of the world need to roll their plans out.

What large countries are doing better? What political party was going to do more, sooner? NO ONE in this country was going to start to do anything sooner.

Now we are going to have conspiracy theories that the government is secretly organizing rallies of people who want to go back to work? Did they also secretly organize the people who streamed on the Florida beaches?

Which large countries (whatever that definition is) are doing worse? China, maybe. Any others?

Lots of people, including medical people, were calling for action in January. Even members of the administration called for action:

Trump reportedly dismissed January coronavirus warnings from Health Secretary Alex Azar as 'alarmist'

The government isn't organizing it. At least there is no evidence of it, although it's curious that the rallies have now been linked with a threat to the 2nd amendment. There is someone behind it, though. Oddly enough, therein is the connection to the 2nd amendment.

They are three brothers with the last name of Dorr.

Three brothers appear to be behind online network of far-right gun owners calling for anti-lockdown protests

 

[Machinehead]

Not sure what you consider a large country, but the first few that spring to mind are South Korea, Germany, and Canada.

 

[Oscar Lindberg]

And away we go: Georgia to reopen some businesses as early as Friday

You mean the state with the guy who didn’t know asymptotic people could transmit the virus until 2 weeks ago?

What could go wrong here?

 

[Trxjw]

Even if the economy is "re-opened" you won't see many jobs coming back for a while. In fact, if this situation levels off, I expect to see lots of restructuring and layoffs later in the year. Particularly where companies realized a significant portion of their work force could work remotely, and that they're overstaffed with "critical" on-site resources. Additionally, that will result in companies likely looking to consolidate retail and office space, which means more people will be laid off until those are filled again. Cleaning staff, security, cafeteria workers, mail people, etc.

 

[Machinehead]

Can anybody who knows more about this than I do tell me why we have bugs?

There's crazy f***ing bugs in my kitchen since the virus started and a lot of my friends are reporting the same, also since the virus started.

 

[eco's bones]

Where am I acting like it is over? I do not think that this will ever be over. There is no eradicating this virus. I believe that this is something that people will be dealing with forever. But that is not a reason to completely kill an economy.

I am not sure what to tell you here. Right now the models show 60,000, not 200,000. They started by showing 2 million. Should we not use these models as a barometer? I am completely fine with that but at that point I can just as easily say that they fatalities will be less than 60,000 as you state that they will be more.

I am not backing suicide. I am only speaking a stark reality. Am going to presume that you have some sort of income that is coming your way as you stay at home. And please forgive me if I am wrong. That is excellent. But there are those that have no paychecks and are staring at no prospects of employment because of the immense damage done to some industries. And with such a high unemployment rate,those benefits will run out much sooner. And now there is not a penny coming in. Welcome to Hooverville creation.

The economy will sort itself out, but it may take a very, very long time to do. And not without a lot of devastation and pain first.

And your "so what" is what leads to a lot of pain for a lot of people. And, please forgive me here if I am wrong, can only be spoken by someone whose checks have not stopped coming in.

A critique of your entire shtick is your belief that things are as they are and we can only succeed as an economy and a country following a certain narrowly proscribed path. As an aside an economy should never come before a country or its people. It should instead be subservient to both. What we've got in the past couple decades + anyway is the opposite though--people as servants of the economy instead of the other way around. This is how you end up with super billionaires, a congress that works for rich people, stagnant wages for workers, regime change resource wars and college students looking at a future of indentured servitude up to their eyeballs in debt before they even start. Things don't have to be this way.

A long while ago I read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding media and he shows the progression of change---of technology over time and the point is that change is inevitable--that things are always subject to change and those that refuse to change get left behind in some way or another and as a somewhat older person I'm getting left behind on the technological front (but I'm alright with it because you can't hate change for its sake or your sake). Things advancing with or without us is really in its way a hopeful message--that we will continue to innovate and evolve as a society and this is not just tangible things like automobiles going from gas guzzling to electric or newspapers/radio/television getting replaced by the internet. More intangible things like an economy are also subject to change. Or as another Canadian Naomi Klein puts it that after a real disaster there are ideas laying around and what matters is what ideas get picked up.

We can't leave a third of the work force unemployed--so where is the money coming from? The bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks replied 'because that's where the money is'. Duh. So what hopefully is going to happen is we'll start sorting out the essential from the non-essential and then we're going to restructure the economy so that those millions of people aren't left out in the cold or we're eventually going to have some kind of revolution whether bloody or otherwise.....hopefully otherwise. The economy bears down the hardest on people of color and young people--here's a chance to begin to rectify those things.

 

[Do you want ants]

Besides a spike in infections another issue for reopening businesses too soon is this.

I’ll use restaurants as the example. They’re mandated that they can reopen. They no longer qualify for assistance. They’re employees either have to come back to work or hope they get fired and qualify for unemployment. Now that unemployment comes out of the restaurants’ pockets and not the State.

So a business that will most likely be operating at half or less of standard sales is left holding the bag for everything. That includes the rent that’s been deferred.

So the likelihood of these small businesses closing permanently goes up. Unlike the airlines and cruise lines we keep propping up.

I’m fine with reopening and easing back in, but there has to be better plan in place at the State and Federal level.

 

[chosen]

I’m fine with reopening and easing back in, but there has to be better plan in place at the State and Federal level.

How about any plan at all?

 

[chosen]

Far better than anything else out there. And responsible for far more good as opposed to harm than anything else out there.

Well, there's more good than bad, but there has been plenty of bad, too.

I don't think it's as clear-cut as you do. In medical treatment and life expectancy, there are plenty better than America, which includes a ridiculous amount of murders by gun, but it also applies to things like infancy deaths.

Quality of life doesn't grade out as well as one might expect. Yeah, I know it's far better than most countries, but we're the richest nation on the planet, so you'd think we would grade a bit higher than we do.

The biggest problem is that we are well on the way to eliminating the middle class. The country will go into full-blown economic collapse if that happens. Eliminate the middle class and no one will be able to purchase product from the rich. That's what a third-world country is.

I love living here, but I've traveled quite a bit, and it ain't so bad in many other places, either.

 

[NYR Viper]

I was listening to an interesting conversation on the Daily Drive this morning. They mentioned that conceivably, we could see a society that has (2) types of people., the immune and the non-immune, where the immune are in high demand and are paid accordingly by critical businesses to get things done. Making others fearful for losing their jobs and consider self inflicting the virus upon themselves in order to provide financially. That's an interesting thought as we move forward here.

 

[sbjnyc]

Can anybody who knows more about this than I do tell me why we have bugs?

There's crazy f***ing bugs in my kitchen since the virus started and a lot of my friends are reporting the same, also since the virus started.

I know nothing about bugs other than I hate them but here's my guess. You're home all the time so the heat is on and there is more garbage and food around.

 

[Fireonk]

I was listening to an interesting conversation on the Daily Drive this morning. They mentioned that conceivably, we could see a society that has (2) types of people., the immune and the non-immune, where the immune are in high demand and are paid accordingly by critical businesses to get things done. Making others fearful for losing their jobs and consider self inflicting the virus upon themselves in order to provide financially. That's an interesting thought as we move forward here.

My wife might have listened to a similar podcast as she brought this up to me yesterday. I can't see how it doesn't lead to exactly what you say, people inflicting the virus on themselves on purpose, especially people who believe themselves to be in good shape and under 50.

 

[sbjnyc]

Ok. I'll bite. If we do not have free market capitalism, what do we have?

Governmental ownership of business is not a very good example of capitalism.

Corporate socialism.

I'm not so sure about socialism as that is a government where the workers control the means of production, not the business owners. But the US is a massive corporate welfare state which is the anathema of a free market sociaety.

 

[Oscar Lindberg]

The federal reserve has been dumping billions into the stock market to keep it afloat, there's a reason these rich politicians wants businesses back open. They know they'll lose money if businesses don't open back up

You got idiots like the lieutenant governor of Texas going on the news saying shit like people need to take risks, and that some things are more important than living. Going back to work is more important than literally being alive

That should tell you all you need to know

 

[Tawnos]

I'm not so sure about socialism as that is a government where the workers control the means of production, not the business owners. But the US is a massive corporate welfare state which is the anathema of a free market sociaety.

You're only talking about the purest definition of socialism. Democratic socialism, for example, is a largely capitalist system where the government and, by extension the workers, controls only those industries vital to general human dignity and prosperity. Corporate socialism is essentially defined by the phrases "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor" and "privatize profits, socialize losses"... corporate welfare is the defining aspect of corporate socialism, just as social services welfare is the defining aspect of democratic socialism.

 

[GoAwayGiannone]

I was listening to an interesting conversation on the Daily Drive this morning. They mentioned that conceivably, we could see a society that has (2) types of people., the immune and the non-immune, where the immune are in high demand and are paid accordingly by critical businesses to get things done. Making others fearful for losing their jobs and consider self inflicting the virus upon themselves in order to provide financially. That's an interesting thought as we move forward here.

That sounds like it could be a great plot to a movie.

 

[sbjnyc]

You're only talking about the purest definition of socialism. Democratic socialism, for example, is a largely capitalist system where the government and, by extension the workers, controls only those industries vital to general human dignity and prosperity. Corporate socialism is essentially defined by the phrases "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor" and "privatize profits, socialize losses"... corporate welfare is the defining aspect of corporate socialism, just as social services welfare is the defining aspect of democratic socialism.

This is the definition in Wikipedia. It doesn't really agree with your definition.

"Democratic socialism is a political philosophy supporting political democracy within a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on workers' self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market socialist economy or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy."

 

[Tawnos]

This is the definition in Wikipedia. It doesn't really agree with your definition.

"Democratic socialism is a political philosophy supporting political democracy within a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on workers' self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market socialist economy or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy."

That's a dictionary definition. I'm talking about in actual practice. For example, Sweden and Norway are both considered democratic socialist, but both run a mixed economy. The balance of the mixture varies from country to country... my sense being that Sweden is more free-market than Norway.