The GOP is responsible for both the Great Recession and the Great Depression, so this one will require a moniker even greater than “Great”. I propose: The Bigly Depression.
Cash for Clunkers is now Dollars for Diseases.
Tennessee State Government workers are being issued laptops, if they don’t have one already, for work from home.
I never even touched one, before today.
Is this one payment of $1,000 period, or is this $1,000/month? I’ve heard both. A flat, one-time payment of $1,000 is NOTHING against the expense of supporting a family. That’s not even a month’s rent or mortgage. I don’t get it.
What happens to a family who loses their jobs because of all the shutdowns? Can they jump onto unemployment right away? I would expect many families living paycheck-to-paycheck are going to quickly be in desperate situations when they can’t make their car/house/CC/loan/etc. payments even if they get unemployment.
Today’s Austria update:
[ul]
[li] The city of Vienna has announced that all on-street parking is now free. This measure is intended to encourage people who need to work, such as doctors and pharmacists, to use their private cars rather than public transportation.[/li][li] Taking a somewhat different tack, the city of Graz has suspended ticket inspections on its public transportation system, effectively making it free to use. The idea is to reduce infections caused by touching or waiting in line for ticket machines.[/li][li] It’s now possible for doctors to issue prescriptions over the phone and fax them to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice. The patient, or a delegate of his choosing, can then go pick up the medicine. In urgent cases, the pharmacy will arrange for home delivery of the medicine.[/li][li] There is traffic chaos on roads leading to Germany, which today closed its border for most travellers. German residents and Austrians who can prove that they work in Germany are permitted to cross; pretty much everyone else is being turned back.[/li][li] Austrian Airlines will be suspending operations on Wednesday, in advance of a planned nationwide shutdown of air traffic on Thursday.[/li][li] There have been reports of outbreaks at several care homes and hospitals, including Vienna’s general hospital.[/li][li] Current statistics: 1016 infected, 3 dead. However, the self isolation and other measures may be slowing the rate of transmission; from Wednesday to Thursday there was a 46% increase but from Saturday to Sunday this had gone down to 32.9%.[/li][/ul]
I made my usual shopping trip today. The Hamsterkäufe seems to be over. The supermarket was well-stocked with pretty much everything except for rice, buns, and disinfectants. Queues at the checkouts were short. The only thing that was different was that shoppers were careful to maintain distance from one another.
I also went to a pharmacy, which was allowing in only one customer at a time. So there was a short line of customers standing outside, spaced one or two metres apart. When I was third in line, a woman walked up to the pharmacy, saw that it was practically empty, and tried to get in. All of us waiting in line called out to her to get in line. She made a big fuss about this, crying out, “But it’s empty!” We repeated that she needed to get in line, so she just said, “Whatever!” and cut in front of me, maybe because she was being antisocial but perhaps not understanding that the line was loosely spaced. When the customer in the store left and everyone moved into the next position, I walked in front of her to maintain my position in the line. Again, she kicked up a big fuss and asked why we were behaving this way. “Don’t you know there’s a pandemic?” I asked her. “Pandemic? Whatever,” she replied. She stood there for another couple minutes before giving up and walking back to the end of the line.
There weren’t too many people on the streets, but it wasn’t deserted. It was more like walking around early on a Saturday morning than on a Monday afternoon. It was strange seeing almost all the shops closed. I didn’t see anyone obviously breaking the rules about going out without a good reason or about gatherings of more than five people, but neither did I see any police enforcing the rules.
If every American adult is to get $1000 (even if just one-time, let alone monthly), even while employment is tanking and the economy is recessing – where is that money supposed to come from? Time to fire up the printing presses? Wring out the billionaires?
A related question: As most better-informed Americans know, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. The payroll taxes being collected today go towards paying retired peoples’ benefits today. Those of us retired folks, blithely collecting our monthly S.S. might be wondering where this money will be coming from in the near future.
Equally, what about us Americans abroad? I can’t see the US government bothering with us.
The magnitude of what’s being discussed above about families and small businesses and such make me think that at least a few large landlords and mortgage holders will have to suspend or forgive certain amounts of payments. It seems like it’d make more sense than to let their properties empty out with no immediate replacement prospects or repossess so many properties that they can probably tell will be slow to sell. If they’re going to take a bath either way, it seems from my layman’s perspective the best thing to do to minimize losses.
But what do I know. Government will almost certainly be playing a role there too.
They could put us on ships returning to the US.
Cruise ships or cargo ships? 
Or maybe Navy warships? 
No, I don’t want to go back (particularly now), I just want my $1000.
An Oregon police department puts out a notice asking people to quit calling 911 because they’re out of toilet paper.
Well, everyone is getting their money out of the stock market and interest rates are near zero. There will be plenty of money to borrow and it will cost near-nothing to borrow it. So, there’s plenty to borrow.
There is no Constitutional prohibition against using general revenues or borrowing to pay SS benefits. The only question is whether there is political will to do so.
It’s coming from the same place as the multi-billion dollar bailout to farmers and the multi-billion dollar gift that corporations got due to lower taxes. Maybe Trump could charge the SS less than $650 a night/room to stay at Mar a Lago while protecting him.
Right now, money is incredibly cheap to borrow. Putting it to good use to help folks pay for food, utilities and rent would be useful. Bailing out airlines, hotels and oil companies would be much less useful.
Well, everyone is getting their money out of the stock market and interest rates are near zero. There will be plenty of money to borrow and it will cost near-nothing to borrow it. So, there’s plenty to borrow.
There is no Constitutional prohibition against using general revenues or borrowing to pay SS benefits. The only question is whether there is political will to do so.
Speaking of money, I recall reading somewhere sometime that one of the effects of the Black Death was that the surviving population had more money.
Yes: the same amount of wealth was redistributed among fewer people.
Who? Why is that significant? 
It’s ok dude, I’ll hold it for ya.