I’m not seeing this so-called “economic stimulus” as a bailout, like the ones given to automotive manufacturers or the probable one to Boeing.
The money which is to be paid out to the citizens of the US is an effort to help people survive these hortibly uncertain times. Prices ARE going up on damned near everything, and hourly employees are being clobbered the worst, financially.
Dammit, I have paid my taxes all my working life. People like me have supported the US government. Instead of sending aid packages to other countries or buying a couple of fighter jets, it is right that Uncle Sam give back a small amount to the taxpaying legions.
As for however many trillions the US must spend fighting this virus, many have called the fight a war. In wartime, you do not complain about costs to arm the military. You expect sacrifices and “making do” all for the greater good of winning the war.
~VOW
The GOP plan funnels hundreds of billions of bucks to corporations who already sit on large cash reserves. I see no stimulus there except more campaign “contributions”.
Low-paid workers, the homeless, the most vulnerable, will get nothing. People with homes, accounts, and sufficient tax filings will get a pittance. I see little stimulus here.
We paid no tax on last year’s small retirement income so we qualify for nothing. If we did receive a kilobuck, it would help pay off my pricey hearing aids; it would not go for new merchandise and stimulate the economy. YMMV.
The seasonal flu doesn’t really kill that many people. It’s absolutely worth getting vaccinated for, but that number is of “flu related illnesses,” which includes anyone who died when they had the flu (even if of another cause) and often ropes in deaths attributed to pneumonia even if there is no diagnosis of flu. Precisely what the enhanced mortality caused by flu is would take substantial analysis but “tens of thousands” is just not the case.
Were Coronavirus to actually send hundreds of thousands to the ICU all in one shot it’d be a disaster. There’s no way around it. There are maybe 100,000 ICU beds in the entire USA, and of course they’re mostly being used for other things; that is why they exist. The health care system absolutely cannot sustain a pandemic that requires tens of thousands of ICU hospitalizations. People would die in hallways.
As of March 20, 8 trillion dollars of wealth has been destroyed in the market. Cite. The Fed or Congress printing 4 trillion dollars only makes up half of that.
It is not like them doing this will mean there will be less money in the future for research (which would be a trivial amount in comparison anyway.) Note that with this amount of wealth lost, inflation is not going to be a problem.
Since any bonds issued now are at almost 0 interest, it is a good time to do it. Not doing it, say not funding job retention - will cost far more in the long run in the loss of taxes as the economy tanks into a depression.
The fight in the Senate is about tying bailout money to job retention, so the companies can’t fire everyone anyway and then buy back more of their stock because it is so cheap. Keeping jobs - and health insurance - is more efficient than just putting all the money into unemployment insurance. Though that needs to be sweetened also.
How does this not affect future funding of research? I would think the bigger the debt and deficit, the more the government would need to cut non-essential funding. I guess that gets into the definition of non-essential, so maybe research is part of essential funding.
The budget of the NIH is less than $42 billion, and the budget of the NSF is less than $8 billion. Not a pittance to you or me, but pretty small when you’re throwing around trillions. It’s really a matter of congress having the will to spend it on those agencies. The point being, funding research at even double current levels is still possible even when spending loads on other things.
Also, when has the government ever cut total spending? (It does occasionally drop for a year or two, but it bounces right back up again.)
I would think the idea is that if a company can’t meet payroll they will have to fire everyone and close up shop. Giving the money to the companies means they can meet payroll, at least for a bit, and when this is over go back to normal. If the money goes directly to the employees, they get a “bonus” check or three, but won’t have a job in a couple of months. Hopefully giving it to employers means they continue to pay employees and can stay viable.
$1200 a person won’t motivate a company to keep you employed, either. You can’t create jobs by handing money to companies. They have no reason to hire people because they get handouts; if it made sense to lay off X employees they will keep doing that even if you give them a bag of money. (Why wouldn’t they?) You can try to base the bailout money on them keeping a certain number of employees, but such deals are complex and rarely end up saving jobs. You’re also creating, of course, a gigantic moral hazard. No supporter of free markets and capitalism should support that.
Giving money directly to the individuals inevitably means that money will be spent on… stuff. The companies that provide that stuff will be rewarded for running effective businesses, and THEY will employ people.
If a company feels they have a viable and profitable business in the right market and under normal circumstances, they likely will do whatever they can to hang on until the market place reopens. Restaurants that were thriving before all this likely feel they can continue to thrive, for example, once the lock down is lifted. But if they are broke, what choice do they have but to let people go? They can only go into so much debt. Banks won’t lend them anything right now. And if they have to fire people, they’d need to rehire in another couple of months, which is a huge hassle. Better to try to keep employees around until this passes. So the incentive they have to hand that money to employees is that once things reopen they can hit the ground running and not need to rehire, retrain and start all over.
First of all, both the Senate and House bills give money both to individuals and small businesses.
It is not true that if you give money to people they will spend it. They can also save it. They can pay down debt. Neither of these helps the economy. Plus, at the moment I have a problem spending anywhere but Amazon and the grocery store, both of which seem to be doing fine.
Money for businesses that involve keeping workers employed saves on unemployment and also keeps the workers covered by health insurance, which could be vital. We’re not talking about creating jobs, we’re talking about preserving jobs.
And speaking of moral hazards in this situation is bizarre, unless you think not pumping money into the economy will discourage the next virus.
Now, giving money to companies (or lending) without a requirement to preserve jobs does not have any of these benefits. Still not a moral hazard, since no actions by any of the companies created the problem.
Again, you’re NOT going to create a job handing money to individuals. $1,200 is nothing compared to the loss of a job. You WILL lose jobs if businesses collapse. When that happens there will be taxes to pay for the $1,200 individual payment.
And as was pointed out, both businesses and individuals are getting funds. They serve 2 different purposes.
So give people more than $1,200. The math just doesn’t work for you. You could give every unemployed American $3,000 a month for three months and that’d be FAR less than the proposed legislation.
Or what about targeted bailouts? American Airlines is pushing for a share of a $45 billion bailout. Let’s assume they get $10 billion of that, which is likely a low end guess. You could give FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS to every employee at American Airlines and that would still cost way less than the bailout.
Bear in mind that the worst hit country in Europe (so far) is Italy, which not only has relatively fewer medical facilities per capita than, say, Germany, but was also the slowest to lock down. There were even people who defied the lockdown and when out for their evening drink as usual. The result was a rapid increase in cases and hey, the docs can get sick as well. As for the elderly, the lack of facilities means fewer respirators for those that need them. In short, if the pace of the new cases is slowed down, it does not overwhelm the hospitals, but the epidemic will most likely last longer as roughly the same number of people will get it eventually anyway.
The big question is how the virus will mutate, as they all do. The so-called Spanish 'flu of 1918 came in several waves and the second in particular was more deadly. The weird thing about this epidemic was that it hit worldwide and it killed many of the young and healthy, so it is not a case of being a result of the war and culling the weak and the elderly. We can only hope that it does not happen again, and bear in mind as well that many of the victims were left with impaired health afterwards. This could occur with the current virus, as it goes for the lungs.
Over here, the shops are open fewer hours, the number of people allowed in is restricted and they avoid getting close to one another, just about everywhere has closed down apart from food shops, and the town looks like a neutron bomb hit it. Those who can are working from hone, the others have been sent home and many are self-quarantining at home. I’ll be doing that as well. So far, very few cases here in Poland, what with rapid and drastic action by the government.
Herd immunity is all and well, but the elderly tend to be left out of the herd.
As for a vaccine, it will be a long wait, at least a year. And despite claims to the contrary, there is nothing that actually stops you falling ill if you are infected.
Coming back to the OP, in France we had 2 weeks ago 33 deads and 1800 sicks of covid19. Today this is 860 dead, 2 000 people are in great emergency (“urgence vitale”) and 19 586 are sick., Today in an olderly home in Vosges 13 are dead, 16 in another one in Paris, and so on even if there is containement mesures in effect for one week. And we are still in the increasing side of the curve.
Students and retired doctors are called back to help in hospitals and in call centers. Peoples in jail are contaminated also.
So this is a disease that is VERY contagious, that can stay undetected for up to15 days and that KILLS. Estimations without any slowing mesures are of 60% of people sick (37 millions in France potentially) and of these 2% will die ( far far more for the 60+, up to 30% mortality rate for them). That’s a poteltial of 740 000 deads in France.
What can we do to escape this? If you slow the spreading of the virus(by isolating mesures), you will have less people sick, and they will not be all at the same time. SO you can have respirators for all of the critical cases, you will not overwhem your health care system. You save lives.
Tha quasi philosophical problem is what cost you put on this lives? is an economic shutdown of 3-4 weeks a too high price to pay? Are the companies willing to lose some of their money to spare the lives of theirs employees?
Here in France, we have perhaps a more centralized governement, with more tradituon of dealing with catastrophes (world warS for instance) by putting the needs of the many on the top priority… and there is a strict police-enforced containement at home, with even curfews in many cities. Going out is possible, with an attestation stating adress, hour and destination. Taxes and rents for stores are canceled, lines of production are redesignated to produce hydroalcoholic gel, masks and so.
So we hope to flaten the curve enough to avoid the majority of the casualties, and the economic price will be paid later and don’t really come as important.
The reason the Spanish flu was worse for the young was that it turned your immune system against you, so those with better immune systems were hit harder.
The existence of the flu was considered a military secret at first, which is one of the reasons it spread so virulently. It was called the Spanish flu because Spain, which was neutral, had no reason not to report it. It did not start in Spain.
My source for the flu stuff is my wife, who wrote a book on the flu when we were worried about the avian flu. She got paid, but the book was never published because the flu was not as bad as expected, showing there is a dark lining to every silver cloud.
I’m at a loss about how herd immunity applies here. It works for vaccination because you can make people immune without a good chance of killing them. This is more like smallpox before Jenner. The “vaccine” for it during the Revolution was infecting people with smallpox, and hoping they didn’t die. After that they were immune and you could control the spread. Not a great solution compared to vaccination, and I wouldn’t call it herd immunity.
We’re already testing a vaccine. The year-long wait would be for traditional medical trials. I would expect something to hit the market much sooner given the situation.
Traditional medical trials take longer than a year. A year is an extremely accelerated rollout. This is assuming the vaccine is safe and shows efficacy. 8 months from now they may be starting over. The very preliminary trials now may show a vaccine is safe enough after a few months, but it will take longer to show if it works at all. No point in gearing up to vaccinate the world with something that doesn’t actually work, or has profound side effects. I know many groups are working on multiple different vaccines, so hopefully at least one of them will work out. Double hopefully one will work so well that trials can be halted early and it is put into immediate use.