The coronavirus spread updated in real time

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_MeDotOrg
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _MeDotOrg »

Jersey Girl wrote:What's the thing about giving every American (I think?) 1K dollars? Is that going to be a thing and how would they do that--use the tax records? Our SSN?

We don't need money. I'm just asking if that is feasible, how they'd do it and would that be a one time deal?

Would that stimulate the economy? Would it be a false effect in some way?

I think there are 2 different tasks: Stimulate the economy and support people. And there are both short term and long term tracks for both. In the short term, I think supporting people will be more important than stimulating the economy. And by short term, I mean the period that Americans will be sheltering in place.

Because while Americans are sheltering in place, I don't think consumers are going to rush out and spend. I don't know about you, but I'm not looking at the ads for power boats in the next 8 weeks. There are certain kinds of discretionary spending that most people will be reluctant to do right now, regardless if they are in a comfortable position. Put some money in increased unemployment benefits. That's money that will more likely be spent in the short term.

I'm in the Tourism industry, and our company, one of the larger ones, has simply shut down. What happens to the lease payments on all of the equipment we use during this down time? I think you are going to see some forms of debt relief/and/or restructuring for certain sectors of industry.

The $1,000 per person solution sounds like a scattershot method of priming the economic engine. We don't know how long this economic slowdown will last, because we don't know how long the SARS-CoV-2 will hang around. But things will not start to recover until it's safe for people to interact, and we don't know when that will be. Spending a lot of money on a short term jolt may not be a great long term strategy.
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_Jersey Girl
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _Jersey Girl »

MeDotOrg wrote:
Jersey Girl wrote:What's the thing about giving every American (I think?) 1K dollars? Is that going to be a thing and how would they do that--use the tax records? Our SSN?

We don't need money. I'm just asking if that is feasible, how they'd do it and would that be a one time deal?

Would that stimulate the economy? Would it be a false effect in some way?

I think there are 2 different tasks: Stimulate the economy and support people. And there are both short term and long term tracks for both. In the short term, I think supporting people will be more important than stimulating the economy. And by short term, I mean the period that Americans will be sheltering in place.

Because while Americans are sheltering in place, I don't think consumers are going to rush out and spend. I don't know about you, but I'm not looking at the ads for power boats in the next 8 weeks. There are certain kinds of discretionary spending that most people will be reluctant to do right now, regardless if they are in a comfortable position. Put some money in increased unemployment benefits. That's money that will more likely be spent in the short term.

I'm in the Tourism industry, and our company, one of the larger ones, has simply shut down. What happens to the lease payments on all of the equipment we use during this down time? I think you are going to see some forms of debt relief/and/or restructuring for certain sectors of industry.

The $1,000 per person solution sounds like a scattershot method of priming the economic engine. We don't know how long this economic slowdown will last, because we don't know how long the SARS-CoV-2 will hang around. But things will not start to recover until it's safe for people to interact, and we don't know when that will be. Spending a lot of money on a short term jolt may not be a great long term strategy.


Don't you think that if you were a young family with a mortgage, that you'd use the 1K on your house payment? I have no idea what a house payment might be but either that or utilities, groceries, etc?

I mean it's not like people are going to go buy a new set of tires when they're worried about feeding the family and keeping a roof over their heads.

Seems out of touch to me. Maybe I don't quite understand it.
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_subgenius
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _subgenius »

Jersey Girl wrote:... I don't quite understand it.

true story.
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_EAllusion
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _EAllusion »

Jersey Girl wrote:
Don't you think that if you were a young family with a mortgage, that you'd use the 1K on your house payment? I have no idea what a house payment might be but either that or utilities, groceries, etc?

I mean it's not like people are going to go buy a new set of tires when they're worried about feeding the family and keeping a roof over their heads.

Seems out of touch to me. Maybe I don't quite understand it.
Not everyone is losing their job. The people who are would be thrown a lifeline while the people who aren’t would be given high velocity spending money to drive the demand side.
_Analytics
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _Analytics »

Jersey Girl wrote:What's the thing about giving every American (I think?) 1K dollars? Is that going to be a thing and how would they do that--use the tax records? Our SSN?

We don't need money. I'm just asking if that is feasible, how they'd do it and would that be a one time deal?

Would that stimulate the economy? Would it be a false effect in some way?


George W. Bush tried something similar in 2001. Here is the abastract of a paper about its effect:

Many households received income tax rebates in 2001 of $300 or $600. These rebates represented advance payments of the tax cut from the new 10 percent tax bracket. Based on a survey of a representative sample of households, this paper finds that only 22 percent of households receiving the rebate would spent it. Instead, they would either save it or use it to pay off debt. This very low rate of spending represents a striking break with past behavior, which would have suggested a much higher rate of spending. The low spending rate implies that the tax rebate provided a very limited stimulus to aggregate demand.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w8672
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_Res Ipsa
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Would someone mind taking a look at the US’s strategic response plan for COVID-19 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper ... pdf#page=1 I would like a second opinion. If I’m reading this right, the government had a specific plan for responding to this kind of pandemic at least as early as 2018. It included specific trigger points for specific measures to be taken by the federal ugovernment.

The COVID-19 plan, dated March 13, was adapted from the already-existing plan. The “adaptations” include changing the relevant trigger points to delay relevant action. They had to do that because many trigger points had already passed and the relevant actions hadn’t happened.

If I’m reading this right, the Trump Administration had a detailed plan for responding to this exact situation and they ignored it.

If I’m reading this wrong, someone please talk me down. Cuz I’ve never been so angry.



ETA: not sure why the link won’t work. Here’s a link to the original New York Times story. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/p ... corps.html
Last edited by Guest on Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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_DarkHelmet
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _DarkHelmet »

Res Ipsa wrote:Would someone mind taking a look at the US’s strategic response plan for COVID-19? https://int.New York Times.com/data/documenthelper/6819-covid-19-response-plan/d367f758bec47cad361f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1. I would like a second opinion. If I’m reading this right, the government had a specific plan for responding to this kind of pandemic at least as early as 2018. It included specific trigger points for specific measures to be taken by the federal government.

The COVID-19 plan, dated March 13, was adapted from the already-existing plan. The “adaptations” include changing the relevant trigger points to delay relevant action. They had to do that because many trigger points had already passed and the relevant actions hadn’t happened.

If I’m reading this right, the Trump Administration had a detailed plan for responding to this exact situation and they ignored it.

If I’m reading this wrong, someone please talk me down. Cuz I’ve never been so angry.


I'm pretty sure whatever bad thing happened was Obama's fault.
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_EAllusion
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _EAllusion »

Fox News is temporarily making itself free to expand its reach in this moment. In a sea of bad news, that's some of the worst I heard.
_Icarus
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _Icarus »

EAllusion wrote:Fox News is temporarily making itself free to expand its reach in this moment. In a sea of bad news, that's some of the worst I heard.


They took Trish Reagan off the air right after her ignorant rant downplaying the virus while attacking Democrats. I can't watch Hannity.
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_Icarus
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Re: The coronavirus spread updated in real time

Post by _Icarus »

97 US deaths yesterday and today we break 150. That's a 50%+ rise in one day.
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
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