3 ms·

The answers are always the same: 1. Redistribution. 2. Debt. That's it. The money will be redistributed from people who were able to prepare for it beforehan

The answers are always the same: 1. Redistribution. 2. Debt. That's it. The money will be redistributed from people who were able to prepare for it beforehand one way or another or we are going to indebt ourselves and/or our children. It is also possible to save money by not expending it (for example on infrastructure repairs), but this should be treated as short term loan. Expenses typically are not avoidable forever, because each one is done for some particular reason.

kennywinker 7y ago
The language you use around prepration seems judge-y. For example, would you consider "deciding not to work at a restaurant" preparing for a pandemic? Because up until now deciding to work at a restaurant is something I really appreciated that people did because I like going to restaurants. If we as a society ask people to stop work to avoid the worst case version of a pandemic, we MUST support them during that time, because we are ALL benefitting from them stopping work. The fact that your job is not gone is luck not preparation.
- lmilcin 7y ago
  It is a fact that some people save money and some don't, that some people decide not to do fun stuff and instead learn things and some go partying, that some people try to make their best and some don't. Every case is individual, but ON AVERAGE, when you print money you dilute the value of existing money which means you take away from people who have money and put it in the hands of ones that were more careless ON AVERAGE.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    I completely disagree with your opinion that the majority of people who have more money got it through personal characteristics like hard work and not partying. But, that said, so some people were able to learn skills that society values more, get paid more, and are thus able to save more money. Great. But lots of THOSE people got their livelihoods crushed by social distancing. You are saying printing money makes everybody subsidize the people who lost their jobs, but not printing money is bleeding their savings to save other people's lives. How is that right? Like even if you have 6-12months of savings on hand, at the end of this you've drained your personal finances to save someone else's life??
loopz 7y ago
These are all intangible stuff devised by human minds.
- lmilcin 7y ago
  How is debt and taxes intangible? If I order you to take piece of your possessions to give to your poorer neighbor, is this intangible? Will it be intangible to your kids when they grow up and are told they can't have this or that because they country needs to become fiscally responsible because their parents were not?
  - _nalply 7y ago
    Debts and taxes are just numbers. Capitalism is a system which knows to enforce the consequence of debts and taxes. Outside of the system people can and will shit on debts and taxes. The rich already do.
    - lmilcin 7y ago
      Your wishful thinking isn't going to change anything. Capitalism is not imaginary, it is real system you need to work with in a capitalist society if you want to be successful (financially). The rich don't get rich by ignoring the system but by learning and exploiting the tacit rules. I see where your confusion can come from, because the tacit rules are different than the official "wikipedia" rules of capitalism. The same way hacker sees the operating system and software API different way than a regular developer. Debts and taxes are not just numbers. When you pay taxes you finance the infrastructure that is around you. Have you ever considered where the roads, bridges and police come from? Do you mean somebody built them from the kindness of their heart and police officers do their job for free after they have tended to their field? Have you ever considered there would probably be no working radio communication if not for some government body to regulate and assign shared resource that is electromagnetic frequencies? If you still think debts and taxes are "just numbers", just take on huge amount of debt and stop paying taxes and report on your experiences. You can, of course, decide to ignore capitalism. But then you need to understand this is going to have consequences, which is the best proof that capitalism is definitely not imaginary.
millstone 7y ago
What does "indebt ourselves and our children" mean? Our children will be indebted to...other children. If Richie Rich buys a treasury bond, then Richie Rich Jr. will be entitled to receive money from Johnny Taxpayer Jr. But this is just equivalent to increasing Johnny's taxes and reducing Richie's. Congress could reverse that with legislation. So, really, why should we care? Now if we had a time machine and were teleporting ventilators from the future, we might have a problem.
- lmilcin 7y ago
  When a country takes up debt it probably must be paid off some way at some point. Even if the country is in perpetual debt for generations, taking more debt now means next generation/s will be able to take less debt. Does that make sense?

kennywinker 7y ago

The language you use around prepration seems judge-y. For example, would you consider "deciding not to work at a restaurant" preparing for a pandemic? Because up until now deciding to work at a restaurant is something I really appreciated that people did because I like going to restaurants. If we as a society ask people to stop work to avoid the worst case version of a pandemic, we MUST support them during that time, because we are ALL benefitting from them stopping work. The fact that your job is not gone is luck not preparation.

lmilcin 7y ago
It is a fact that some people save money and some don't, that some people decide not to do fun stuff and instead learn things and some go partying, that some people try to make their best and some don't. Every case is individual, but ON AVERAGE, when you print money you dilute the value of existing money which means you take away from people who have money and put it in the hands of ones that were more careless ON AVERAGE.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  I completely disagree with your opinion that the majority of people who have more money got it through personal characteristics like hard work and not partying. But, that said, so some people were able to learn skills that society values more, get paid more, and are thus able to save more money. Great. But lots of THOSE people got their livelihoods crushed by social distancing. You are saying printing money makes everybody subsidize the people who lost their jobs, but not printing money is bleeding their savings to save other people's lives. How is that right? Like even if you have 6-12months of savings on hand, at the end of this you've drained your personal finances to save someone else's life??

loopz 7y ago

These are all intangible stuff devised by human minds.

lmilcin 7y ago
How is debt and taxes intangible? If I order you to take piece of your possessions to give to your poorer neighbor, is this intangible? Will it be intangible to your kids when they grow up and are told they can't have this or that because they country needs to become fiscally responsible because their parents were not?
- _nalply 7y ago
  Debts and taxes are just numbers. Capitalism is a system which knows to enforce the consequence of debts and taxes. Outside of the system people can and will shit on debts and taxes. The rich already do.
  - lmilcin 7y ago
    Your wishful thinking isn't going to change anything. Capitalism is not imaginary, it is real system you need to work with in a capitalist society if you want to be successful (financially). The rich don't get rich by ignoring the system but by learning and exploiting the tacit rules. I see where your confusion can come from, because the tacit rules are different than the official "wikipedia" rules of capitalism. The same way hacker sees the operating system and software API different way than a regular developer. Debts and taxes are not just numbers. When you pay taxes you finance the infrastructure that is around you. Have you ever considered where the roads, bridges and police come from? Do you mean somebody built them from the kindness of their heart and police officers do their job for free after they have tended to their field? Have you ever considered there would probably be no working radio communication if not for some government body to regulate and assign shared resource that is electromagnetic frequencies? If you still think debts and taxes are "just numbers", just take on huge amount of debt and stop paying taxes and report on your experiences. You can, of course, decide to ignore capitalism. But then you need to understand this is going to have consequences, which is the best proof that capitalism is definitely not imaginary.

millstone 7y ago

What does "indebt ourselves and our children" mean? Our children will be indebted to...other children. If Richie Rich buys a treasury bond, then Richie Rich Jr. will be entitled to receive money from Johnny Taxpayer Jr. But this is just equivalent to increasing Johnny's taxes and reducing Richie's. Congress could reverse that with legislation. So, really, why should we care? Now if we had a time machine and were teleporting ventilators from the future, we might have a problem.

lmilcin 7y ago
When a country takes up debt it probably must be paid off some way at some point. Even if the country is in perpetual debt for generations, taking more debt now means next generation/s will be able to take less debt. Does that make sense?