9 ms·

I think he's alluding to the option of giving money to people instead of to companies; this will alleviate personal devastation.

downerending 6y ago
That sounds good, but how does it play out? We could maybe afford to pay everyone $10K/y for a few years, especially now that we're printing money like crazy. And we'd just let companies go bankrupt and the economy as we know it seize tight. Businesses would generally be wiped out, and your mom-and-pop outfits that worked their entire lives to build something would be on the dole like the rest of us. With the private economy gone, the government could run "essential" industries. It could probably do an okay job of allocating talent, I guess. It's kind of like turning a firehose on an overheating server rack. It might work...
- cmendel 6y ago
  10K? What are you talking about? We blew 30 Trillion! in a month! With that we could give every person in the USA 90K!
  - downerending 6y ago
    That was just a for-instance. That said, the $30T probably hasn't actually been expended. Rather, it was used to buy assets that are likely worth less than $30T right now. How much less? Who knows. My guess, though, is that the Fed (or Feds) will eventually recoup most of that. When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. I'm not that knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that when given a choice between keeping your seed corn dry and eating it, you need to think very hard about what you're doing.
    - cmendel 6y ago
      >When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. Where do you think it goes exactly? This might help explain our disconnect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
      - downerending 6y ago
        I was specifically addressing the idea that $30T was given to companies. This simply isn't correct. A better analogy would be if the government decided to "give" $90K to each homeowner in return for a $90K share in their home equity (valued according to some plausible marking). That's very different than simply giving them $90K with no strings attached. Certainly something is being given, but it's not worth anything like $90K.
100ideas 6y ago
On the eve of passing the first $2 trillion stimulus package, final deliberations in the US Congress about the "best" way to use the funds devolve into partisan deadlock: One side insists that the only rational policy is for approximately 100% of the funds to be used to prevent business failures, arguing that "1) citizens need businesses to employ them so they can earn the monies they need to avoid starvation and homelessness with enough leftover (or at least a line of credit) for consumer consumption to collectively drive 70% of the economy; 2) the economy is literally made out of businesses and if too many die, then by definition so will economy; and 3) failed businesses take longer and are more costly (in capital investments) to repair/replace than are the jobs/homes/lives of the employees that must be sacrificed to save the company. "On the contrary!", says the almost-equally-sized other half of the legislature, "Approx 100% of the funds to be distributed directly to citizens, $6000 each, thus 'cutting out the the middleman employers' and maximizing the number of citizens saved from homelessness and starvation due to unemployment. THIS is the optimal policy, both economically AND morally!" To break the deadlock, Congress selects YOU as stimulus policy czar: your job is to decide and justify how best to distribute the stimulus funds - primarily distributed to businesses, primarily distributed directly to citizens, or some compromise between?
- 100ideas 6y ago
  I’m going to take an extreme position in the hopes it “stimulates” conversation: the best course is $6k direct citizen payments. Business that fail create new niches some of the gritty but solvent ex-employed can try to exploit with new startups. Also, if the stimulus in the scenario was $4 trillion total, each citizen could be given/loaned ~$12000; by pooling their stimuli payments, tens of individuals and/or large families could potentially have enough capital to take a risky shot on a startup / small biz.
  - ianai 6y ago
    It’s bizarre that this is an extreme position. It underscores how far and extreme US politics has become that supporting people is viewed so negatively while bailing out multinational corporations goes without saying. Being too big to fail is a sign that a company should be busted up into smaller companies, but I digress... I highly doubt startups would form around families just due to people getting one time large payments like 12k. If you have a family of 10 you’re going through 120k plenty quickly with just food, shelter, and other necessities. So much so that the money would have a huge multiplier effect at sustaining local demand for essential goods and services.
dnautics 6y ago
"this will alleviate personal devastation" Will it? Or will it just push it out over time? Or something else completely? Can you say with certainty that more people won't die of despair if we give people money? Does it depend on doing something a certain way? Are there some ways of doing things better than others? How much depends on the effectiveness policymakers (politicians) versus implementors (bureaucrats)? I don't think we can say for certain "doing nothing" is categorically worse than "doing something".
- newen 6y ago
  This is hilarious.
  - dgzl 6y ago
    Thanks for thinking it's more important for citizens to get free cash instead of job-creators, seems like a good time to buy a new gun.
- dgzl 6y ago
  Agreed. You can't just dump money into citizens' pockets with no expectation of return. Giving an engine gas doesn't make the engine more efficient at using the gas, it just let's us get to the next mechanic. And that's what we need, good mechanics. So how do we spend our money, buying enough gas to get part way to our goal, or spend the money on the mechanics to make our engine efficient enough so we can get to our goal with less gas than we need?
  - clawedjird 6y ago
    You can't just dump money into citizens' pockets with no expectation of return. Giving an engine gas doesn't make the engine more efficient at using the gas Maybe the point isn't to generate a financial return or increase the efficiency of the "engine." Maybe the point is simply to prevent hypothetical deaths resulting from "economic devastation." Maybe the car engine just needs enough gas to make it to the next gas station, not extensive re-engineering.

downerending 6y ago

That sounds good, but how does it play out? We could maybe afford to pay everyone $10K/y for a few years, especially now that we're printing money like crazy. And we'd just let companies go bankrupt and the economy as we know it seize tight. Businesses would generally be wiped out, and your mom-and-pop outfits that worked their entire lives to build something would be on the dole like the rest of us. With the private economy gone, the government could run "essential" industries. It could probably do an okay job of allocating talent, I guess. It's kind of like turning a firehose on an overheating server rack. It might work...

cmendel 6y ago
10K? What are you talking about? We blew 30 Trillion! in a month! With that we could give every person in the USA 90K!
- downerending 6y ago
  That was just a for-instance. That said, the $30T probably hasn't actually been expended. Rather, it was used to buy assets that are likely worth less than $30T right now. How much less? Who knows. My guess, though, is that the Fed (or Feds) will eventually recoup most of that. When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. I'm not that knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that when given a choice between keeping your seed corn dry and eating it, you need to think very hard about what you're doing.
  - cmendel 6y ago
    >When you give peons like us $10K, you don't get any of it back, except in taxes. Where do you think it goes exactly? This might help explain our disconnect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
    - downerending 6y ago
      I was specifically addressing the idea that $30T was given to companies. This simply isn't correct. A better analogy would be if the government decided to "give" $90K to each homeowner in return for a $90K share in their home equity (valued according to some plausible marking). That's very different than simply giving them $90K with no strings attached. Certainly something is being given, but it's not worth anything like $90K.

100ideas 6y ago

On the eve of passing the first $2 trillion stimulus package, final deliberations in the US Congress about the "best" way to use the funds devolve into partisan deadlock: One side insists that the only rational policy is for approximately 100% of the funds to be used to prevent business failures, arguing that "1) citizens need businesses to employ them so they can earn the monies they need to avoid starvation and homelessness with enough leftover (or at least a line of credit) for consumer consumption to collectively drive 70% of the economy; 2) the economy is literally made out of businesses and if too many die, then by definition so will economy; and 3) failed businesses take longer and are more costly (in capital investments) to repair/replace than are the jobs/homes/lives of the employees that must be sacrificed to save the company. "On the contrary!", says the almost-equally-sized other half of the legislature, "Approx 100% of the funds to be distributed directly to citizens, $6000 each, thus 'cutting out the the middleman employers' and maximizing the number of citizens saved from homelessness and starvation due to unemployment. THIS is the optimal policy, both economically AND morally!" To break the deadlock, Congress selects YOU as stimulus policy czar: your job is to decide and justify how best to distribute the stimulus funds - primarily distributed to businesses, primarily distributed directly to citizens, or some compromise between?

100ideas 6y ago
I’m going to take an extreme position in the hopes it “stimulates” conversation: the best course is $6k direct citizen payments. Business that fail create new niches some of the gritty but solvent ex-employed can try to exploit with new startups. Also, if the stimulus in the scenario was $4 trillion total, each citizen could be given/loaned ~$12000; by pooling their stimuli payments, tens of individuals and/or large families could potentially have enough capital to take a risky shot on a startup / small biz.
- ianai 6y ago
  It’s bizarre that this is an extreme position. It underscores how far and extreme US politics has become that supporting people is viewed so negatively while bailing out multinational corporations goes without saying. Being too big to fail is a sign that a company should be busted up into smaller companies, but I digress... I highly doubt startups would form around families just due to people getting one time large payments like 12k. If you have a family of 10 you’re going through 120k plenty quickly with just food, shelter, and other necessities. So much so that the money would have a huge multiplier effect at sustaining local demand for essential goods and services.

dnautics 6y ago

"this will alleviate personal devastation" Will it? Or will it just push it out over time? Or something else completely? Can you say with certainty that more people won't die of despair if we give people money? Does it depend on doing something a certain way? Are there some ways of doing things better than others? How much depends on the effectiveness policymakers (politicians) versus implementors (bureaucrats)? I don't think we can say for certain "doing nothing" is categorically worse than "doing something".

newen 6y ago
This is hilarious.
- dgzl 6y ago
  Thanks for thinking it's more important for citizens to get free cash instead of job-creators, seems like a good time to buy a new gun.
dgzl 6y ago
Agreed. You can't just dump money into citizens' pockets with no expectation of return. Giving an engine gas doesn't make the engine more efficient at using the gas, it just let's us get to the next mechanic. And that's what we need, good mechanics. So how do we spend our money, buying enough gas to get part way to our goal, or spend the money on the mechanics to make our engine efficient enough so we can get to our goal with less gas than we need?
- clawedjird 6y ago
  You can't just dump money into citizens' pockets with no expectation of return. Giving an engine gas doesn't make the engine more efficient at using the gas Maybe the point isn't to generate a financial return or increase the efficiency of the "engine." Maybe the point is simply to prevent hypothetical deaths resulting from "economic devastation." Maybe the car engine just needs enough gas to make it to the next gas station, not extensive re-engineering.