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>residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June I hate this juvenile, dismissive angle that's so pervasive here. There a

>residents are going to riot because they won't be able to go to a crowded bar in June I hate this juvenile, dismissive angle that's so pervasive here. There are serious considerations here. It's not just about enjoying life. First: how are we going to fund compulsory unemployment for another 3 months?

whalesalad 6y ago
Totally. And what about all the non-essential businesses? A friend of mine owns a dog washing business. None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment and 2. he can’t re open anyways because he’s not essential. So he just sits around day after day watching his business go down the toilet.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment He should pay his employees more money.
  - counterpoint1 6y ago
    He raises prices to support higher pay, dog grooming now costs $500, none of his former customers can afford it, the company goes bankrupt and the employees are back on unemployment again. You can't just pretend that every business can magically afford to raise wages. This isn't Apple paying kids in China 50 cents to build an iPhone they sell for $1,000, this is a local business that's probably barely able to pay the founder a middle-class salary in the best of times.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  ...until unemployment insurance runs out. People like that don't understand that it's not forever. Or worse, they run it out, go back to work, then there's another lock-down because infection rates go up. Now they're not eligible for unemployment at all because they haven't paid into the system for too long. (At least that's how it works in the three states where I have experience filing for unemployment. I doubt that California lets people collect money forever.)
  - harambaebae69 6y ago
    There's likely to be a teary-eyed politician who goes up in front of Congress as unemployment benefits end and insists they be renewed because it's almost Christmas and how heartless must you be to take food out of an orphans mouth during the holiday season yada yada There's a long history of this happening in the USA if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement-ebook/dp/B074P5JP8C/ https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement...
- kevinskii 6y ago
  Once he is allowed to re-open, won't the first issue go away as well? I believe unemployment benefits are contingent on not having a job to go back to. If they're allowed to return to work and your friend wants them back, then they couldn't choose to stay home and continue to collect unemployment.
  - ibejoeb 6y ago
    The other perversity is that grant conversion, i.e., forgiveness of the PPP loan, is contingent on rehiring. If the requisite number of former employees do not return, the business will be required to repay, and that is tantamount to paying employees with no ROI.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Non essential businesses are being reopened gradually based on risk. It's not like everyone is shut down for 3 months, then the next day everyone is open. Newsom just said today that pet grooming is next. However other businesses like concert venues will probably have to wait until phase 4
  - seandougall 6y ago
    Pet grooming has been classified as essential (by California) since late April. Our local groomer reopened quickly after that. There might be some cities that have other restrictions, but grooming is already open in most places.
slg 6y ago
Many of the people who are unemployed now will go back to work sometime in the next three months. The article is framing that three month timeline as closer to the end of the reopening process while many of the comments here, including yours, are framing that three month time frame as the start of the reopening effort.
seccess 6y ago
I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted. If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.
- timr 6y ago
  "I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted." Because there's no point debating such a question. Arguing that we should leave lockdowns in place because people would be too scared to go outside even if we lifted the lockdowns, is tautological. If the argument is that people are going to stay home anyway, then we should open the economy on first principles.
  - seccess 6y ago
    I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else. So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.
ravenstine 6y ago
> It's not just about enjoying life. Even so, this is not something anyone should apologize over. Life should be worth living. To someone who has lived their whole life being able to enjoy life in any which way is experiencing a massive shock right now. Of course people want to be able to go to crowded bars, be around other people, go to concerts, ride roller coasters, get wasted, etc. We rely on these things because life is boring at best and usually bad for a lot of people. If we don't have anything to look forward to, even simple things, we lose hope. Gee, I'm really sorry that it seems selfish or even "conservative" to the smarty pants who are content living indoors and consuming media and frozen dinners. Most of us get tired of that and it becomes frightening when our jobs are in question or have no job at all. Just being able to go to a crowded bar, be around other people, having a pint, and not having to wear masks, sounds really damned good right now. I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion. EDIT: Many of the people who make that kind of argument also say "cry me a river" when someone whose business or job is "nonessential" says anything negative about their predicament. Um, you people ought to look at your own jobs and question just how "essential" they are. I don't think I've ever worked an "essential" job in my life, yet I'm payed much more than most "essential" workers are.
- ibejoeb 6y ago
  Exactly. LA can't even open a beach. The beach is the safest place to be right now.
  - slg 6y ago
    LA's beaches are starting to open tomorrow [1]. LA is making clear progress towards reopening. I understand they aren't doing it as fast as some want, but that isn't an excuse to pretend that no progress is being made at all. [1] - https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888 https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888
- aphextron 6y ago
  >"I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion." Everyone wants to simply feel happy. Everyone is sick and tired of all of this. Everyone wants to go out to a bar and have a pint. But we can't. We just can't. And not because the government says so. But because many many many more people than necessary will die if we do. That's the reality we live in now. And not understanding that, while acting as if your feelings matter more than others' lives makes you sound like a spoiled child. That is what people are being "high and mighty" about.
650REDHAIR 6y ago
The same way we’ve funded endless wars for 20 years?
- ibejoeb 6y ago
  Income tax.
messick 6y ago
Well, if we take $2k payments and make them monthly, in a decade or so we'll reach a meaningful percentage of the direct costs of the Iraq/Afghan wars.
- Alupis 6y ago
  $2,000 x 150,000,000 = $300,000,000,000 That's 300 billion dollars every month... And that's for only 150 million adults...(there's a lot more than that) It's estimated to have cost about 3 Trillion dollars for the Iraq war, a 17+ year conflict[1]. At $300 billion a month (on the extreme low end), that's $3 Trillion every 10 months. Put another way - we could fund another 17+ year long armed conflict every 10 months at that rate. The entire 2021 federal budget is projected to be around 4.8 Trillion... and they estimate they'll only bring in $3.8 Trillion in revenue. Disregarding that your projection is grossly innacurate, how is this something we can do? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#Indirect_and_delayed_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_W...
  - pashamur 6y ago
    I know this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but raise the top marginal tax rates. Not a nominal raise, but something significant, like 20%. And the cap gains rate as well. Basically move to a more redistributive system like Europe, which can afford to do this for a lot of their citizens. That's how we've funded war-like efforts in the past, and if this is likened to a WWII style mobilization effort (which it has been by several politicians, then the well off citizens need to pitch in much more than they are now).
    - Alupis 6y ago
      It would simply not be enough. If you took all of Bill Gates' ($107 billion) and all of Jeff Bezos' ($145 billion) and all of Larry Ellison's ($59 billion) money... every single penny, you'd still wouldn't be able to pay for even a single complete month of this program. It's an enormous amount of money. What the Nordic counties do doesn't scale to the third largest country by population... Not to mention they don't pay for their own military protection (barely) among other differences. Funded wars? Wars have almost always involved massive debt being taken on by the federal government. It's just simply not feasible to run that way for long term.

whalesalad 6y ago

Totally. And what about all the non-essential businesses? A friend of mine owns a dog washing business. None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment and 2. he can’t re open anyways because he’s not essential. So he just sits around day after day watching his business go down the toilet.

triceratops 6y ago
> None of his employees want to work because 1. they earn more on unemployment He should pay his employees more money.
- counterpoint1 6y ago
  He raises prices to support higher pay, dog grooming now costs $500, none of his former customers can afford it, the company goes bankrupt and the employees are back on unemployment again. You can't just pretend that every business can magically afford to raise wages. This isn't Apple paying kids in China 50 cents to build an iPhone they sell for $1,000, this is a local business that's probably barely able to pay the founder a middle-class salary in the best of times.
reaperducer 6y ago
...until unemployment insurance runs out. People like that don't understand that it's not forever. Or worse, they run it out, go back to work, then there's another lock-down because infection rates go up. Now they're not eligible for unemployment at all because they haven't paid into the system for too long. (At least that's how it works in the three states where I have experience filing for unemployment. I doubt that California lets people collect money forever.)
- harambaebae69 6y ago
  There's likely to be a teary-eyed politician who goes up in front of Congress as unemployment benefits end and insists they be renewed because it's almost Christmas and how heartless must you be to take food out of an orphans mouth during the holiday season yada yada There's a long history of this happening in the USA if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement-ebook/dp/B074P5JP8C/ https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Good-Intentions-Entitlement...
kevinskii 6y ago
Once he is allowed to re-open, won't the first issue go away as well? I believe unemployment benefits are contingent on not having a job to go back to. If they're allowed to return to work and your friend wants them back, then they couldn't choose to stay home and continue to collect unemployment.
- ibejoeb 6y ago
  The other perversity is that grant conversion, i.e., forgiveness of the PPP loan, is contingent on rehiring. If the requisite number of former employees do not return, the business will be required to repay, and that is tantamount to paying employees with no ROI.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
Non essential businesses are being reopened gradually based on risk. It's not like everyone is shut down for 3 months, then the next day everyone is open. Newsom just said today that pet grooming is next. However other businesses like concert venues will probably have to wait until phase 4
- seandougall 6y ago
  Pet grooming has been classified as essential (by California) since late April. Our local groomer reopened quickly after that. There might be some cities that have other restrictions, but grooming is already open in most places.

slg 6y ago

Many of the people who are unemployed now will go back to work sometime in the next three months. The article is framing that three month timeline as closer to the end of the reopening process while many of the comments here, including yours, are framing that three month time frame as the start of the reopening effort.

seccess 6y ago

I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted. If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.

timr 6y ago
"I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted." Because there's no point debating such a question. Arguing that we should leave lockdowns in place because people would be too scared to go outside even if we lifted the lockdowns, is tautological. If the argument is that people are going to stay home anyway, then we should open the economy on first principles.
- seccess 6y ago
  I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else. So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.

ravenstine 6y ago

> It's not just about enjoying life. Even so, this is not something anyone should apologize over. Life should be worth living. To someone who has lived their whole life being able to enjoy life in any which way is experiencing a massive shock right now. Of course people want to be able to go to crowded bars, be around other people, go to concerts, ride roller coasters, get wasted, etc. We rely on these things because life is boring at best and usually bad for a lot of people. If we don't have anything to look forward to, even simple things, we lose hope. Gee, I'm really sorry that it seems selfish or even "conservative" to the smarty pants who are content living indoors and consuming media and frozen dinners. Most of us get tired of that and it becomes frightening when our jobs are in question or have no job at all. Just being able to go to a crowded bar, be around other people, having a pint, and not having to wear masks, sounds really damned good right now. I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion. EDIT: Many of the people who make that kind of argument also say "cry me a river" when someone whose business or job is "nonessential" says anything negative about their predicament. Um, you people ought to look at your own jobs and question just how "essential" they are. I don't think I've ever worked an "essential" job in my life, yet I'm payed much more than most "essential" workers are.

ibejoeb 6y ago
Exactly. LA can't even open a beach. The beach is the safest place to be right now.
- slg 6y ago
  LA's beaches are starting to open tomorrow [1]. LA is making clear progress towards reopening. I understand they aren't doing it as fast as some want, but that isn't an excuse to pretend that no progress is being made at all. [1] - https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888 https://twitter.com/lacdbh/status/1259933680408997888
aphextron 6y ago
>"I understand that there's always a cost benefit analysis to all of this, but the high and mighty attitude towards people who simply want to feel happy needs to stop. It damages every discussion." Everyone wants to simply feel happy. Everyone is sick and tired of all of this. Everyone wants to go out to a bar and have a pint. But we can't. We just can't. And not because the government says so. But because many many many more people than necessary will die if we do. That's the reality we live in now. And not understanding that, while acting as if your feelings matter more than others' lives makes you sound like a spoiled child. That is what people are being "high and mighty" about.

650REDHAIR 6y ago

The same way we’ve funded endless wars for 20 years?

ibejoeb 6y ago
Income tax.

messick 6y ago

Well, if we take $2k payments and make them monthly, in a decade or so we'll reach a meaningful percentage of the direct costs of the Iraq/Afghan wars.

Alupis 6y ago
$2,000 x 150,000,000 = $300,000,000,000 That's 300 billion dollars every month... And that's for only 150 million adults...(there's a lot more than that) It's estimated to have cost about 3 Trillion dollars for the Iraq war, a 17+ year conflict[1]. At $300 billion a month (on the extreme low end), that's $3 Trillion every 10 months. Put another way - we could fund another 17+ year long armed conflict every 10 months at that rate. The entire 2021 federal budget is projected to be around 4.8 Trillion... and they estimate they'll only bring in $3.8 Trillion in revenue. Disregarding that your projection is grossly innacurate, how is this something we can do? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#Indirect_and_delayed_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_W...
- pashamur 6y ago
  I know this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but raise the top marginal tax rates. Not a nominal raise, but something significant, like 20%. And the cap gains rate as well. Basically move to a more redistributive system like Europe, which can afford to do this for a lot of their citizens. That's how we've funded war-like efforts in the past, and if this is likened to a WWII style mobilization effort (which it has been by several politicians, then the well off citizens need to pitch in much more than they are now).
  - Alupis 6y ago
    It would simply not be enough. If you took all of Bill Gates' ($107 billion) and all of Jeff Bezos' ($145 billion) and all of Larry Ellison's ($59 billion) money... every single penny, you'd still wouldn't be able to pay for even a single complete month of this program. It's an enormous amount of money. What the Nordic counties do doesn't scale to the third largest country by population... Not to mention they don't pay for their own military protection (barely) among other differences. Funded wars? Wars have almost always involved massive debt being taken on by the federal government. It's just simply not feasible to run that way for long term.