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The cost of the shelter in place order is doing more harm than good. When the dust settles, I am convinced that more people will have died as a result. I'm on

The cost of the shelter in place order is doing more harm than good. When the dust settles, I am convinced that more people will have died as a result. I'm on pretty solid ground here. The costs of poverty and economic collapse are arguably better researched than pandemics. And it is hard not to be disgusted by the attitude of many people on HN, who are least affected by this. Having some relatives in that part of the country, I would compare this to the dust bowl. A complete economic collapse that will over the next year require millions of people to flee to cities, as they have absolutely nothing left. What are people supposed to do when every single business has gone from their town? But people here like to sneer at these "stupid rednecks" that are clearly not as smart as us, right?

eropple 6y ago
"Economic collapse" is, one, overstated, and two, not likely with functioning economic policy. The answer to this one really is actually simple. Just write the checks. "But but but debt--" Debt is denominated in our own currency and it's the reserve currency of the world, that debt is fucking fictional. Just write the checks. "But but but undeserving poors--" No. Just write the checks. I realize, of course, I am shouting into the wind. I understand that it isn't actually about the economically underprivileged, because we'd write the checks. And it isn't actually about the Small Business Owner--service industry small business owner checking in, doing fine, thanks--being threatened, because we'd write the checks. It's about something much darker and much more mendacious and the rhetoric that is so readily adopted by useful idiots who want their haircuts or whatever. We will have to come to grips with the understanding that in many parts of modern America it is more acceptable to have Grandma drown in her own goddamned lungs than it is to just write the checks. And that is the downfall of civic society before all else.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I'm not even against these checks, but as far as the debt concern goes: doesn't it require paying interest? At which point when you can't pay the interest, you'll have to print money, resulting in massive inflation? I never understood why people say it's fictional. Is it somehow fictional under the assumption of playing by the rules? Or under the assumption that when the US is demanded to pay it'll just say "make me" and then erase the debt that way?
  - eropple 6y ago
    Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these debts do not begin at "fictional" and go from there (and this is a viewpoint I don't personally hold, so long as reserves are denominated in the U.S. dollar its motion and not the numbers on a balance sheet are what actually matter): spending creates money, taxes destroy money. If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. This is a generality and of course it's more nuanced than just this, but "spend in bad times, tax in good times" is a reasonable place to start. Where we have problems is that the "tax in good times" side of this keeps getting dropped for one reason or another. Cynically, I notice that this "for one reason or another" coincides strongly with a particular political party being elected once good times are back so that they can proceed to drive it off the nearest hillside yet again and somehow blame "government" for it.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      > If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. I mean, I'm not arguing about how to avoid inflation. My question is about the debt being fictional. When you say "debt is fictional" that means that you can rack it up endlessly without consequences, but this clearly means there are consequences that you have to mitigate in another way. To argue that it's fictional you'd need to argue those problems don't come up at all. Otherwise you might as well say heart attacks are fictional because we can treat them, snake bites are fictional because we can treat them, etc...
- JPKab 6y ago
  " "But but but undeserving poors--" No. Just write the checks." Nobody in this thread said anything about that. "Debt is denominated in our own currency and it's the reserve currency of the world, that debt is fucking fictional." I studied economics. I can assure you, that's a radical oversimplification of how international debt works. Are you aware of how US government debt is taken on? I don't think you are. You are acting as if the risk profile remains unchanged as policies are pursued. I'm not debating Keynesian economics here. If the economy is in a deflationary spiral, then creating money isn't going to be destructive in pure terms, provided it's done correctly. "We will have to come to grips with the understanding that in many parts of modern America it is more acceptable to have Grandma drown in her own goddamned lungs than it is to just write the checks." Again, I'm not against writing the checks. I'm against writing the checks if it's not necessary and there isn't a benefit to doing so. The same callousness you highlight in that line could also be said about allowing small businesses to fail (ruining young people's lives) to protect grandma, who had elderly people in previous generations just accept deadly diseases as a part of reality rather than shutting down whole economies to protect themselves. Glad you, as a small service business owner, are doing fine. But every day, the percentage of business owners who aren't doing fine goes up. What's the stop criteria for this in your opinion? What is the signal that SHOULD be used for opening back up? Waiting for a vaccine relies on hope, and that as we all know, is not a strategy.
mehrdadn 6y ago
> When the dust settles, I am convinced that more people will have died as a result. I'm on pretty solid ground here. > But people here like to sneer at these "stupid rednecks" that are clearly not as smart as us, right? Wow. You're putting a lot of words in people's mouths. That's also quite a bit coming from someone who just claimed such confidence in his own prediction of the future. I assume this means you're more of an expert in this than the ones in the government we're all familiar with and who are predicting the opposite? But in case you're actually interested in what actual experts (not me) think about the whole "minimizing harm" thing, you might enjoy reading/listening to this, which evaluates at what point it's worth shutting down the economy. It might shake your solid ground: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843
pnutjam 6y ago
And suddenly conservatives were concerned about poverty.
aisengard 6y ago
The shelter in place order mostly hits around the margins. Most people are staying home on their own volition - government orders notwithstanding. I started staying home a few weeks before the official lockdown went into effect. The economy was going to collapse no matter what - that's not because of government giving an order to stay home, it's because the reality is that the virus infects everyone and leads to horrific health deterioration. Furthermore, our government has provided our economy nearly zero safety net to account for something like this. Pandemics are scary. Suffering severe health deterioration or maybe even dying are existentially scary. No amount of shutting our ears and screaming "HOAX!" is going to change how most people view the risk - it only increases the chaos and lengthens the crisis. You want the economy to come back? Then figure out how to make people feel safe, which means getting rid of the virus, because no amount of weird charts or saying "it's just the flu" is going to work now that people realize how bad it really is. Ignoring the problem isn't a solution.
- altoidaltoid 6y ago
  Agreed, I already cancelled my business travel two weeks before our state issued its first guidance on WFH. OpenTable's data showed the significant drop in reservations weeks before official orders as well. Open the stores and nobody comes?

eropple 6y ago

"Economic collapse" is, one, overstated, and two, not likely with functioning economic policy. The answer to this one really is actually simple. Just write the checks. "But but but debt--" Debt is denominated in our own currency and it's the reserve currency of the world, that debt is fucking fictional. Just write the checks. "But but but undeserving poors--" No. Just write the checks. I realize, of course, I am shouting into the wind. I understand that it isn't actually about the economically underprivileged, because we'd write the checks. And it isn't actually about the Small Business Owner--service industry small business owner checking in, doing fine, thanks--being threatened, because we'd write the checks. It's about something much darker and much more mendacious and the rhetoric that is so readily adopted by useful idiots who want their haircuts or whatever. We will have to come to grips with the understanding that in many parts of modern America it is more acceptable to have Grandma drown in her own goddamned lungs than it is to just write the checks. And that is the downfall of civic society before all else.

mehrdadn 6y ago
I'm not even against these checks, but as far as the debt concern goes: doesn't it require paying interest? At which point when you can't pay the interest, you'll have to print money, resulting in massive inflation? I never understood why people say it's fictional. Is it somehow fictional under the assumption of playing by the rules? Or under the assumption that when the US is demanded to pay it'll just say "make me" and then erase the debt that way?
- eropple 6y ago
  Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these debts do not begin at "fictional" and go from there (and this is a viewpoint I don't personally hold, so long as reserves are denominated in the U.S. dollar its motion and not the numbers on a balance sheet are what actually matter): spending creates money, taxes destroy money. If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. This is a generality and of course it's more nuanced than just this, but "spend in bad times, tax in good times" is a reasonable place to start. Where we have problems is that the "tax in good times" side of this keeps getting dropped for one reason or another. Cynically, I notice that this "for one reason or another" coincides strongly with a particular political party being elected once good times are back so that they can proceed to drive it off the nearest hillside yet again and somehow blame "government" for it.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    > If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. I mean, I'm not arguing about how to avoid inflation. My question is about the debt being fictional. When you say "debt is fictional" that means that you can rack it up endlessly without consequences, but this clearly means there are consequences that you have to mitigate in another way. To argue that it's fictional you'd need to argue those problems don't come up at all. Otherwise you might as well say heart attacks are fictional because we can treat them, snake bites are fictional because we can treat them, etc...
JPKab 6y ago
" "But but but undeserving poors--" No. Just write the checks." Nobody in this thread said anything about that. "Debt is denominated in our own currency and it's the reserve currency of the world, that debt is fucking fictional." I studied economics. I can assure you, that's a radical oversimplification of how international debt works. Are you aware of how US government debt is taken on? I don't think you are. You are acting as if the risk profile remains unchanged as policies are pursued. I'm not debating Keynesian economics here. If the economy is in a deflationary spiral, then creating money isn't going to be destructive in pure terms, provided it's done correctly. "We will have to come to grips with the understanding that in many parts of modern America it is more acceptable to have Grandma drown in her own goddamned lungs than it is to just write the checks." Again, I'm not against writing the checks. I'm against writing the checks if it's not necessary and there isn't a benefit to doing so. The same callousness you highlight in that line could also be said about allowing small businesses to fail (ruining young people's lives) to protect grandma, who had elderly people in previous generations just accept deadly diseases as a part of reality rather than shutting down whole economies to protect themselves. Glad you, as a small service business owner, are doing fine. But every day, the percentage of business owners who aren't doing fine goes up. What's the stop criteria for this in your opinion? What is the signal that SHOULD be used for opening back up? Waiting for a vaccine relies on hope, and that as we all know, is not a strategy.

mehrdadn 6y ago

> When the dust settles, I am convinced that more people will have died as a result. I'm on pretty solid ground here. > But people here like to sneer at these "stupid rednecks" that are clearly not as smart as us, right? Wow. You're putting a lot of words in people's mouths. That's also quite a bit coming from someone who just claimed such confidence in his own prediction of the future. I assume this means you're more of an expert in this than the ones in the government we're all familiar with and who are predicting the opposite? But in case you're actually interested in what actual experts (not me) think about the whole "minimizing harm" thing, you might enjoy reading/listening to this, which evaluates at what point it's worth shutting down the economy. It might shake your solid ground: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843

pnutjam 6y ago

And suddenly conservatives were concerned about poverty.

aisengard 6y ago

The shelter in place order mostly hits around the margins. Most people are staying home on their own volition - government orders notwithstanding. I started staying home a few weeks before the official lockdown went into effect. The economy was going to collapse no matter what - that's not because of government giving an order to stay home, it's because the reality is that the virus infects everyone and leads to horrific health deterioration. Furthermore, our government has provided our economy nearly zero safety net to account for something like this. Pandemics are scary. Suffering severe health deterioration or maybe even dying are existentially scary. No amount of shutting our ears and screaming "HOAX!" is going to change how most people view the risk - it only increases the chaos and lengthens the crisis. You want the economy to come back? Then figure out how to make people feel safe, which means getting rid of the virus, because no amount of weird charts or saying "it's just the flu" is going to work now that people realize how bad it really is. Ignoring the problem isn't a solution.

altoidaltoid 6y ago
Agreed, I already cancelled my business travel two weeks before our state issued its first guidance on WFH. OpenTable's data showed the significant drop in reservations weeks before official orders as well. Open the stores and nobody comes?