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The cost of lockdowns are a US-only, entirely political problem. No other industrialised country has a remotely similar degree of unemployment or even homelessn

The cost of lockdowns are a US-only, entirely political problem. No other industrialised country has a remotely similar degree of unemployment or even homelessness as a result of the lockdowns - because they already had social safety nets and because they had the political will to implement adequate emergency measures to support the population and small businesses. Example: unemployment in heavily hit France in June 2020 is 1% _lower_ than June 2019. https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/france?sc=LAB- https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/france?sc=LAB-

makomk 6y ago
It's an "entirely political problem" in the sense that European countries have found ways to avoid counting most of the people who aren't working and whose income is coming entirely from the state as being unemployed whereas the US didn't. (Generally some sort of furlough scheme where the state pays their entire wages.) This doesn't fix the problem - a lot of the jobs which still exist on paper are likely phantom jobs that will disappear once companies start having to actually pay employees, people aren't necessarily better off financially (European schemes usually involve a cut to wages, whereas the US unemployment extension managed to pay many people more than when they were employed), it screws over the people who end up actually-officially-unemployed, and it discourages people from moving to new, actually-existing jobs if they appear. It sure does fix the figures though.
- bildung 6y ago
  They do that for a reason: Businesses stay in business, employees remain in the company, which means customer relations, supplier contacts etc. are kept, company-internal knowledge doesn't get lost etc. - and those employees still have money to spend in the economy. Keep in mind most of these schemes were already in place before Covid, they are not temporary measures and financed as such (e.g. they mostly work insurance-like and were well-financed before the pandemic started), though the money paid out was increased in most cases. The macroeconomic disruption avoided by this is immense. What this additionally allows for is a) better planning beyond 2020 for companies, and b) much higher willingness in the population to cooperate in the preventive measures like distancing, masks and so on, which helps to explain the stark difference in new cases between both regions.

makomk 6y ago

It's an "entirely political problem" in the sense that European countries have found ways to avoid counting most of the people who aren't working and whose income is coming entirely from the state as being unemployed whereas the US didn't. (Generally some sort of furlough scheme where the state pays their entire wages.) This doesn't fix the problem - a lot of the jobs which still exist on paper are likely phantom jobs that will disappear once companies start having to actually pay employees, people aren't necessarily better off financially (European schemes usually involve a cut to wages, whereas the US unemployment extension managed to pay many people more than when they were employed), it screws over the people who end up actually-officially-unemployed, and it discourages people from moving to new, actually-existing jobs if they appear. It sure does fix the figures though.

bildung 6y ago
They do that for a reason: Businesses stay in business, employees remain in the company, which means customer relations, supplier contacts etc. are kept, company-internal knowledge doesn't get lost etc. - and those employees still have money to spend in the economy. Keep in mind most of these schemes were already in place before Covid, they are not temporary measures and financed as such (e.g. they mostly work insurance-like and were well-financed before the pandemic started), though the money paid out was increased in most cases. The macroeconomic disruption avoided by this is immense. What this additionally allows for is a) better planning beyond 2020 for companies, and b) much higher willingness in the population to cooperate in the preventive measures like distancing, masks and so on, which helps to explain the stark difference in new cases between both regions.