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Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of travel and discretionary income for a few months. Do any of you even know that a much wider and largely poorer world exists outside your highly developed bubble? Do you not fathom that for billions of people all around the world, the money you don't earn by working today means no food tomorrow and possibly no electricity or capability of paying the doctors visit for your kid next week? Do you not grasp that for most of these billions of people, the work necessary to get this basic income on a daily and weekly basis absolutely depends on the ability to leave home and engage in external economic activity? The economic losses that have already been caused by attempts at lockdown are NOT just about some lost income. In so many cases, they literally affect the most fundamental aspects of being able to survive without suffering very badly. The privileged righteousness that ignores this here is way too common, and awfully foolish. Especially when you consider that we're still in the middle of all this and not even the world's best experts can yet concretely say that lockdowns have done much or that they were the better choice vs trying to keep the economy of so many places from falling so far.

thesizeofa 6y ago
Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view of the world some of you have in a country pretending to be rich, yet it collapses at first sign of real trouble.
- joshuahughes 6y ago
  Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiotic or evil. Whatever happened to nuance?
  - thesizeofa 6y ago
    Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.
    - i_am_proteus 6y ago
      While there are many metrics of the pandemic's, including health, GDP, and unemployment, it's interesting to note, in light of this comment, that the UK per-capita death rate is currently about 20% higher than the US per-capita death rate from COVID-19.[0] [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
      - sh461 6y ago
        Also good to point out that the UK is about 8 times more densely populated than the US.
      - Pyramus 6y ago
        While your link compares confirmed deaths due to Covid-19, it seems that this effect remains even when you look at excess deaths [1]. However, the US is still in the midst of the pandemic, and I expect the US to catch up on this lamentable metric. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...
- mcntsh 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here... that in around the world people are not suffering directly because of the quarantines, because they have "publicly accessible healthcare" and they don't "ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times"? Forgive me but you'd be wrong.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  If lockdowns only occur in highly developed countries, then by their own logic they are nearly worthless, since the thing they're trying to avoid will spread just as much in the majority part of the world that isn't highly developed. Thus, there have been strong pushes for lockdowns globally, regardless of development level. In some developing countries, they have been applied (in others no). In these cases or many others where a developing country shied away from heavy-handed lockdown, government support of the type you mention is nearly nonexistent. That you take its existence for granted suggests to me that you yourself live in a place where there is support and simply assume it should be the case anywhere (it's not). The same for the taxes you mention for social support. Sure, the taxes some developer pays in California, or the UK, or New York or X developed place might be used to help social benefits programs in that place. In many if not most other places in the world though, any collected taxes for social programs are mismanaged, often stolen or simply don't exist in the first place. Again, that's how much of the world actually is, most of its people very definitely don't have much access to government support or public healthcare. I speak from experience here by the way, living in a large developing country with a famously corrupt government at all levels, and 60% of its 130 million person population living day to day, hand-to mouth. I can't even begin to image the social and even humanitarian catastrophe of full lockdown here had it been applied (fortunately it wasn't despite the pressures of COVID deaths). Even partial quarantine has been damaging enough. I don't even understand the meaning of your last sentence. This isn't about "weakly collapsing" at the first sign of trouble, it's about the hard math of what inevitably happens if you force-stop daily outdoor economic activity in any country with a majority population that must engage in exactly such activity in order to keep from literally going hungry.
- gassius 6y ago
  Just a friendly remainder that "government support" cost money, and governments usually[0] don't have any other source of money than taxation and borrowing, both put the burden in the productive citizens of a country, and had their limits. Very hard to see where the support will be paid off without traumatic consequences. Of course, almost every economy is printing money as there is no tomorrow, diluting current assets dramatically, and who will suffer that most are those with fixed income like pensionist. Is a very very bad scenario that we are getting into it. In the US, people wonder how markets are growing since the beggining of the pandemic despite the colossal impact in the real economy, there are many reasons but my contention is that people should take that growth as the new baseline of value, and see how their assets compare with that growth. The difference is how much value your assets lost in that timeframe. Printing money is the magic invisible taxation that most people don't see or complain until its too late. [0] Maybe Norway and its massive sovereing fund is an exception, but the fund took an over 100B USD loss in the first quarter of 2020, and it will be a lot worse in the second. Even that sovereing fund, which is the gold global standard for a rainy day state fund, can be depleted very quickly with the current scenario
  - antientropic 6y ago
    What assets are being "diluted dramatically"? The only asset class you mention are stocks and they're mostly up. Here in the Netherlands, housing prices have continued to rise during corona. Eurozone inflation in July was 0.4% annualized. So were is the massive dilution? The government support you mention is for the most part financed through bonds (at very low or negative interest rates), not by "printing money".
    - gassius 6y ago
      The value of money is being diluted, the USD[0] and the Euro[1] for example, but by no means limited to them. IMHO the difference of the monetary growth and the GDP growth in the same period is the value lost for each money unit. I concede GDP growth is not the perfect indicator of the value of an Economy, but it is what we have. This is not post Bretton Woods, standard modus operandi we are talking here. Since 2008 we can see a change of scenario, and in Q1 2020 we can see once again a clear jump. Inflation may result of an increase in the monetary base, but, as we saw with Japan, since they already tried[3], other factors as a productivity shock alongs with a liqudity trap might lead to deflation[4], which may be a far worse scenario. One could argue that if equity and assets prices, on one hand, and salaries and pensions on the other, are stable while money is diluted as per above definition, you are already on a deflationary cycle. [0]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE [1]https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/money-supply-m3 https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/money-supply-m3 check 10y [2]https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap19l.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap19l.pdf [3]https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap70c.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap70c.pdf
ImaCake 6y ago
Third world countries have first world problems as well. They just have them on top of their third world problems. Something tells me they would rather be hungry rather than both hungry and dying. Palau having open borders wouldn't have stopped the end of tourism, but it would have let the virus in.
bosswipe 6y ago
Privileged software engineers do not set lockdown policies. Go rage at somebody else.
wdb 6y ago
The problem is that with your developer job, in the U.K., you won’t be eligible for government help because your last salary after loosing your job causes you to go over the maximum savings limit. That happened to me
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Consider it a cleansing fire, setting in motion the actions needed to reach the goal inscribed in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones /me shrugs edit: Take it like a man! https://youtu.be/7tve5qbEkv4?t=170 https://youtu.be/7tve5qbEkv4?t=170

thesizeofa 6y ago

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view of the world some of you have in a country pretending to be rich, yet it collapses at first sign of real trouble.

joshuahughes 6y ago
Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiotic or evil. Whatever happened to nuance?
- thesizeofa 6y ago
  Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.
  - i_am_proteus 6y ago
    While there are many metrics of the pandemic's, including health, GDP, and unemployment, it's interesting to note, in light of this comment, that the UK per-capita death rate is currently about 20% higher than the US per-capita death rate from COVID-19.[0] [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
    - sh461 6y ago
      Also good to point out that the UK is about 8 times more densely populated than the US.
    - Pyramus 6y ago
      While your link compares confirmed deaths due to Covid-19, it seems that this effect remains even when you look at excess deaths [1]. However, the US is still in the midst of the pandemic, and I expect the US to catch up on this lamentable metric. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...
mcntsh 6y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here... that in around the world people are not suffering directly because of the quarantines, because they have "publicly accessible healthcare" and they don't "ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times"? Forgive me but you'd be wrong.
shadowprofile77 6y ago
If lockdowns only occur in highly developed countries, then by their own logic they are nearly worthless, since the thing they're trying to avoid will spread just as much in the majority part of the world that isn't highly developed. Thus, there have been strong pushes for lockdowns globally, regardless of development level. In some developing countries, they have been applied (in others no). In these cases or many others where a developing country shied away from heavy-handed lockdown, government support of the type you mention is nearly nonexistent. That you take its existence for granted suggests to me that you yourself live in a place where there is support and simply assume it should be the case anywhere (it's not). The same for the taxes you mention for social support. Sure, the taxes some developer pays in California, or the UK, or New York or X developed place might be used to help social benefits programs in that place. In many if not most other places in the world though, any collected taxes for social programs are mismanaged, often stolen or simply don't exist in the first place. Again, that's how much of the world actually is, most of its people very definitely don't have much access to government support or public healthcare. I speak from experience here by the way, living in a large developing country with a famously corrupt government at all levels, and 60% of its 130 million person population living day to day, hand-to mouth. I can't even begin to image the social and even humanitarian catastrophe of full lockdown here had it been applied (fortunately it wasn't despite the pressures of COVID deaths). Even partial quarantine has been damaging enough. I don't even understand the meaning of your last sentence. This isn't about "weakly collapsing" at the first sign of trouble, it's about the hard math of what inevitably happens if you force-stop daily outdoor economic activity in any country with a majority population that must engage in exactly such activity in order to keep from literally going hungry.
gassius 6y ago
Just a friendly remainder that "government support" cost money, and governments usually[0] don't have any other source of money than taxation and borrowing, both put the burden in the productive citizens of a country, and had their limits. Very hard to see where the support will be paid off without traumatic consequences. Of course, almost every economy is printing money as there is no tomorrow, diluting current assets dramatically, and who will suffer that most are those with fixed income like pensionist. Is a very very bad scenario that we are getting into it. In the US, people wonder how markets are growing since the beggining of the pandemic despite the colossal impact in the real economy, there are many reasons but my contention is that people should take that growth as the new baseline of value, and see how their assets compare with that growth. The difference is how much value your assets lost in that timeframe. Printing money is the magic invisible taxation that most people don't see or complain until its too late. [0] Maybe Norway and its massive sovereing fund is an exception, but the fund took an over 100B USD loss in the first quarter of 2020, and it will be a lot worse in the second. Even that sovereing fund, which is the gold global standard for a rainy day state fund, can be depleted very quickly with the current scenario
- antientropic 6y ago
  What assets are being "diluted dramatically"? The only asset class you mention are stocks and they're mostly up. Here in the Netherlands, housing prices have continued to rise during corona. Eurozone inflation in July was 0.4% annualized. So were is the massive dilution? The government support you mention is for the most part financed through bonds (at very low or negative interest rates), not by "printing money".
  - gassius 6y ago
    The value of money is being diluted, the USD[0] and the Euro[1] for example, but by no means limited to them. IMHO the difference of the monetary growth and the GDP growth in the same period is the value lost for each money unit. I concede GDP growth is not the perfect indicator of the value of an Economy, but it is what we have. This is not post Bretton Woods, standard modus operandi we are talking here. Since 2008 we can see a change of scenario, and in Q1 2020 we can see once again a clear jump. Inflation may result of an increase in the monetary base, but, as we saw with Japan, since they already tried[3], other factors as a productivity shock alongs with a liqudity trap might lead to deflation[4], which may be a far worse scenario. One could argue that if equity and assets prices, on one hand, and salaries and pensions on the other, are stable while money is diluted as per above definition, you are already on a deflationary cycle. [0]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE [1]https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/money-supply-m3 https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/money-supply-m3 check 10y [2]https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap19l.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap19l.pdf [3]https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap70c.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap70c.pdf

ImaCake 6y ago

Third world countries have first world problems as well. They just have them on top of their third world problems. Something tells me they would rather be hungry rather than both hungry and dying. Palau having open borders wouldn't have stopped the end of tourism, but it would have let the virus in.

bosswipe 6y ago

Privileged software engineers do not set lockdown policies. Go rage at somebody else.

wdb 6y ago

The problem is that with your developer job, in the U.K., you won’t be eligible for government help because your last salary after loosing your job causes you to go over the maximum savings limit. That happened to me

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Consider it a cleansing fire, setting in motion the actions needed to reach the goal inscribed in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones /me shrugs edit: Take it like a man! https://youtu.be/7tve5qbEkv4?t=170 https://youtu.be/7tve5qbEkv4?t=170