7 ms·

We haven't even seen the extent of the depression yet. Combined with congressional inaction on social spending a lot of people are going to be in very deep fina

We haven't even seen the extent of the depression yet. Combined with congressional inaction on social spending a lot of people are going to be in very deep finanical issues. This is a systemic problem that we needed fixed 3 months ago.

sebmellen 6y ago
The lack of continued large-scale stimulus is tragic. We need a strong stimulus package with direct monetary relief (one $1200 check is not enough), and a program of structured financial relief / rent forgiveness. Unfortunately, I don't see it happening.
- OpticalWindows 6y ago
  We should be reciving our 3rd and onto our 4th right now.
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    Really, it's an infrastructure problem. We don't have direct payment rails set up for something like UBI, and the political will to build this infrastructure is next to zero. Most of the companies receiving relief were badly managed before the pandemic, and they should be allowed to fail. But it's very hard to structure relief in a fair and effective way.
    - waheoo 6y ago
      In WW2 we transformed every industry overnight to be geared for war. I think we can handle setting up a payment system... Like what kind of weak ass excuse is that? You can't figure out how to pay everyone? Please. Give me a break. Ubi is the effective and fair way to stimulate the economy btw. All this stimulus aimed at businesses is absolutely moronic. If people know they have secure pay coming in they will spend the money. Its the uncertainty that causes people to hard cash. Businesses don't need the cash, if they can't stay afloat during this they shouldn't be allowed to make it through. I do believe they deserve some help,aybe tax breaks, maybe short term allowance to make people redundant / reduce so they can equalise the books but there is no fair way to give them money and not the people.
    - OpticalWindows 6y ago
      I agree its very difficult and in making decisions like this we will incidentally help pick winners and losers. I dont think temporary relief will make or break a business model effected by the pandemic. On some of those edge cases we will need to decide whether the government will get their money back or accept losses.
    - perardi 6y ago
      An excellent point. How many people are/were barely attached to the banking system? Especially if you’re working, well, a bit under the table, in day labor situations like construction or office cleaning. I got my stimulus check. Basically immediately. Because I have a standard 9–5 salaried job with direct deposit, so the government knew exactly where to send the money. But that seems to obviously not have the force multiplier effect of sending it to someone who just got fired from a movie theater.
      - sjg007 6y ago
        It’s based on IRS direct deposit.
        perardi 6y ago
        …yes, and? I said that. Quote: “salaried job with direct deposit”
        paulgb 6y ago
        I'm not the above poster, but I took your comment to mean direct deposit from your employer to your account, not direct deposit from the IRS to your account (for tax refunds, which is what I assume the above poster means).
        sjg007 6y ago
        Yep. It's any tax refund setup to direct deposit from the IRS to your bank account. It doesn't matter if you have employer direct deposit. One other problem is that many people in the US are unbanked so they get prepaid debit cards or a check.
    - redisman 6y ago
      > Really, it's an infrastructure problem. No it's not. Seemed to work fine in July didn't it? It's obviously a political problem. Why can't we just use the same mechanism again? edit: Maybe you're talking about the business/paycheck replacement relief and not the individual checks like the parent was?
- meerita 6y ago
  Keynesian economy never worked. Redistributing money will just make it worthless.
  - drxzcl 6y ago
    I love your certainty. I'm not sure it's warranted though.
    - meerita 6y ago
      Well, just look the evidence: Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, etc.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        I'll give you Venezuela and Argentina, but can you clarify how Spain matches your argument?
        meerita 6y ago
        Between the socialists years, 2006-2010 they've spent so much in consume programs that we will be paying for that many years. We're lucky that we have euro, but the proof is unemployment is hight as crazy every year and there are no signs of investement. People also changed mindset from savings to spendings, and now they are demanding more money from the goverment for anything. Please check also Chile, they had couple of programs made by Bachelet, they all failed.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        That's a weird argument, given that they appear to have run a primary surplus in those years: https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/government-budget https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/government-budget I agree that there was a massive mal-investment in much of the Eurozone post 2002 (I'm irish and remember this well), but I don't really see how this maps to socialism/socialists. Can you clarify?
- nostromo 6y ago
  Yes, we need at least another 6 trillion. Maybe 20 trillion. Why stop there? We should quadruple the money supply maybe, we need to protect commercial real estate investors, after all. ... and then in 2021 we can all scratch our heads and wonder why income inequality is worse than ever, and despite all this spending, we didn't even make an appreciable dent in the impact of Covid-19 on public health.
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    I think a quote from Bernie Sanders encapsulates the problem: "in the US, we have socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor". Corporate lobbyists know the government is a cash cow, and they take advantage of this. They will always get relief if they ask for it. Direct payments are the opposite of this.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      When you dramatically expand the money supply you make the rich richer. It doesn't matter how the money is distributed, it tends to inflate asset prices, and the people who own the most assets (the rich) reap the rewards in the end. If you wanted to stop that, you'd have to actually pay for your spending, perhaps by implement some sort of wealth tax or dramatically increasing income taxes. Of course, nobody wants to increase taxes, so we just keep printing money to try and fix every problem.
      - flurben 6y ago
        What you just said is factually incorrect. Expanding the monetary supply does not "make the rich richer."
      - sebmellen 6y ago
        The number of people who are homeless, in medical debt, and unable to work or make any money due to limited skillsets and COVID is astounding. These people need some type of immediate help, and if they don't receive it, the effects will be far more detrimental than the effects of fiscal stimulus. And I think you're confusing monetary stimulus with fiscal stimulus. > It doesn't matter how the money is distributed, it tends to inflate asset prices For the US, that's not true. The US Dollar is the world's reserve currency, and the Fed isn't worried about inflation, but a lack of money supply. The pandemic has led to a huge demand for safe assets, including Treasury bonds, which has led to incredibly low interest rates on Treasury bonds, and a stronger dollar. See, for example, this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/05/what-2-trillion-coronavirus-bailout-is-really-going-cost/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/05/what-2-tr....
- pessimizer 6y ago
  We should have explicitly been paying people to stay home, but somehow the $1200 + the $600 unemployment bump became welfare payments, and morons were giving speeches about how they were incentivizing people to stay home. No shit. Once we had things under control, we could loosen up quarantine, then when it got shitty again, tighten it up again and pay people to stay home. It would have goddamn paid for itself. If people could quarantine and know their livelihoods were secure, they wouldn't be so upset about it. edit: this is a rehearsal for when the next coronavirus comes around that has an infection rate like covid-19 but a death rate like MURS. It's going to whip through the world like the plague.
  - xienze 6y ago
    The problem is that one stimulus check cost $2 trillion dollars. Doing that every single month for an indefinite period of time is, quite expensive to put it mildly. And that’s not even taking into consideration that there’s a lot of people with monthly expenses in excess of $1200 per month.
    - altdatathrow 6y ago
      I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1]. This article [2] gives a pretty good overview of the $4T spent in total so far [1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/159-million-economic-impact-payments-processed-low-income-people-and-others-who-arent-required-to-file-tax-returns-can-quickly-register-for-payment-with-irs-non-filers-tool https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/159-million-economic-impact-pay... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-bailout-spending/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/corona...
      - xienze 6y ago
        > I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1]. Great, but the bill cost $2T. Same with the recent one that’s been put on ice. Because there’s no such thing as a bill that only contains direct cash payments to citizens, they’re loaded up with pork and stuff that doesn’t even having anything to do with the pandemic.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Where does that money come from? QE & more government debt?
  - erosenbe0 6y ago
    Mostly deficit spending. QE and the like is for increasing the money supply, not really spending. Though it can have a knock on effect in terms of the rate the govt borrows at.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Yep and it doesn’t matter.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    I think it's instructive to set aside money for a minute and think about things in real terms: if we shut things down, then which parts of the economy won't be functioning and what is the cost of that. For example: suppose hospitality workers are paid to stay at home. How is that paid for? Well actually it's entiely paid for by people having fewer of the hospitality experiences that they are used to. It is obvious when you take money out of the equation that hospitality workers staying at home will not cause there to be any less of essentials such as food and shelter to go around. There are other sectors like manufacturing where there is a real cost to be paid. But that could be as small as delaying the purchase of the manufactured goods by period of lockdown. No so bad. Whem you look at it like this way, QE seems entirely justified. All it really does is spread the effects accross the economy to people who can bear them, and avoids financially ruining people which will be a primaey cause of long term economic damage once things reopen.
    - quickthrower2 6y ago
      I'm not concerned about justification for QE, but more about where is the limit of debt you can take on to provide cash to a vast population, and is there a better way to fix things? I see the problem as a lack of agility of the economy. The hospitality works could have another job, but those jobs can't get created fast enough. How can they get paid by other people rather than the government. Another question is post-covid do we want to ramp up consumption again. Do we need people flying to hotels to meet up, or will Zoom do? And if Zoom will do, what of the hospitality industry (already taking a stab wound from Airbnb etc.).
- cft 6y ago
  The response to such stimulus will likely be inflation.
xienze 6y ago
> Combined with congressional inaction on social spending a lot of people are going to be in very deep finanical issues. I would imagine people are experiencing such things already seeing as how it’s been seven months with nothing but a single $1200 check.
- OpticalWindows 6y ago
  Yes and states have run out of funding. They literally cant pay people the services they promised them when taking taxes.
- chrismcb 6y ago
  We should never have sent a 1200 check at all. The people who need help were the ones who lost their job. And they got it through extra unemployment benefits. I do realize there is an issue with some people who don't qualify for unemployment either because they still work part time or because they were self employed. That group should have been targeted and or given benefits as well
sjg007 6y ago
Pretty easy solution on November 3rd. Vote Democrat down ticket.
- chrismcb 6y ago
  Democrats are part of the problem. The solution isn't to vote democrat or republican, it is to vote for people that care. Term limits would go a long way to solving that problem.
  - throw_away 6y ago
    Getting rid of First Past the Post with something like Star Voting (https://www.starvoting.us https://www.starvoting.us) would go much further without imposing arbitrary limits.
  - karmelapple 6y ago
    Do you have a suggestion for who to vote for who “cares”? And as my sibling comment mentioned, eliminating first past the post would, in my opinion, be a gigantic improvement. If you’re in Massachusetts, please vote Yes on 2 this election so we can have ranked choice voting statewide.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    At worst, the Democratic party will make all the right speeches but ultimately do nothing. In contrast, the Republican party stole medical supplies from blue states[0] during the acute phase of the pandemic and chose to minimize the federal response to SARS-CoV-2 because the pandemic was only killing Democrats[1]. Depriving your political opponents of medical supplies during a pandemic is arguably a crime against humanity. Neither of these choices are particularly good, but one choice is far worse than the other. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/ [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-s...
    - dave_4_bagels 6y ago
dang 6y ago
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890196.)
- sebmellen 6y ago
  How do subthreads work? I assume they're just hidden due to divisiveness / flamewar risk?
  - dang 6y ago
    Mostly it's offtopicness, especially generic tangents: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
    - sebmellen 6y ago
      Understood. Hope I didn't do anything "wrong" in this case.
      - dang 6y ago
        Not at all! Your comment was super specifically on topic. The generic one which I detached was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 - detach means it's no longer a reply to your comment but is rather a top-level comment that can therefore float to a lower location on the page. There's nothing wrong with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 either. It was just more generic. Also important to understand: the moderation decision is not primarily about a comment, it's about the entire subtree. I don't want people to feel blamed for what they posted, especially when it was other commenters who ended up going further off topic.

sebmellen 6y ago

The lack of continued large-scale stimulus is tragic. We need a strong stimulus package with direct monetary relief (one $1200 check is not enough), and a program of structured financial relief / rent forgiveness. Unfortunately, I don't see it happening.

OpticalWindows 6y ago
We should be reciving our 3rd and onto our 4th right now.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Really, it's an infrastructure problem. We don't have direct payment rails set up for something like UBI, and the political will to build this infrastructure is next to zero. Most of the companies receiving relief were badly managed before the pandemic, and they should be allowed to fail. But it's very hard to structure relief in a fair and effective way.
  - waheoo 6y ago
    In WW2 we transformed every industry overnight to be geared for war. I think we can handle setting up a payment system... Like what kind of weak ass excuse is that? You can't figure out how to pay everyone? Please. Give me a break. Ubi is the effective and fair way to stimulate the economy btw. All this stimulus aimed at businesses is absolutely moronic. If people know they have secure pay coming in they will spend the money. Its the uncertainty that causes people to hard cash. Businesses don't need the cash, if they can't stay afloat during this they shouldn't be allowed to make it through. I do believe they deserve some help,aybe tax breaks, maybe short term allowance to make people redundant / reduce so they can equalise the books but there is no fair way to give them money and not the people.
  - OpticalWindows 6y ago
    I agree its very difficult and in making decisions like this we will incidentally help pick winners and losers. I dont think temporary relief will make or break a business model effected by the pandemic. On some of those edge cases we will need to decide whether the government will get their money back or accept losses.
  - perardi 6y ago
    An excellent point. How many people are/were barely attached to the banking system? Especially if you’re working, well, a bit under the table, in day labor situations like construction or office cleaning. I got my stimulus check. Basically immediately. Because I have a standard 9–5 salaried job with direct deposit, so the government knew exactly where to send the money. But that seems to obviously not have the force multiplier effect of sending it to someone who just got fired from a movie theater.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      It’s based on IRS direct deposit.
      - perardi 6y ago
        …yes, and? I said that. Quote: “salaried job with direct deposit”
        paulgb 6y ago
        I'm not the above poster, but I took your comment to mean direct deposit from your employer to your account, not direct deposit from the IRS to your account (for tax refunds, which is what I assume the above poster means).
        sjg007 6y ago
        Yep. It's any tax refund setup to direct deposit from the IRS to your bank account. It doesn't matter if you have employer direct deposit. One other problem is that many people in the US are unbanked so they get prepaid debit cards or a check.
  - redisman 6y ago
    > Really, it's an infrastructure problem. No it's not. Seemed to work fine in July didn't it? It's obviously a political problem. Why can't we just use the same mechanism again? edit: Maybe you're talking about the business/paycheck replacement relief and not the individual checks like the parent was?
meerita 6y ago
Keynesian economy never worked. Redistributing money will just make it worthless.
- drxzcl 6y ago
  I love your certainty. I'm not sure it's warranted though.
  - meerita 6y ago
    Well, just look the evidence: Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, etc.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      I'll give you Venezuela and Argentina, but can you clarify how Spain matches your argument?
      - meerita 6y ago
        Between the socialists years, 2006-2010 they've spent so much in consume programs that we will be paying for that many years. We're lucky that we have euro, but the proof is unemployment is hight as crazy every year and there are no signs of investement. People also changed mindset from savings to spendings, and now they are demanding more money from the goverment for anything. Please check also Chile, they had couple of programs made by Bachelet, they all failed.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        That's a weird argument, given that they appear to have run a primary surplus in those years: https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/government-budget https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/government-budget I agree that there was a massive mal-investment in much of the Eurozone post 2002 (I'm irish and remember this well), but I don't really see how this maps to socialism/socialists. Can you clarify?
nostromo 6y ago
Yes, we need at least another 6 trillion. Maybe 20 trillion. Why stop there? We should quadruple the money supply maybe, we need to protect commercial real estate investors, after all. ... and then in 2021 we can all scratch our heads and wonder why income inequality is worse than ever, and despite all this spending, we didn't even make an appreciable dent in the impact of Covid-19 on public health.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  I think a quote from Bernie Sanders encapsulates the problem: "in the US, we have socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor". Corporate lobbyists know the government is a cash cow, and they take advantage of this. They will always get relief if they ask for it. Direct payments are the opposite of this.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    When you dramatically expand the money supply you make the rich richer. It doesn't matter how the money is distributed, it tends to inflate asset prices, and the people who own the most assets (the rich) reap the rewards in the end. If you wanted to stop that, you'd have to actually pay for your spending, perhaps by implement some sort of wealth tax or dramatically increasing income taxes. Of course, nobody wants to increase taxes, so we just keep printing money to try and fix every problem.
    - flurben 6y ago
      What you just said is factually incorrect. Expanding the monetary supply does not "make the rich richer."
    - sebmellen 6y ago
      The number of people who are homeless, in medical debt, and unable to work or make any money due to limited skillsets and COVID is astounding. These people need some type of immediate help, and if they don't receive it, the effects will be far more detrimental than the effects of fiscal stimulus. And I think you're confusing monetary stimulus with fiscal stimulus. > It doesn't matter how the money is distributed, it tends to inflate asset prices For the US, that's not true. The US Dollar is the world's reserve currency, and the Fed isn't worried about inflation, but a lack of money supply. The pandemic has led to a huge demand for safe assets, including Treasury bonds, which has led to incredibly low interest rates on Treasury bonds, and a stronger dollar. See, for example, this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/05/what-2-trillion-coronavirus-bailout-is-really-going-cost/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/05/what-2-tr....
pessimizer 6y ago
We should have explicitly been paying people to stay home, but somehow the $1200 + the $600 unemployment bump became welfare payments, and morons were giving speeches about how they were incentivizing people to stay home. No shit. Once we had things under control, we could loosen up quarantine, then when it got shitty again, tighten it up again and pay people to stay home. It would have goddamn paid for itself. If people could quarantine and know their livelihoods were secure, they wouldn't be so upset about it. edit: this is a rehearsal for when the next coronavirus comes around that has an infection rate like covid-19 but a death rate like MURS. It's going to whip through the world like the plague.
- xienze 6y ago
  The problem is that one stimulus check cost $2 trillion dollars. Doing that every single month for an indefinite period of time is, quite expensive to put it mildly. And that’s not even taking into consideration that there’s a lot of people with monthly expenses in excess of $1200 per month.
  - altdatathrow 6y ago
    I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1]. This article [2] gives a pretty good overview of the $4T spent in total so far [1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/159-million-economic-impact-payments-processed-low-income-people-and-others-who-arent-required-to-file-tax-returns-can-quickly-register-for-payment-with-irs-non-filers-tool https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/159-million-economic-impact-pay... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-bailout-spending/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/corona...
    - xienze 6y ago
      > I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1]. Great, but the bill cost $2T. Same with the recent one that’s been put on ice. Because there’s no such thing as a bill that only contains direct cash payments to citizens, they’re loaded up with pork and stuff that doesn’t even having anything to do with the pandemic.
quickthrower2 6y ago
Where does that money come from? QE & more government debt?
- erosenbe0 6y ago
  Mostly deficit spending. QE and the like is for increasing the money supply, not really spending. Though it can have a knock on effect in terms of the rate the govt borrows at.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Yep and it doesn’t matter.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I think it's instructive to set aside money for a minute and think about things in real terms: if we shut things down, then which parts of the economy won't be functioning and what is the cost of that. For example: suppose hospitality workers are paid to stay at home. How is that paid for? Well actually it's entiely paid for by people having fewer of the hospitality experiences that they are used to. It is obvious when you take money out of the equation that hospitality workers staying at home will not cause there to be any less of essentials such as food and shelter to go around. There are other sectors like manufacturing where there is a real cost to be paid. But that could be as small as delaying the purchase of the manufactured goods by period of lockdown. No so bad. Whem you look at it like this way, QE seems entirely justified. All it really does is spread the effects accross the economy to people who can bear them, and avoids financially ruining people which will be a primaey cause of long term economic damage once things reopen.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    I'm not concerned about justification for QE, but more about where is the limit of debt you can take on to provide cash to a vast population, and is there a better way to fix things? I see the problem as a lack of agility of the economy. The hospitality works could have another job, but those jobs can't get created fast enough. How can they get paid by other people rather than the government. Another question is post-covid do we want to ramp up consumption again. Do we need people flying to hotels to meet up, or will Zoom do? And if Zoom will do, what of the hospitality industry (already taking a stab wound from Airbnb etc.).
cft 6y ago
The response to such stimulus will likely be inflation.

xienze 6y ago

> Combined with congressional inaction on social spending a lot of people are going to be in very deep finanical issues. I would imagine people are experiencing such things already seeing as how it’s been seven months with nothing but a single $1200 check.

OpticalWindows 6y ago
Yes and states have run out of funding. They literally cant pay people the services they promised them when taking taxes.
chrismcb 6y ago
We should never have sent a 1200 check at all. The people who need help were the ones who lost their job. And they got it through extra unemployment benefits. I do realize there is an issue with some people who don't qualify for unemployment either because they still work part time or because they were self employed. That group should have been targeted and or given benefits as well

sjg007 6y ago

Pretty easy solution on November 3rd. Vote Democrat down ticket.

chrismcb 6y ago
Democrats are part of the problem. The solution isn't to vote democrat or republican, it is to vote for people that care. Term limits would go a long way to solving that problem.
- throw_away 6y ago
  Getting rid of First Past the Post with something like Star Voting (https://www.starvoting.us https://www.starvoting.us) would go much further without imposing arbitrary limits.
- karmelapple 6y ago
  Do you have a suggestion for who to vote for who “cares”? And as my sibling comment mentioned, eliminating first past the post would, in my opinion, be a gigantic improvement. If you’re in Massachusetts, please vote Yes on 2 this election so we can have ranked choice voting statewide.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  At worst, the Democratic party will make all the right speeches but ultimately do nothing. In contrast, the Republican party stole medical supplies from blue states[0] during the acute phase of the pandemic and chose to minimize the federal response to SARS-CoV-2 because the pandemic was only killing Democrats[1]. Depriving your political opponents of medical supplies during a pandemic is arguably a crime against humanity. Neither of these choices are particularly good, but one choice is far worse than the other. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/ [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-s...
  - dave_4_bagels 6y ago

dang 6y ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890196.)

sebmellen 6y ago
How do subthreads work? I assume they're just hidden due to divisiveness / flamewar risk?
- dang 6y ago
  Mostly it's offtopicness, especially generic tangents: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    Understood. Hope I didn't do anything "wrong" in this case.
    - dang 6y ago
      Not at all! Your comment was super specifically on topic. The generic one which I detached was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 - detach means it's no longer a reply to your comment but is rather a top-level comment that can therefore float to a lower location on the page. There's nothing wrong with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 either. It was just more generic. Also important to understand: the moderation decision is not primarily about a comment, it's about the entire subtree. I don't want people to feel blamed for what they posted, especially when it was other commenters who ended up going further off topic.