Author Topic: What is a good about Covid 19 related?  (Read 8936 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #50 on: March 30, 2020, 04:42:50 am »
Universal basic income is a difficult thing to get right because it has to take into account a lot of factors. The cost of living is not the same everywhere.
But that sort of system would be able to deal with lockdowns much better.

I don't like the idea of universal basic income. I think all who are able need to pull our own weight, it gives us some purpose in life, otherwise there are significant numbers of people content to coast by on the absolute minimum or worse, cause trouble for others. I like having a safety net but I don't want to be able to just sit around and mooch off society while I'm able to work.

Universal healthcare? Absolutely, at least for medical necessities. I don't believe anyone should have to choose between death and bankruptcy. Nobody should ever have to wonder whether they should call for an ambulance or visit the emergency room for some chest pain or just take a chance and hope that it's indigestion because it's going to cost several thousand dollars to find out. Nobody should ever be denied treatment that is medically necessary.
 

Offline BravoV

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #51 on: March 30, 2020, 04:55:08 am »
Capitalism in general works very well I think, but it needs some controls to keep things in check. A completely free market works ok for non-essentials but goods and services essential to basic living there has to be a greater degree of control against dramatic price fluctuations. Taxation ought to also be progressive, it should be possible for anyone who makes the right choices to become quite well off, but it should be progressively more difficult to become so wealthy that it snowballs and allows someone to use money to keep acquiring more money without generating any actual value. It could be all but impossible to be a billionaire and it would not stop anyone from becoming extremely wealthy. There is this false idea that the wealthy create jobs but it actually works the other way around. People who build successful businesses create jobs and that makes them wealthy along the way.

The problem is, the "check" is never existed and deliberately shot down since the beginning and every times whenever someone tried to bring it out.

An "opinionated" article, imo, but worth reading as this kind of view rarely seen in 1st tiers news in Western world.

Few quotes ...

"This is not capitalism. Capitalism is simple. You let winners win. You let losers lose. Regulate the whole show to the minimum degree realistically necessary to protect workers, consumers and citizens. These simple rules have been forgotten. Instead, we have an adulterated form of capitalism that, as far as finance is concerned, has no losers."

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Catholicism without God."


Read here -> $6 Trillion ‘rescue package,’ unaffordable bailouts and buybacks: Bend over, here it comes again! ... its from "Russia Todays" ...  >:D

Offline james_s

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #52 on: March 30, 2020, 04:56:16 am »
I hadn't realized there was anywhere that actually had UBI. I've known enough people who can barely be motivated to get a job even when they can't pay the bills and will always do the bare minimum they can get away with to survive. My friend's stepson is in his late 20s now and can't seem to hold a job for any length of time, he mooches off his mom who keeps giving him money for some stupid reason. He's perfectly content to sit around smoking pot and playing video games, activities I have no particular issue with *provided* they are done in moderation but with him that's pretty much all he ever does.
 

Offline IDEngineer

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #53 on: March 30, 2020, 05:01:14 am »
Universal healthcare? Absolutely, at least for medical necessities. I don't believe anyone should have to choose between death and bankruptcy. Nobody should ever have to wonder whether they should call for an ambulance or visit the emergency room for some chest pain or just take a chance and hope that it's indigestion because it's going to cost several thousand dollars to find out. Nobody should ever be denied treatment that is medically necessary.
Emotionally I want to agree, and I'm not going to argue, but do consider this. Such medical expenses are paid for with tax dollars, which politicians and the media constantly scrutinize to find fault with how they're spent (though they often couch such actions as "oversight" or "being responsible", they really do it to find ammunition against their political opponents). If the government is financially responsible for your medical expenses, then legally they can prove standing to control those behaviors which cause or increase those expenses.

Let's take an easy one: Smoking. The medical expenses associated with smoking are 100% preventable. Therefore, it seems reasonable to compel taxpayer-funded patients to not smoke, correct?

OK, then what about fast food? How about liver disease caused by liquor consumption? Drug abuse? Every one of those is 100% preventable - wouldn't it be appropriate to ban them to save tax dollars? (Ask yourself how those would be enforced, and what penalties we would impose for violation?)

Now let's get to the tougher ones. What about activities deemed "risky" to one's health? I'm a scuba diver, an activity deemed risky enough that it disqualifies you from many life insurance policies. Same for private pilots. But what about rock climbing? Kayaking? Children's sports like soccer, baseball, and (especially) gymnastics? There are well known stats for the dangers of these activities, and your CHOICE to participate risks government spending obligations.

Finally, the heavy lifting. Should women deemed "high risk" be allowed to get pregnant? The costs for a baby requiring NICU can hit six figures at light speed, and the actuarial tables that statistically predict such outcomes are well known to both the medical and insurance industries. And that's not even considering the risks to the mother. How about adults with inheritable mental or physical ailments - should they be allowed to create children who will be virtually certain to create enormous expense for the government?

There is substantial legal precedent for a benefactor having standing over the decisions of a beneficiary. Politicians and the media already weaponize the spending decisions of their adversaries. Do you really want your medical decisions to be wrapped around that axle?
 

Offline IDEngineer

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #54 on: March 30, 2020, 05:08:33 am »
The problem is, the "check" is never existed and deliberately shot down since the beginning and every times whenever someone tried to bring it out.
Not true.

Early in the industrial revolution we didn't have antitrust, and the problems with that quickly became evident enough that we passed antitrust legislation. It's been used on quite a few industries, and strongly considered on many more.

Also, please look up Glass-Stegal. Passed as a result of the Great Depression, it successfully kept banking and investment separated for ~70 years until Clinton signed it away. To no one's great surprise, the Great Recession followed within about a decade. That's about as perfect an example of your "check" as you'll ever get... it didn't exist and the problem occurred, the problem didn't recur while the "check" was in place, and then the "check" was removed and the problem resurfaced in just a few years.

"Checks" do exist, can and do work. We just need less wild swings in our (at least USA) politics to stop the wild overshoots and overcorrections.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #55 on: March 30, 2020, 05:22:47 am »
"Checks" do exist, can and do work. We just need less wild swings in our (at least USA) politics to stop the wild overshoots and overcorrections.

That's a problem that seems to be getting larger and I suspect it has many causes. Not the least of which is the internet in general and more recently social media. These make it possible for people to exist largely within these carefully crafted echo chambers where anyone holding a different view is easily expelled, people have largely lost the ability to agree to disagree and politics has become a religion for many people. They cannot objectively discuss their views or the pros and cons of their chosen side, it's always that their guy can do no wrong and the other guy can do no right. Any criticism of their side is taken like a personal attack on themselves.

Everybody wants quick and simple solutions to complex problems. Politicians make lofty promises as they campaign, far more and bigger than a person could ever hope to actually accomplish in office. The system responds slowly by design, this keeps the entire course of the nation from oscillating wildly between extremes, but it also means that necessary changes occur much to slowly to keep people happy, and no matter who is in charge or what they are doing roughly half the country is upset about it.
 

Online Marco

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #56 on: March 30, 2020, 05:34:53 am »
The easiest retort to this error is to ask the following question: "If the debt doesn't matter, why do we bother paying interest on it?"
For debt on the Fed balance sheet, mostly because accountants like accounting. Treasury pays interest to the Fed, Fed returns interest to the Treasury. Weeee ....
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"If paying interest doesn't matter, why is interest an increasing percentage of the federal budget?"
Because a significant amount of the federal debt isn't on the Fed balance sheet.
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"What happens when the interest continues to increase, until it starts squeezing out mandatory and discretionary spending?"
Interest on US treasury bonds increases at the mercy of the Fed, if the private market refuses to buy it at say 0% interest rate at auction ... then next auction the Fed just does nudge nudge wink wink and the private parties know that they can sell it the next day to the Fed in private market operations at a tiny profit. So they buy, because a tiny profit is enough to tie up liquidity for a day. The detour through the private market is just because it makes economists feel a little less upset ...

The capacity on the private market for debt at low interest rate is finite, the capacity on the Fed balance sheet is infinite. Just look at Japan central bank's accumulation of Japanese sovereign debt and look at how all the chicken littles (like say ZeroHedge) predicting catastrophic results have been wrong.

Which isn't to say you should always print money to pay the government budget, but occasionally doing so and just ignoring the expansion of the money supply it creates without subsequently shrinking it again does no real harm in an otherwise stable economy. As I said, it takes a bit of discipline.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 05:43:33 am by Marco »
 

Offline olkipukkiTopic starter

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #57 on: March 30, 2020, 06:09:25 am »
How come last few postings related to subj?  :-DD :-//  :wtf:  :palm:

 
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Online Zero999

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #58 on: March 30, 2020, 02:06:40 pm »
No can fix bullshit journalism.

Live slaughtering is perfectly legal in China for smaller food animals like rabbits, dogs, chickens and fishes. Chinese cuisine frequently calls for internal organs of animals, and due to their fast deterioration, they have to be cooked right after slaughtering.

China has revised an edible animal list after the outbreak, and animals being slaughtered there are all on the list.
Okay, I admit, I have said some things in my other posts about wet markets which were wrong/misleating.

Looking into the issue more, the wet markets themselves are really the problem, but the way they are run is. I admit, I was too quick to suggest banning them outright. Selling live animals is fine. The problem is density and slaughtering them in an unhygienic manner, allowing all the guts and shit to spread infection to live animals and people nearby.

I certainly don't care what people in China eat. The only animals which should be banned are those which are endangered. It's not so much what's eaten, but how it's reared and slaughtered which is the problem.

Completely banning wet markets would be bad for China, because they provide people with nutritious food, at a reasonable price. There need to be laws on minimum levels of hygiene, maximum density, keeping different species apart and a ban of on-site animal slaughter.

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My criticism isn't purely aimed at the Chinese, even though they are to blame for this pandemic.

You should blame Western democracy for not allowing your government to save you.
To be fair to the Chinese government, once the cover up stopped, they have dealt with the situation very well and western governments were far too slow to react.

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The whole world needs to improve animal welfare and hygiene. It won't stop until there's a global ban on these intensive farming practices.

You sound like the Greta girl. The venerable Lord Putin once commented her with something like everyone in Africa wants living quality in Sweden, but first they have to develop economy.
It doesn't change the fact that it's true. You  can call me what you want but it won't change the fact that cramming huge numbers of animals into a small space is going to encourage the spread of disease and pumping them full of antibiotics will result in superbugs. The world's intensive animal farms are ticking bombs of infection and should be banned. This is arguably more important than the environmental and ethical side of the debate.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 02:09:46 pm by Zero999 »
 

Online Zero999

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #59 on: March 30, 2020, 03:47:24 pm »
Anyway, I could go on about China, the lack or rule of law, the US battery farming etc. but those are negative and not on topic. I apologise for shitting on a relatively happy thread.

One of the good things about the lockdown is it will reduce levels of environmental pollution. Hopefully more people will continue to avoid unnecessary travel and work from home more, even when it's over.
 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #60 on: March 30, 2020, 04:42:01 pm »
Why do people think that people actually need to eat bats to get this? There was a study conducted in 2008 (german), with the aim of identifying wildlife animal viruses that have a pandemic potential just like SARS. They found some form of corona viruses in bats over here in Europe too. So when no one ever looks, it is easy to assume everything is fine or somehow a regional thing. It is not.

These viruses might be able to bridge the gap to domesticated animals any time too here, but maybe never had an effect because of cooking properly and good kitchen hygiene (separating raw meat from ready dishes, washing hands). Bad news for Ozzy Osborne type personalities that like their bats raw, but everyone else would be safe. I do rather assume that a lack of kitchen hygiene is more likely to cause such outbreaks than eating (raw) exotic animals. Maybe animal farmers were unkowingly selling infected animals, reluctant to close their facilities early, too, so a larger group of people got infected concurrently which gave this a higher chance to break out.

Outbreaks are not new in western societies as well. Basically the same reasons for how it spreads are here too, the cash cow companies do not want to risk their business even in the light of facts that indicate it would be best to close. Not really anyone's fault, none of them are epidemiologists and usually verdicts require evidence. And no one has the psychic powers to predict 2 weeks into the future. Meningitis cases (60 deaths per year) for example provoke temporary closing of schools or at least make it to the public every few years, it just never becomes a pandemic.

In other words, the market will swiftly price that $1K per person into every transaction.[...]
UBI is literally one of the least intelligent concepts to be proposed in a very long time. But it sure sounds good to anyone who loves (what appears to be) a free handout and doesn't think beyond that.
To make UBI work you would need to fix rents/prices/salaries (which is short of taking away property in some form; harsh limit to an open market), and more or less punish people by taking UBI away.
It would take away the distinction between government, employment and living your life in a way only totalitarian governments used to.
So... such developments end up in pure socialism, where practically every opinion expressed sooner or later becomes a political statement that would be judged for it's consequences regarding the government (that pays the UBI), otoh no one really owns property (one way or the other) and therefore you have a totalitarian socialism, controlling not only citizenship, but also work, how you spend your income and which spare time activities you do. Such systems existed in several countries and were dumped because of exactly these reasons, i can't believe how many people do not see this kind of trajectory.

If unregulated, no one has a benefit, because there will be price gouging and the money ends up in the wrong hands.
Support your local planet.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #61 on: March 30, 2020, 05:44:59 pm »
Why do people think that people actually need to eat bats to get this? There was a study conducted in 2008 (german), with the aim of identifying wildlife animal viruses that have a pandemic potential just like SARS. They found some form of corona viruses in bats over here in Europe too. So when no one ever looks, it is easy to assume everything is fine or somehow a regional thing. It is not.

These viruses might be able to bridge the gap to domesticated animals any time too here, but maybe never had an effect because of cooking properly and good kitchen hygiene (separating raw meat from ready dishes, washing hands). Bad news for Ozzy Osborne type personalities that like their bats raw, but everyone else would be safe. I do rather assume that a lack of kitchen hygiene is more likely to cause such outbreaks than eating (raw) exotic animals. Maybe animal farmers were unkowingly selling infected animals, reluctant to close their facilities early, too, so a larger group of people got infected concurrently which gave this a higher chance to break out.

Outbreaks are not new in western societies as well. Basically the same reasons for how it spreads are here too, the cash cow companies do not want to risk their business even in the light of facts that indicate it would be best to close. Not really anyone's fault, none of them are epidemiologists and usually verdicts require evidence. And no one has the psychic powers to predict 2 weeks into the future. Meningitis cases (60 deaths per year) for example provoke temporary closing of schools or at least make it to the public every few years, it just never becomes a pandemic.
I doubt kitchen hygiene has that much to do with it. Respiratory viruses such as Covid-19 are typically contracted by inhalation, rather than ingestion. No doubt it's theoretically possible to contract Covid-19 from eating raw bat meat, but the stomach acid destroys the virus so any infection will be from the mouth, which will be minimal compared to someone inhaling dry bad faeces in a farm or market. I'm not a doctor or virologist so can't be sure. It's just my basic understanding of the situation.

We don't get Corona viruses here in Europe and North America because we don't have a culture of eating bat meat, but we do get influenza which is hosted by pigs and birds.

As I said before, it's more likely intensive farming practises are to blame, than bad kitchen hygiene. Putting more animals into a small space increases the risk of a virus spreading, especially when the animals are stressed, which weakens their immune systems. Moving live animals around and mixing species also increases the risk of the disease spreading and mutating so it can infect humans. The Chinese intensively farm a greater range animals such as bats, reptiles, cats etc. than the usual pigs, cattle and poultry, hence an even greater possibility of viruses mutating and infecting humans.

Here's an interesting report on factory farming and swine influenza. It's a shame nothing was learned about the 2009 swine flu pandemic. :palm: Covid-19 will be seen as a Chinese problem, rather than due to intensive farming and poor animal welfare/hygiene which are global.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/22780/swine_flu_report_05_05_2009.pdf
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 05:52:11 pm by Zero999 »
 
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Offline Kasper

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #62 on: March 30, 2020, 06:19:45 pm »
In Canada, we financially incentivize people to have kids and not work.  They get more welfare money from taxpayers if they have kids and they get less if they get a job.  Some people have lots of kids and teach them all working is for suckers.

UBI should remove both those incentives and a lot of bureaucratic waste.

Right now, governments are creating more and more programs to give money here and there.  It will never be fairly distributed and it will be an enormous amount of work right at a time when governments have other extra work to do.

What is good about covid is it may encourage people to consider simplifying the welfare systems and hopefully at the same time, removing the incentive to have kids and not work.

 
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Offline IDEngineer

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #63 on: March 30, 2020, 07:12:33 pm »
UBI should remove both those incentives and a lot of bureaucratic waste.
UBI is effectively a devaluing of the currency. Just like a rising tide lifts all boats, and deflation/inflation changes the value of all currency in circulation, raising the economic baseline for literally everyone just resets the value of all transactions (as described above). UBI would be rapidly priced into all transactions and the net effect would be basically zero. The only way to help specific people is to help *those specific people*.

I believe that most of the social programs probably started with great intentions, but like all other government handouts it's just too easy for politicians to leverage them for vote buying. It's just too easy to argue that "this special interest should be covered" and "that special interest cannot be left out in the cold". No politician wants to be on the evening news saying that they oppose helping children, the handicapped, veterans, or whatever other group shouts the loudest today. I mean no disrespect to any group - there are legitimate needs in every society - but this has become a one-way ratchet that politics prevents any sort of correction. Again, there's no closed loop providing feedback. And as long as a nation is willing to rack up deficits, with their resulting debt and its interest, that false sense of security allows this Jenga tower to keep getting taller and more rickety until at some point it crashes, as all such Ponzi Schemes do.

Searching for the root cause, the only thing I've been able to think of is the ability to run government deficits which is why I suspect a balanced budget requirement would go a long way toward preventing this problem. Basically it would provide the necessary feedback. It would force painful, but necessary, discussions rather than allowing politicians to just "settle for everything". You want to help that special interest group? Then maybe you need to cancel that defense program. You want to send financial aid to some obscure nation in a part of the world nobody wants to visit? Then you'll have to convince the mothers of the nation that their children don't need subsidized lunches.

Somehow we need to stop spending like trust fund kiddos and restore fiscal responsibility, so we CAN help the actual people who need it - and not just throw money at everyone (as with a UBI), which would just make the problem worse. But doing so requires policitians (and the voters who elect them) to act like adults rather than kids at the candy store with their hands out, and sadly I see a lot more of the latter than the former.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #64 on: March 30, 2020, 07:22:06 pm »
As far as UBI devaluing the currency is concerned. People said a similar thing about he minimum wage, which was supposed to push up prices, negating any pay rises, yet that doesn't seem to have been the case.

There's a strong culture of blaming the poor for their own poverty, perhaps more so in the US, than other countries. In reality most of the poor are ordinary people who have fallen on hard times and are struggling to get out of poverty. Historically people relied on family and those who couldn't turned to begging and crime. A decent welfare programme should aim to get people back into work and avoid crime. It should be seen as an investment, rather than encourage laziness. I appreciate there are some lazy people around who milk the system, but I believe they are in the minority.

I sit on the fence as far as UBI. No government has ever tried it, so it's not proven to work one way or another. Lots of money is wasted in deciding who receives what benefit and UBI could get rid of all of that, but there will still be those who will need more money and are unable to work, such as someone with a disability, who needs an expensive powered wheelchair
 
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Offline IDEngineer

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #65 on: March 30, 2020, 07:40:31 pm »
As far as UBI devaluing the currency is concerned. People said a similar thing about he minimum wage, which was supposed to push up prices, negating any pay rises, yet that doesn't seem to have been the case.
UBI is a minimum wage taken to the ultimate extreme. The difference is that while a minimum wage is a form of targeted assistance, a UBI (by definition) applies to everyone. Well, anything that applies to everyone just changes the baseline for everyone. It's like raising all of the voltages in a system by some shared amount, say by raising the common from 0V to 10V... nothing actually changes because all of the potential differences, which cause current to flow, are still the same. A potential that used to measure 5V to ground now measures 15V to 10V - same differential, same current flow. For that reason, a UBI is nothing but a devaluation of the currency as explained above.

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A decent welfare programme should aim to get people back into work and avoid crime. It should be seen as an investment, rather than encourage laziness.
I totally agree with you there, and I suspect the "aid" program rules themselves are often to blame. For example, what happens if an aid recipient decides to use their aid funds to buy a bunch of meats and start a BBQ operation? To me, that's someone using aid in a constructive way to leverage themselves out of poverty. But something tells me the "rules" would find fault with that, not to mention the regulatory hurdles to them just trying to start a small enterprise to support themselves. There's a lot of fancy talk and handwaving about "helping the poor" but are the programs really structured to do that, or just to barely keep them afloat and thus perpetuate the dependency?

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I sit on the fence as far as UBI. No government has ever tried it, so it's not proven to work one way or another.
Agreed, but because its scope is universal it's very different from other aid programs and actually easier to project what would happen. Inflation and devaluing of currencies is very well understood. So is the market reaction to widespread effects, they get priced into everything automatically. The (over)reaction to that - price and wage controls - well, the effects of those on an economy are very well understood too. And they are not positive.

EDIT: Correct punctuation, add example.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 07:43:16 pm by IDEngineer »
 

Offline Circlotron

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #66 on: March 30, 2020, 07:44:42 pm »
 Maybe enough military personnel will get sick so that a few wars will stop.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 07:48:58 pm by Circlotron »
 

Online Gyro

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #67 on: March 30, 2020, 07:48:39 pm »
Getting back to "What is a good about Covid 19 related?"... News stories like this one!  ;D

Quote
Coronavirus: Driver stopped on M6 lockdown trip with wife in boot

A driver flouted the coronavirus lockdown to pick up £15 windows with his wife in the boot of his car.

The man, who had bought the windows on eBay, was stopped by police on the M6 in Cheshire on Sunday after collecting his purchase in Salford.

Police said his wife had to sit in the boot as she "could not fit in the vehicle" for the return journey to Coventry.

North West Motorway Police issued the man with a traffic offence report.

After the force tweeted news of the 220-mile round trip people reacted with a mixture of shock and disbelief.

    A driver has travelled from Coventry to Salford to collect a £15 EBay purchase of windows. His wife could not fit in the vehicle so she was travelling in the boot for the return journey when stopped on the M6 Cheshire. The driver was given a TOR for the offence.
    — North West Motorway Police (@NWmwaypolice) March 29, 2020

Anthony Collier said: "I am amazed at how many people are still making unnecessary journeys."

Jonny Evans quipped: "Maybe he saw a window of opportunity."

The government has banned all non-essential travel amid the coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-52088987


Be careful of those ebay bargains folks!
Best Regards, Chris
 

Online Zero999

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #68 on: March 30, 2020, 08:26:09 pm »
As far as UBI devaluing the currency is concerned. People said a similar thing about he minimum wage, which was supposed to push up prices, negating any pay rises, yet that doesn't seem to have been the case.
UBI is a minimum wage taken to the ultimate extreme. The difference is that while a minimum wage is a form of targeted assistance, a UBI (by definition) applies to everyone. Well, anything that applies to everyone just changes the baseline for everyone. It's like raising all of the voltages in a system by some shared amount, say by raising the common from 0V to 10V... nothing actually changes because all of the potential differences, which cause current to flow, are still the same. A potential that used to measure 5V to ground now measures 15V to 10V - same differential, same current flow. For that reason, a UBI is nothing but a devaluation of the currency as explained above.
It depends on how it's done. If the government simply printed money and gave to to everyone, then yes, I can see how that would cause hyperinflation. If the money was simply raised from taxation, then no, it wouldn't because there wouldn't be an increase in money supply. It would just be a different method of wealth redistribution, replacing what already occurs in most countries.

Anyway, I'm not going to debate this any further because it's off-topic and is all hypothetical: it's never been put into practise.

Another good thing which will come out of Corvid-19 is a reduction in other diseases, ranging from the common cold, to sexually transmitted infections.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #69 on: March 30, 2020, 09:43:28 pm »
Maybe enough military personnel will get sick so that a few wars will stop.
That would definitely by a plus.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #70 on: March 30, 2020, 10:25:55 pm »
[...]
UBI is a minimum wage taken to the ultimate extreme. The difference is that while a minimum wage is a form of targeted assistance, a UBI (by definition) applies to everyone. Well, anything that applies to everyone just changes the baseline for everyone. It's like raising all of the voltages in a system by some shared amount, say by raising the common from 0V to 10V... nothing actually changes because all of the potential differences, which cause current to flow, are still the same. A potential that used to measure 5V to ground now measures 15V to 10V - same differential, same current flow. For that reason, a UBI is nothing but a devaluation of the currency as explained above.
[...]

UBI is universal but the systems it replaces are not. That means when it is first applied, it is not a universal change to everyone. People who previously got welfare stop getting welfare. People who make tons of money get extra taxes.  That is not universal.

If you want an electronics example think about an op amp with input range of 5V to 15V being fed by a signal with a range of 0V to 12V.  Currently, anything below 5V is clipped up to exhibiting same response as 5V (min wage workers get same money as welfare users).  If you incr DC bias on the signal (apply UBI) then you remove clipping on bottom end (aka incentivize welfare users to get jobs) and add clipping on top end (aka higher taxes for higher income).

People on welfare should see no big change. 
People on min wage should see biggest change, as they should. Currently they do way more work than people on welfare but have similar income.
People of moderate wage will see relatively low change because the extra money is relatively less meaningful to them.
People of extra high wage will see less income (after taxes).

Ideally removing the welfare system that gives incentive to have kids and not work means society becomes more productive and that reduces the extra taxes required to pay for UBI.

There should be a correlation between effort and income but our system clips on the bottom end because effort and income have different bottoms.  Min effort is 0 hours/lifetime and min income is ~$1000/month or whatever welfare pays.  It seems reasonable to think there could be a way to make sure people who do 40hrs of easy work / week get more money than people who do 0 hrs work / lifetime.  UBI seems like a way to do that.
 

Online Marco

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #71 on: March 30, 2020, 10:41:33 pm »
Just like a rising tide lifts all boats, and deflation/inflation changes the value of all currency in circulation, raising the economic baseline for literally everyone just resets the value of all transactions (as described above).

Not saying it's a good idea, but a shock increase to inflation rapidly decreases existing private debt (and savings). Given that private debt overhang is becoming a break on the economy that particular aspect wouldn't be so bad. Unlike sovereign debt, private debt does matter.

Of course such a debt jubilee should really be combined with a restructuring of the economy to avoid debt building as much the second time. Fix real-estate, better regulate leveraged buyout, stock buy backs and dividend issues etc.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 10:44:50 pm by Marco »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #72 on: March 30, 2020, 10:47:23 pm »
[...]
UBI is a minimum wage taken to the ultimate extreme. The difference is that while a minimum wage is a form of targeted assistance, a UBI (by definition) applies to everyone. Well, anything that applies to everyone just changes the baseline for everyone. It's like raising all of the voltages in a system by some

UBI is universal but the systems it replaces are not. That means when it is first applied, it is not a universal change to everyone. People who previously got welfare stop getting welfare. People who make tons of money get extra taxes.  That is not universal.
What stops UBI dead in it's tracks is that it needs a tax of at least 75% on income which makes it totally uninteresting to have a job. A long standing rule of economy is that tax on income has an optimum around 49% and should not exceed that number.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #73 on: March 30, 2020, 10:47:37 pm »
Drew a picture to show what I am thinking about UBI vs welfare only for people who don't work. With the current system, anyone who doesn't feel like doing lots of work is better off doing no work.  Getting off welfare means more expenses (child care, transportation, tuition, etc) and less free money.  With UBI, every bit of work is rewarded and people who are in the hole can see incentive to try even if they can only manage to do a bit of work. Hopefully that gets them on the right path to becomming productive instead of being stuck on welfare for generations.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: What is a good about Covid 19 related?
« Reply #74 on: March 30, 2020, 10:50:40 pm »
[...]
UBI is a minimum wage taken to the ultimate extreme. The difference is that while a minimum wage is a form of targeted assistance, a UBI (by definition) applies to everyone. Well, anything that applies to everyone just changes the baseline for everyone. It's like raising all of the voltages in a system by some

UBI is universal but the systems it replaces are not. That means when it is first applied, it is not a universal change to everyone. People who previously got welfare stop getting welfare. People who make tons of money get extra taxes.  That is not universal.
What stops UBI dead in it's tracks is that it needs a tax of at least 75% on income which makes it totally uninteresting to have a job. A long standing rule of economy is that tax on income has an optimum around 49% and should not exceed that number.

Ouch. 75% would be painful. Is that 75% evenly distributed?
 


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