Perhaps I'm simply misreading the situation and am in a bad mood, but it seems that whenever we see a government program rolled out, politicians seem more interested in preventing fraud, misuse, and politically sensitive spending than they are in seeing the program actually succeed / solve it's stated problem. This results in layers of complexity, regulations, and bullshit that impede the program from functioning efficiently. I would rather a cash transfer program have a 25% fraudulent claim rate and a 90% legitimate claim success rate than a 2% fraudulent claim rate and a 50% legitimate claim success rate. Politicians seem to want the latter. Further, there were arguments during the negotiations about the 2 trillion dollar bail out about abortions and oil subsidies ffs. These guys need to get their heads out of their asses and join us in the real world.
It's the "do it yesterday" part that they're having trouble with. Major banks are saying that the government isn't forthcoming with the details they need to actually implement the lending program, so they've had to delay its launch.
[1] https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relie...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianthompson1/2020/04/03/no-sm...
There are two possibilities:
1. This program is going to continue the great tradition of government epic failures of providing help to small businesses
2. This time around it works and small businesses get an immediate ( in a commercial sense of the word ) help in record time.
One won't need to be a genius to figure out the implication of 2. Personally, I think it would be 1.
The CARES act did do this, and it did it yesterday.
Since we are now awaiting implementation, politicians are no longer in the picture. They understood what needed to be done, and did their jobs. It is now up to the bureaucrats.
Now that congress has passed the law, it's up to the EXECUTIVE BRANCH of the government to make it happen. There's a politician at the head of that - POTUS.
People wanted an outsider in the White House, someone who would "shake things up", and this is the consequence. This is what it means.
The POTUS can and should be making this implement faster.
This is implemented through the agencies of the Executive branch, the operations for which are almost entirely run by bureaucrats. When Trump entered office, he didn't just fire all of the bureaucrats at the Department of Labor, he just replaced its head.
The folks that work on the day-to-day operations of processing unemployment insurance claims, or maintaining/improving the systems remain largely unchanged. Their employment is a function of the budget and funding, which is determined by Congress, and then assented by the POTUS.
In the case of CARES, the Senate unanimously passed it, and POTUS quickly signed it into law. He is not going to micro-manage its implementation. It's now up to the bureaucrats.
If that system gets rolled out, the US as the country is over because it is an admission that the US is not capable of maintaining it's existing economic system.
The only part of the distribution system that isn't working very well because of the shutdown is the part that distributes dollars.
Any service disruptions right now are not due to the shutdown - they are due to the actual effects of the virus. Look at the MTA. Half of its employees are sick, and the other half have called in sick. Train service has been reduced, and passengers are now packed like sardines in a can on the trains that are still running. Look at the supply chain disruptions - they aren't caused by people being stopped from coming in to work - they are because people can't, or are afraid to come into work.
As well they should be, given the state of healthcare in this country. Who is going to pay for their care if they are one of the 20% that need hospitalization after catching it?
But due to years of people handwringing over abuse, and "economists" encouraging thrift, the process to get food stamps isn't speedy, it's state-by-state, and now it's overwhelmed.
Due to the general anthemia among the GOP for welfare type programs, different states are going to see different levels of urgency with boosting the food stamp programs. It's much the same as how some GOP led states refused the medicaid expansion that was part of the ACA.
Hopefully this will reveal new information to voters of those states as they slowly starve and as they realize that certain other states are doing better - what's the difference? Competent governance. You can't buy it, but you can vote for it.
That's a talking point.
Chinatown grocery stores are mostly closed in both Manhattan and Queens. Patels is closed everywhere.
Edit: Downvotes don't protect from reality
Effective grocery store prices are 2x - all of the sales have been removed. Eggs in Queens went from $1.69/dozen to $7.99 a dozen.
$1200 tax credit for 2020 ( this is what it actually is ) is nothing for people who live and support high cost areas which are the people who allow for the white collar jobs to exist.
Every state with shutdown orders considers logistics essential services. Nobody but the virus is preventing the people working in them from going to work.
I'll repeat it: Nobody working in food production and distribution is forbidden from going to work.
If prices are rising, it has nothing to do with the shutdown, and everything to do with the fact that there's a global pandemic... Which will be made worse if lift the shutdown orders.
Are you planning on ordering these people back to work at gunpoint, to lower the price of eggs? Or are you going to instead, consider extending a short-term loan, so that the grocer can absorb the price hike? The number of hens laying eggs hasn't changed over the past four weeks.
> I'll repeat it: Nobody working in food production and distribution is forbidden from going to work.
That is not the message that is being repeated on TV and on the news. The message is "stay home. if you are close to people you are going to be infected and die. stay home". The message is not "Stay home unless you work in list in blah blah blah. Also, unless you have comorbidity such as diabetes, heart disease, compromised lunges you are going to be fine". If you keep repeating that people are going to die, people are going to believe you even though the number of people who are going to die that do not have comorbidity factors have a very low risk. That's how you destroy logistic.
Right now Amazon, objectively a logistics company, has an equivalent of the ground hold on all non-essentials. I cannot get a frying pan delivered until April 24th.
> I'll repeat it: Nobody working in food production and distribution is forbidden from going to work.
We are at 10% of seasonal flu death numbers heading head first into a wall.
This is a very weird line of argumentation. Do you think there is some media-wide conspiracy in favor of containment? To what end?
These "talking points" are also what the epidemiologists and politicians are saying. Just because you are in the minority that doesn't agree with it doesn't make you right and everyone else wrong.
Amazon is having a hold because demand for everything is up, because people are trying to avoid going outside to shop... And because their employees are concerned about their personal safety. No government agency has stepped in to shut down an Amazon warehouse. If you lift the shutdowns, you will actually increase their concerns about personal safety.
> If you keep repeating that people are going to die, people are going to believe you even though the number of people who are going to die that do not have comorbidity factors have a very low risk.
Those people have relatives who are at risk, or may not be interested in rolling the dice on ending up in the hospital. This virus has a much higher hospitalization rate than the flu. Are you ready to pay for all their medical bills? Has socialized medicine finally found its moment to arrive on the shores of the United States? Or, alternatively, are you personally ready to take a job lifting boxes in a warehouse for $15/hour with no medical benefits? One that you commute to in a subway car that's packed shoulder-to-shoulder with sick people?
The MTA is unable to operate the NYC subway, because they have so many sick employees. Do you think a Krelminesque order to stop broadcasting bad news on the telly is going to defy reality, and get the subway running at full capacity, again?
> We are at 10% of seasonal flu death numbers heading head first into a wall.
Italy has, over the span of 4 weeks, hit 300% of their regular seasonal flu deaths, and 50% of the hospitalizations, despite a lockdown but this apparently does not stop people on the internet from drawing false equivalences to the flu.
Do you have a better plan for dealing with a virus that sends more people to the hospital in 4 weeks, than the flu does in half a year? How many hospitalizations and deaths do you think they would have hit if cases continued to double every three days?
You cannot have it both ways - either employees are concerned for their safety and logistics therefore is affected or they are not and logistics is not affected.
> The MTA is unable to operate the NYC subway, because they have so many sick employees. Do you think a Krelminesque order to stop broadcasting bad news on the telly is going to defy reality, and get the subway running at full capacity, again?
MTA decided to cut the service on NYC subway because it projected a drop of demand. It is an organization has been been mismanaged for decades. I find it very difficult to believe that it would suddenly be making marginally optimal decisions in "the stay at home" environment.
> Italy has, over the span of 4 weeks, hit 300% of their regular seasonal flu deaths, and 50% of the hospitalizations, despite a lockdown but this apparently does not stop people on the internet from drawing false equivalences to the flu.
The vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths come from comorbidity.
> Do you have a better plan for dealing with a virus that sends more people to the hospital in 4 weeks, than the flu does in half a year? How many hospitalizations and deaths do you think they would have hit if cases continued to double every three days?
Order a stay at home for at risk population and population with comorbidity. Lift it from anyone else. Eat 10-15% hit to the economy rather than a total devastation. The mass poverty creating economic hit is going to destroy the medical system much faster than COVID-19.
Credit card companies are slashing credit lines. Postal service is failing to deliver mail in some locations. Unemployment numbers/systems work as well as Healthcare.gov did upon launch.
We are one to two weeks away from massive civil unrest when thousands of people have no money to pay for food.