Democracy is the system of elected representatives. You can elect a government that is completely opposed to welfare programs.

India has some of the hardest working people in the world, and it's a shame the way many have been treated by government programs. Government handouts have created a culture in which many of the poor are at the mercy of corrupt bureaucrats just to get by.

"What's that you say? Your rice allotment was 100 grams less than you're entitled to? Fuck you. Store is closed today. Hey everyone, thank smartass over here, nobody gets rice today."

This is government welfare here in India.

I was born poor. One american idea that does resonate with me after coming to USA is that a lot of poor people do not see themselves as poor. While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day. They make life better for themselves and others. That was the case with my family. We lived in a house whose floor was basically painted with cowdung, roof leaked, we could not afford meat and we borrowed newspapers from others to read. Yet, not once we would call ourselves poor and demand that someone else take care of us. It would be insulting for our pride.

A lot of well off people in India and USA automatically think of poor people as losers or without agency. They then propose that government must help them. Guess what, other than a small fraction of poor people most DO NOT want that help. They would rather prefer to do what they want to do. Poor people do not want your food, clothing and shelter, they have their own desires. We can not possibly know what they are.

India is an extremely social country and lockdowns have much bigger costs for people. If people are angry and fed up and willing to risk their lives, I can understand. I do not think assurance of food or money per month will keep them indoors.

What we need is some humility to recognize that just because someone else has less money than we do, that does not reduce their self worth or gives us the right to know "what they need".

PS. Shortage of food was not a problem in India during last lockdown it is not a problem today either. Food Corporation of India has a record stockpile of rice right now.

Not to diminish your experience, but you are an exception. Most poor people stay poor, no matter how hard they work.

And most poor people prefer free food over no food. You are right that most would prefer a dignified job and agency over their lives, but to say that people prefer to starve than to accept aid, or that it is just fine as a matter of policy to let people starve (or die of diarrhea as hundreds of indian children do each day as they don't have access to clean water) is just absurd. No one wants to watch their children die.

Again, i dont doubt your lived experience, but please do reflect on your views and whether they even remotely reflect reality.

His views reflect reality, they are probably less statistically likely. Any good political solution has to recognize the effects of agency and surroundings.

There is a HUGE difference in accepting a dole because you're shut down for the survival of your species and can't work vs how you see yourself functioning in a society where you can work.

> shut down for the survival of your species

Do you really believe the survival of our species is at stake?

There have been 1754 covid-19 deaths per million people in the USA since the start of the pandemic [0], a seemingly reliable number. That works out to 1 out of 570 people that have died of covid. Mostly older and less healthy folks.

Part of the problem may be that not everyone is that scared. Living in democracies we need to respect that.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It doesn't matter how I framed it... take it however you want. Here in texas, people were lined up for miles to buy guns because we were borderline on the edge of failing. People were stocking up food, toilet paper, supplies. We weren't talking about taking care of each other, we were focusing on gimmics we thought would help us survive what many expected to be collapse. We had a failed presidency, we had a failed response, millions lost their jobs, millions of people lost incomes...

I don't think people realize how bad it got and just how quickly we forget and forgive those who were in charge that led us down the path that almost led to certain failure.

So yeah, our species may have survived if you want to frame it as such to debate the words used more than the reality of what the words meant.

I intentionally chose the words I said because it was a disaster and to be honest, we still haven't really learned from it.

You intentionally chose the words you said, but it doesn't matter how you framed it?

Ok, maybe we should back up. I objected to your "survival of your species" characterization of the pandemic, but am happy to agree to leave that aside, some hyperbole in the heat of the moment I guess. I wasn't sure, because it appears there are people who feel that way. Like you said, people overreacted, buying guns, stockpiling, afraid to leave the house, etc. Some people are still overreacting, expecting the worst at every turn.

As the science and data continue to roll in we find that this is not as bad as was once feared. Lately I've been reading the recent articles/studies on how this is an airborne aerosol, which means the cloth masks everyone have been wearing may not have made much of a difference. The CDC now appears to be trying to talk people down, letting them know that surface transmission is not a significant factor, that we don't need to wear masks outside, etc. It's may be the case where find out in the end that the lockdowns were a waste of time and that aggressive contact tracing was the only thing that worked.

This thread got into talking about democracy and lockdowns. A lot lot of people don't think this is as big a disaster as you do. 1 out of 570 people dead, skewing older with comorbidities, doesn't strike many people as a disaster. Many people don't accept the premise that the lockdowns are worth it, and therefore don't want to spend the money supporting those same lockdowns like you suggested. They would rather live their lives as close to normal as practical. They don't feel the need to assign political blame for a pandemic that caught almost the entire planet by surprise. They have a vote, the same as you. They feel just as strongly as you. Difficult situation, eh?

> That works out to 1 out of 570 people that have died of covid. Mostly older and less healthy folks.

Your assumption is that what the USA went through, with the shutdowns is the worst-case scenario. I posit that it is not - things could have been far worse in terms of death, as well as second- and third-order effects on the economy, jobs and food security.

You said "the survival of the species" was at stake. Are you telling me that you stand by that comment? Do you really think this coronavirus might have killed off our species?

There is zero science supporting this. In fact, to the contrary, experts from the beginning expected this to peter out on its own [0]:

> 2019-nCoV joins the four coronaviruses now circulating in people. “I can imagine a scenario where this becomes a fifth endemic human coronavirus,” ... “We don’t pay much attention to them because they’re so mundane”

> Odds: Moderate. “I think there is a reasonable probability that this becomes the fifth community-acquired coronavirus,” Adalja said, something he expanded on in his blog. Webby agreed: “I have a little bit of hope that, OK, we’ll put up with a couple of years of heightened [2019-nCoV] activity before settling down to something like the other four coronaviruses.”

> Odds: Pretty good. What we may be seeing “is the emergence of a new coronavirus … that could very well become another seasonal pathogen that causes pneumonia,”

Your statement about "survival of the species" seems outlandish, according the the science I read. Your above reply "things could have been worse" is not an adequate defensse of such an alarmist statement.

Do you have any references supporting your position? oit appears so far that you do not.

You should keep in mind that not everyone shares your paranoia and want to get on with as much of their lives as possible. We live in democracies and other people will rightfully object to you imposing your views on all of them without better justification.

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

> You said "the survival of the species" was at stake.

That wasn't me saying that; I'm not gp. I was only objecting to your comment that implicitly assumed a linear effect, and therefore concludes that things wouldn't have been bad without shutdowns

>> That works out to 1 out of 570 people hat have died of covid.

I do not think the "survival of the species" was at stake, but our 2020 lifestyles were at stake. Things could have gotten much worse, in a non-linear, exponential manner.

My apologies! I didn't mean to mix you up with the original comment I was replying to. I did specifically object to the characterization of the pandemic as a threat to the surivial of the species. I'm glad you agree!

Worst case would be healthcare systems collapsing, and a majority of essential workers falling ill, dying, or simply refusing to go work. It would possibly cause severe supply chain disruptions, which in its turn could result in local food shortages, civil unrest and so on. If such a situation would be allowed to spiral out of control, it could very well result in a systemic collapse, especially on a local or regional level. On a global level, it's less likely.

Systemic collapse does not mean societal collapse or the end of humanity, or even civilization. The collapse will be a horrible affair and it might take centuries to get back on track if things get real bad. Humanity would still be around, though, and we're not threatened as a species.

I'm glad you agree that covid-19 is not a threat to our species!

Why did you bring up systemic collapse? You made some pretty broad statements. Things like food shortages and civil unrest happen all the time, for lots of reasons. There's Syria, Somalia, the former Soviet Union, the Arab Spring, everywhere a war is fought, etc. It wouldn't be surprising for this pandemic (and/or lockdowns) to tip some country over the edge, somewhere. But maybe not. Hasn't happened yet.

I think it's curious that you had to throw a new worst-case scenario out there. I hear you saying "ok, the species will survive, but we could, worst case, collapse, horrible, for centuries". What are you thinking? Do you think something like that might happen in a developed country? Or in India? Wouldn't hospitals just triage patients, letting the old and sick die? Aren't most health care workers already vaccinated? Is it reasonable to think that a disease that has killed less than 0.175% of the population (USA, 1 in 570), mostly older and/or sicker, could possibly cause the collapse of important supplies or cause food shortages?

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to have a tendency to dwell on worst case scenarios, even ones that are pretty marginal? I assume that it's because we are emotional creatures, and fear is a powerful emotion. Probably good for the survival of the species :-)

It was a counter-point to the "existential threat" argument.

> Do you think something like that might happen in a developed country?

Do I beleive it could happen? Yes, but it's quite unlikely, and it requires a series of fuck-ups from a lot of people. It's also more likely to happen in undeveloped countries:

> It wouldn't be surprising for this pandemic (and/or lockdowns) to tip some country over the edge, somewhere. But maybe not.

> Wouldn't hospitals just triage patients, letting the old and sick die?

I think you underestimate how pissed off people might get if the system they entrusted their relatives' care to suddenly decided to just let them manage on their own.

On a local level, things are messier - as you say, local governments fall every now and then and covid is just about as likely to trigger it as any other major issue.

I find it far more likely that it won't happen,though.

As for worst-case scenarios in general, I think it's simply a way for us to plan ahead. "Shit will happen. It might be rough. We'll manage because we though of it beforehand." And yes, it' probably good for the survival of the species. :D

"Survival of our species" is a bit extreme. Not to diminish the severity of our pandemic but it kills 1%. If we did nothing and just let everyone get it, 1% of us would die (not in any way advocating for that) our species would survive just fine. Perhaps you could just say "responding to a public health emergency"

I do acknowledge the difference, what I am trying to highlight that perhaps dole is not what they want. Perhaps the poor people are not interested in staying indoors in return for dole and would rather risk their lives to seek things that value more than dole. It is not the lack of dole that is causing the failure of lockdowns.

It is the lack of dole that caused the failures of lockdowns in combination with a lack of systemic social safety nets to help support people. If you were unemployed, you lost your healthcare, if you lost your healthcare getting sick probably means losing your house/rent or getting behind, if you get behind none of those stimulus checks do anything for those that are behind because the system was never designed to support people through a pandemic.

You're trying to highlight something that doesn't exist.

> I was born poor.

You can get out of being poor. You cannot get out of being dalit[0].

> While their struggles are real they do not see themselves as losers but rather see themselves as strugglers who will eventually make it some day.

Only about 20% of Indians can afford to have even aspirations. About 66% cannot. 18% struggle to even survive. Newspaper? They would eat it. [1] (data from 2016)

> They then propose that government must help them. Guess what, other than a small fraction of poor people most DO NOT want that help.

The relationship between the government and the people in India is very different from what you are probably used to. It's true that many people in India don't want the government's "help", but that's because this "help" is usually exploitation. They'd be lucky to be left alone. [2]

> If people are angry and fed up and willing to risk their lives

You have to pass a certain threshold of awareness to be categorized as "willing". Most of these people have no idea what the consequences of their actions are. Almost a third(!) of the women in India cannot even read or write. [3]

> What we need is some humility to recognize that just because someone else has less money than we do, that does not reduce their self worth or gives us the right to know "what they need".

Should the same litmus test apply to your post about the Indian condition?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit#Discrimination [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/482584/india-households-... [2] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/why-india-s-p... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India

None of that you have stated is even remotely relevant to the discussion at hand but appears like a bait for some kind of flamewar. I will not take this bait.

> Should the same litmus test apply to your post about the Indian condition?

Obviously. But my post is about not making assumptions about what poor people want and rather trust that they have an agency.

Now consider what you and the sibling comment say in the context of a representative democracy.

How many of the people that truly have no food to eat will go to vote?

Or, how easy are they to corrupt?

India is not even close to having a government that represents the people's interests. However, it does have a true "representative democracy" in the sense that the votes are real. The voters sure have been coerced and bribed, but at least the counting machinery works and is respected.

This is part of the myth of American exceptionalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism). We're #1, even when we're dead last.

Americans love getting free shit, and hate giving anything away. We love getting tax cuts & refunds, stimulus checks, welfare, food stamps. But when we're not eligible to receive it, we hate giving away food stamps, welfare. Everyone thinks we pay too much tax, and doesn't want the state to do anything. But then we complain that the government isn't solving all our problems with all the money we aren't paying in taxes. To avoid all the complaints from directly taxing everyone, we tax alcohol and tobacco (in addition to income), but we don't tax corporate profits or rich people, and have a small sales tax compared to the EU.

America actually has a bit of a crisis of food. Tens of millions of families go hungry every year in the US. Yet we export hundreds of billions of dollars worth of (mostly) feed grain and corn. It's not that we're too proud to take hand-outs, we'd just rather let our neighbors starve.

> ... who will eventually make it some day

I believe there is a term for this, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"

Don't you need ration card to access PDS?

The whole thing is a sham. If you don't have ration card you can still buy it by paying a higher price to the 'dealer' who then secretly puts it under the account of someone else who is probably dead.

>In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.

I didn't realize that being a rich country with a developed economy was a pre-requisite to being a representative democracy.

Providing food is far from something only developped countries can do. Very poor countries can and have done so. All you have to provide is food, shelter, and maybe a very small baseline of income.

India already has a very large and ambitious food subsidy program, which targets over 800 million beneficiaries and has cost running over 2 trillion dollars. The idea that Indian government can significantly expand its social security net in a year where it has had large unexpected out-of-budget expenditure thanks to covid and has simultaneously taken a huge hit in tax revenue due to businesses suffering due to lockdowns, seems, at least to me, based more in fantasy rather than economic reality. And then further to claim that India has failed as a democracy for that reason just seems childish hyperbole.

Which are the poor countries you have in mind? How long have they sustained that assistance?

It's not... in fact, I'd say other democracies with less emphasis on wealth at all cost, do it much better.

Hard to take GP seriously. India can even raise funds from various sources (see: PM Cares) if needed, to provide for these needs. They just don't want to, much rather line their own pockets than feed the poor (who happen to be their voting bank, but are too uneducated to vote in their own interest).

>see: PM Cares

Size of PM Cares fund was estimated to be $1.23 billion dollars[1] (from May 2020, the most recent source I could find). The size of India's food subsidy program is over 2 trillion dollars.[2]

So, PM Cares fund is less that 0.1% of the amount Indian government already spends on food subsidies.

>too uneducated to vote

What's the point of education when you form your opinions with such laziness?

Sources:

[1] https://www.indiaspend.com/pm-cares-received-at-least-1-27-b...

[2] https://www.financialexpress.com/economy/increase-pds-price-...

At a certain point you run out of money.

The US can print trillions of dollars in an emergency as a world reserve currency. Most countries cannot do this.

The idea that India could just pay 1.4 billion people not to work for a year doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

You can't print a chicken. Money is only the intermediary.

There are tons of chicken farmers in the world who love to exchange their chickens for the US dollars. However, the same farmers don't want to sell their chickens for Zimbabwian dollars. USD has the world reserve currency status, that's why MMT folks want to print money to spend on fiscal policy. Third world countries don't have this luxury.

Every sovereign nation with resources should be able to handle emergencies. India is not a small nation without resources. At this point, it seems that people are shifting blame from an ineffective government as well as people's will to cooperate on some externality such as world reserve currency.

Did people read the FT article at all?

Shutting down an economy is well past any fathomable emergency.

If the economy doesn't serve the people, it deserves to be shutdown - especially in an emergency.

The point isn't to do it for a year, but to do it for 2-3 weeks in a very strict manner. If you prepare for it, and then do it every time the spread starts going exponential, then you can keep the numbers incredibly low until vaccines are distributed.

That's a dream. Money don't feed people. Foods do. And human activity necessary to feed a billion people sitting at home will require another billion to do the production, distribution and organization in a timely manner.

And the whole point of lockdown was to prevent people from performing these movements.

I don't see a good solution here.

This is really not the case. You buy food from farmers, who can keep money, and you use existing government capacity to distribute it. It's been done before and can be done still.

But then the laborers who process the food have to go to work. And often work in close quarters in factories where it's easy to spread the virus.

A lot of food processing isn't strictly necessary. People can be expected to cook or live off existing stock for 2-3 weeks if they do not work.

Spend some time volunteering with local emergency preparedness teams and you'll get a better sense of just how much of the US food system is essential "just in time"

The more urban a place the more "just in time" everything is because the space is more valuable doing literally anything other than warehousing calories

Not with that attitude it's not.

It's not that they can't afford it - it's that they're unwilling to actually leverage the wealth of their country to do it. I seriously don't understand the thinking that resources are still so scarce that an entire country like India somehow can't afford to meet the basic needs of its people (let alone the US). If the resources exist you figure out how to get them to the people that need them. Not doing this is how you get unrest, a massive rise in crime and eventually coups, wars, etc. Democracy and capitalism are not givens - they are very much still experiments that can and do fail.

Redistributing wealth won't help if the store shelves are empty. People have to be out there working and making stuff or else we won't have any stuff.

Then you tag certain works as "essential" and then eventually everyone argues that they are essential.

Only around 2-8% of people in cities need to work to sustain everyone's livelihoods.

As for those who live off of agriculture, you can ensure basic self sufficiency.

Do you even live in the real world? Because your numbers are just totally disconnected from reality. In my city way more that 8% of people work in essential fields like food production and distribution, emergency services, utilities, transportation infrastructure, vehicle repair, home repair, healthcare, military, etc.

Food distribution and emergency services typically get taken over in good part by the military.

Necessary food production is generally outside of cities.

All Healthcare except for what is immediately necessary similarly is not needed, same for vehicle repair and so on.

Keep in mind, this is only for a very short period of time. You don't have to deploy anywhere near the population needed for a sustainable organization.

For the US for example, there are 55 million "essential workers". 11 million of those are in agriculture or restauration (so either outside of a city or dispensable). 10 million are in finance or residential/commercial facilities services, most of which is preemptible for a few weeks. 4.5 million are in governmental services which can largely either be done remotely or preempted for a few weeks. Realistically you're looking at 25 million or so when you cut down on everything that isn't necessary and have the military take over a lot of the work.

If you want to see what thay looks like, you can look at the Wuhan lockdowns and to a lesser extent various strict lockdowns in third world countries.

On what premise? This kind of talk presumes economies and governments don't serve the will of the people.

I mean, lets be real, if they don't serve the will of the people then the economy and government is short term and lockdowns were never the problem, but a symptom...

Not every country has the privilege of having the world's reserve currency. Money printing never ends well for poor countries.

In a democracy, This isn't a privilege, its the will of the people.

Why frame it as money printing? Does everything that can help people have to be pejorative?

I think that the OP is pointing out that some democracies are freer to act than others. The USA has absolute latitude, especially after demonstrating that countries that might threaten that latitude (ie. anyone who cut the oil off up to 10 years ago - now irrelevant) will be destroyed. India does not have all that much latitude.

It's political, i get it... but its laughable they try and prove a point through downvotes... but such is hacker news, hide the reality they don't agree with :)

Vastly depends on the country. In France, lots of efforts were made ( salary compensation so that people keep their jobs and get paid by the government, and companies aren't forced to fold; loans and loan guarantees for businesses; compensation for missed revenues for impacted companies; schools were kept open to give equal opportunities to children; moratorium on evictions; etc etc), with the president even saying multiple times "whatever it costs" ( the guy who was elected on a fiscal responsibility and reform platform ). And still people were left worse than before. It's really not easy, but governments really have to do their best.

That's extremely vague and untenable.

Besides, the lockdowns were completely unwarranted. Sure, at the beginning, no one seemed to know how dangerous this thing is, but we have learned quite a bit about it since and it does not merit the sweeping lockdowns in place. Locking down and protecting the vulnerable like those with comorbidities, absolutely, but not everyone. It is not that dangerous of a virus!

Sadly, this has proven to be a successful experiment in how media-driven FUD, sloppy reporting, and blatant misinformation can make people behave irrationally. We know the tallies are bogus because of the bad monetary incentives and methods used to determine whether someone's death counts as a COVID death, we know that something like a half a percent of the population is really affected, we know that the side effects of the lockdown are very concerning (rising suicide, undiagnosed cancers and other illnesses because people fear medical facilities). This is all pure political opportunism at this point.

You want to help the poor? Get rid of the lockdown. The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to admit that there's nothing to fear (frankly, that ship has kind of sailed; people will ask "well, if it isn't that dangerous, why have we been under lockdown?"). You need a believable exit. (Enter the vaccine.)

Precisely.

What you described is exactly what happened in China and Vietnam: one short strict lockdown while taking care of people's material necessities. Unsurprisingly, both countries have eliminated community transmission.

This is a naive reading of what has happened.

There may well be some cross immunity in some communities due to previous coronavirus circulations. And the numbers in China are not all that credible - one guy at my work had three of four grandparents die of "some winter cold" in March last year. It will be quite some time before the numbers in China become clear I think.

I think if China didn't manage coronavirus successfully we'd have seen numbers of deaths due to "some winter cold" so large that even communist party wouldn't be able to hide

Really? They did a pretty good job of hiding a host of vast reeducation centres....

Did they? You can rely on your reader to know that you're referring to Xinjiang.

At this point - but these centres were revealed to the world (by journalists who are now kicked from the country) fully built and also full of inmates.

> you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.

You are mistaking democracy with other virtues. income/food/capabilities do not come from thin air, it is eventually generated by people and under lockdowns when most economy is at a standstill this is incredibly difficult. So even the "redistribution" does not work that well. India is also a far poorer country so there is not much to distribute in first place.

> locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.

What we need is some humility that we do not fully understand what others need and the only way to find it out is by giving people freedom. Poor people in India right now do not want anyone's alms. They are more interested into going out, doing what they want to do rather than just get food clothing and shelter. The previous lockdown did ensure that everyone had food clothing and shelter through government and private charity efforts but people were in general pretty upset.

I think we should stop assigning blame to democracy just because realities don't match up our expectations, partly because we are not infinitely smart to understand what other people want.

I think it's safe to assume if you're missing anything from the base of Maslow's hierarchy then those things are probably included in what you immediately need, let alone what you want.

This to me just reads as excuses based on how it is, not how it could have been.

Learned helplessness is what they call it.

Canada, Australia & New Zealand (and I'm sure many other countries) have done an excellent job providing money to people who are stuck at home because they can't go to work. Here in Canada it was $500/week for 28 weeks, then you moved onto a different scheme if you still needed support. Everyone who needed it go it. We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200.

Be careful not to generalize that all democracies have done a poor job just because some have.

You realize that the stimulus check comes with a cost right? You almost sound like government can just give arbitrary money to citizens but isn't willing to do so.

You can absolutely give money to citizens. The government is FOR and BY the citizens. If the citizens agree to shutdown, they can agree to provide a means to continue society through the shutdown.

The notion that we can't do this, is the one i have problems with because its absurd.

You can do this, but it has consequences. Money is not inherently valuable. It's a medium we use to store and exchange value inherent to scarce goods and services which people demand. To be a stable representation of value, money must also be scarce. This is a fundamental concept of economy, not something decided on and enforced by government.

The money a government gives to citizens must come from somewhere. They could liquidate assets owned by the government, borrow it from another government, take it from entities who are subject to the government's authority (taxes), or - what I assume you're getting at - just make more of it.

That last one isn't as simple as it sounds because it doesn't increase the cumulative value of the currency. Printing dollars is like dividing a pizza into more and more slices. It doesn't increase the amount of pizza. Inflation is a very real problem that has annihilated economies.

Funny how none of that ever comes up when we're discussing bailing out corporations. Quantitative easing by itself was several trillions of dollars arbitrarily invented, let alone the various bank and corporate bailouts over the past decade. And don't forget that we literally allow banks and such to print money and stocks on demand (aka leverage) to allow them to make money.

In any case, value fiat money is not a product of rarity, it is a statement of the value of future tax receipts. Money encodes/is an exchange marker for work done or promises of work to be done.

It does come up with regards to bailouts. There are tons of people who are opposed to corporate bailouts and who worry about inflation and a ton of problems created by the zero interest rate policy etc.

Less than 6% of the stimulus funds went to pay people, most of the money went into tax savings for banks and big companies (that clearly hadn't stopped eating avocado toast and starbucks coffee and hadn't salted away money for emergencies /s)

We could have done a blanket shutdown for 1 month, paid everybody to stay home and it would have cost multiple order magnitudes less than the current nightmare approach, that not only still impacted the economy, also caused 100's of thousands of dead people. This was a preventable catastrophe, caused because corporations are better represented and more important to our politicians than actual citizens. Thanks Citizen's United for legalizing blatant corruptions /s

The cost of not doing stimulus is much much higher than the cost of doing it, though.

The US paid a lot more than the $1200, in the form of unemployment supplements.

$600 a week at the beginning of the pandemic through July and then $300 a week this year, in addition to a second $2000 payment that went out to more than furloughed or unemployed people.

These numbers don't mean much on their own.

Sure, if you live with mom and pop and you got laid off from a job and had a place to fall back onto, yippee

If you live in pretty much any major city and you're the breadwinner then it doesn't cover rent/mortgage.

We froze foreclosures, so there are estimated millions pending. Unemployment is still in pre-pandemic numbers - all though improving.

I think our reliance on "job" to live is problematic when a virus doesn't care about the societal ramifications of a job.

I think we should talk more broader UBI programs and talk about what countries did that worked... do a huge retrospective and make things better for the future.

In Seattle, I know people who received the equivalent of $75k/year on unemployment from various government sources. That exceeds the median household income in the State, never mind individual income. This is on top of, in some cases, a generous severance.

That easily covered their mortgage and their lifestyle, even in this expensive city, and was in no way sustainable. They had no interest in looking for work while they were receiving those benefits, but now that the benefits are disappearing they've started looking for work again.

Conversely I know a young couple in Indiana who have no idea how they’re going to feed themselves each week. There are always examples of abuse to point to, but for many people the safety net is a wet paper bag at best.

There was no implication of abuse intended in what I wrote. The intent was temper the notion that everyone receiving unemployment benefits is on the brink of poverty. The reality varies widely. The topic requires more nuance.

I don't think we need a UBI that makes it easy to live in a city where ~$3000 month ($2400 + normal unemployment) won't cover expenses including housing.

2400 a month is rent here in Austin - and not even expensive rent. Without income, those rentals will foreclose/be evicted. Are you saying future pandemic responses should imply much of society simply deserves to be destitute?

Unable to afford $2400 month housing in an expensive city isn't the same thing as destitute.

There's houses available in much of the country for $100,000 or less. I'm fine arguing that people can have the option to struggle paying high rent or move, we don't need to pay the high rent just because they prefer the place.

Those houses are $100k or less because the only jobs nearby don't pay enough to buy something more expensive.

What does that matter if the house is in good condition and has a sensible amount of room for a family?

> 2400 a month is rent here in Austin

Just no, not unless you live in a luxury dwelling or location. Here’s an example place I used to live long ago. Centrally located, next to the major highways, and not unsafe. It’s old and not fancy, but under $1000 and your living expenses can be much lower than that with a roommate. https://www.livechevychase.com/floorplans

Dude, I have a wife and 2 kids and my house is small and yes, it would cost 2400 a month to rent it, luckily i bought it before it tripled in value... i wouldn't buy it for 500k today...

(also, every single room but an efficiency is sold out and there is no pricing on their 3 bedrooms)

How does it compare to France, Denmark and the UK though?

Pretty sure it's much more generous than the UK for everyone except the well-off. In many cases the US managed to pay more than 100% of people's previous salaries in unemployment, structured to be most generous compared to their previous job for those with the least pay before, whereas furlough for those lucky enough to get it was capped at 75% and unemployment for those unlucky enough to lose their jobs entirely was barely boosted over the stingy standard payments. Unfortunately, trusted US publications like the New York Times mislead their readers about this for nakedly partisan reasons, just like they did with every other part of the US pandemic response and how it compared to the rest of the world.

I dunno, I just updated the first paragraph to make it more clear that I was responding to the $1200 (I replaced "that" with "the $1200").

>> We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200.

No, we've been desperately waiting for vacinnes after being repeatedly promised there will be plently for everyone ("look at all these contracts we've signed!") while they pay you off with massive borrowing that someone is going to be responsible for when the music stops.

Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal.

Texas is not normal :)

Most of us are staying home still, in the major cities we collectively wear masks regardless of our goofy gov. Large places of employment still aren't opening offices and many that are talking about opening are doing so with the realization it won't be like it used to be...

Not sure where you live - but I travel full time in an RV and have stayed and traveled through El Paso, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and everywhere in between in the last 3 months. Maybe some are still hiding at home, but from my experience the overwhelming majority of Texans seem to be out enjoying the sunshine and open businesses.

Living in Austin I would say it’s a mix, but the main thing is that you now have about a third of people (including most of the high risk) who are vaccinated (at least the first dose) and joining the ... 1/5? Or so? ... who “don’t believe in COVID.”

Combined that’s a decent chunk of the population getting back out. I think it’s still quiet compared to normal, but it sure seems like one giant party compared to the last year. It’s really hard to subjectively judge these things.

Yeah, the traffic is starting to suck again!

Agree. White collar workers are mostly working from home. But everyone is out and about (mostly wearing masks). Most fast food restaurants have their dining rooms closed, but plenty of sit down places.

> Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal.

Fifty THOUSAND people died in Texas. I'm not sure how anyone can hold it up as a *good" comparison.

The population of Texas is 29,000,000 - so even (incorrectly) assuming that these 50,000 people died exclusively from Covid and not compounded by several co-morbities... that's 0.17% of the state's population. And even as a factor of the number of cases in TX (2.84mil, last check), that comes to 1.7%.

Thank you, a little dose of practical perspective with numbers, instead of all-caps hysteria with descontextualizad mentions of thousands.

I second this - I also appreciate the numbers. Another way to look at this (29 million people in Texas, 50k deaths) is that 1 of every 580 people in Texas died of covid. Just a tiny bit better than the national average.

At 1,721 deaths per million of population, if Texas were a country it would be the 16th worst on the planet.

Ranking 16th worst out of 198 is not an enviable or "good" place to be.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?new

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/

It's a fairly typical place for a western country to be at this stage of the pandemic. Because of the way the disease spread via inter-country travel from, mostly, Italy and surrounding countries, the developed western world was hit first - and because people have to be tested in order for their deaths to be recorded as Covid-19 related, only countries with a reasonably well-developed healthcare system and economy actually report meaningful death counts. (The US in particular had really widespread testing compared to almost everyone else during the whole time period where it had a widespread Covid-19 outbreak - though the mainstream media gave the opposite impression for partisan political reasons.)

The CDC failures at the beginning were a stitchup by the Democrats? Quick, write your article in time for the Pulitzer!

The reporting on the CDC's failures certainly was a stitchup on behalf of the Democrats. For example, the US had a really aggressive rollout of Covid-19 testing compared to Europe and other places which would've left it much better equipped to spot community spread early on when the number of cases was still small - right up until the point the reagents turned up at labs and didn't work, and ages was wasted working out why. Turns out some nominally well-qualified, non-partisan CDC official had covered up the fact the tests were contaminated and let them roll out to labs anyway. You wouldn't know this from the media reporting which inverted the blame, telling their readers it was Trump and his administration which decided not to have widespread Covid testing, that any screw-ups were due to his political appointees, and literally had people begging in the NYT comments section for career CDC staff to take over the running of the whole pandemic response because at least they were competent, unlike Trump and co.

I think you are letting Trump appointees at the CDC off far too easily: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cd...

'McGowan reached his breaking point when Redfield asked him to stop the deportation of a dog, according to people who worked closely with him.

In late June, a Peace Corps volunteer evacuated from West Africa was told that the rabies vaccine of her dog, a terrier mix named Socrates, was not valid. Rabies vaccines are marked with pink dye, and a photo of Socrates’ vaccination showed a clear liquid, a CDC email said. Border authorities said Socrates had to be sent back to Africa, revaccinated and quarantined there for 28 days before returning. The Peace Corps volunteer sparked a #SaveSocrates outcry on social media.

CDC experts told McGowan that the last foreign dog with rabies that slipped through had cost more than $500,000 in public health charges, including shots for 44 people who had been near the animal, an email shows. Making an exception threatened to render the policy unenforceable for the 500 animals that are deported every year.

At a time when the pandemic had killed nearly 130,000 Americans, McGowan spent an hour and a half on the phone with the HHS general counsel and other senior officials to figure out how to make an exception for a dog. All the while, he told colleagues, his mind kept returning to the fact that the same administration was using the CDC’s quarantine power to deport thousands of children at the border with Mexico.

Later that day, Brian Harrison, the HHS chief of staff and a former labradoodle breeder, announced the liberation of Socrates. Secretary Azar tweeted out the news with the hashtag #SaveSocrates.

Privately, McGowan fumed.

“He was sad, downtrodden and defeated,” a colleague said. “This was really the final straw for him: How we are going to let dogs in, but basically we’re going to require children to be carted off and out of the country? And all in the name of public health.”

McGowan resigned in August.

The following month, Caputo took a medical leave after he hosted a live video on his personal Facebook in which he accused “deep state scientists” of “sedition” and warned his followers to stock up on ammunition in anticipation of political upheaval. In that rant, which was reported by The New York Times, Caputo said CDC scientists had only changed out of their sweatpants to meet at coffee shops and plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next.”'

> It's a fairly typical place for a western country to be at this stage of the pandemic

I'm horrified you can waive it away as "fairly typical" for a western country when Texas has a deaths/1 million population 3 times that of Canada, 4 times that of Denmark and on and on.

Denmark has about half the Covid-19 deaths per capita of the next highest European country based on the figures I've found. They're very much not typical. Neither is Canada, though I haven't been able to figure out what gave them such good results early on since they didn't do anything that unusual and it really doesn't seem to have lasted (their new infection rate crossed that of the US and hit an all-time high recently). Denmark's the usual combination of being reasonably well distanced from Italy geographically and geopolitically, strict border closures starting in March 2020, and a certain amount of lockdown and social distancing mixed in - there's a handful of countries like that with reasonable results. (The other Nordic countries minus Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia spring to mind. Think there's a few others as well, but not many.)