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.)