no laws were broken, Congress several years ago made this type of thing legal for them (you or I tried that, well that is a different story). Ethical??? Well when did members of Congress or the Senate have ethics?

Despite the rambling nature of his pressers, Andrew Cuomo in NY seems to be doing his best to make this non-partisan. He has spoken highly at times of the federal government.

There are some misconceptions that have certainly arisen from this. Two you mentioned, LC. President Trump did not early on ban flights to/from China. He has mentioned this and even talks about how he got quite a lot of flak from the Democrats for this. Neither of these points are true. He put travel restrictions on travel to China on Jan 31, but did not ban it. And, of record, no Democratic leaders argued against the restriction.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/the-facts-on-trumps-tra... /

Which is right? Or both? Or, is it just that both parties are playing dysfunctional partisan politics, as usual? Why not pass a stripped down bill with things everyone can agree to, and then start negotiation on a second bill?

There's a key difference between those things though. What does a stripped down bill "with the things that everyone can agree to" accomplish if the trillion dollars handed out doesn't even come with a guarantee that companies receiving that money not lay off employees during the course of the aid? That's the entire point of the bill, right?

I can see the argument that Pelosi insisting on student loan forgiveness now is poor timing, but at the same time we're hurtling towards an unemployment rate of 30% -- which would eclipse the max rate during the Great Depression. Providing student loan forgiveness IS an economic stimulus. That's money that will go into spending that wouldn't otherwise. It may be an unpopular policy position amongst Conservatives, but it's not as though it's unrelated to the crisis we're trying to solve right now.

As for the layoff provision, whether that's appropriate or not is dependent on a host of other factors. Different companies are affected differently. For some businesses it makes no sense NOT to lay off employees. Does it make sense to have hotels around the country fully staffed, with 0 customers? [/QUOTE]The whole point of this is to pay people who can't work and to keep them on their employers payroll because we have a truly insane system in the United States that insists on linking health insurance to employment status.

From a 'business' perspective, of course it make no sense "NOT to lay off employees." But only when it's your money. When you're getting bailed out by the government and being given free money to keep your payroll intact, it's hardly a bridge too far to require you to, you know, keep your payroll intact.

This is not an either or proposition. Not injecting this money directly to businesses to keep their payrolls intact leads to a 25-30% unemployment rate and a huge uninsured rate. It overwhelms the Unemployment Insurance infrastructure (which doesn't provide a large enough benefit to support most people anyhow) and increases the uninsured rate at the worst possible time to do so.

You can do that and fund surgical mask production. In fact, the 'Defense Production Act' that Trump signed but has refused to enact does exactly this. It gives you the ability to mandate the production of necessary items from private companies and, conveniently, provides them with a big ol' customer in the form of the federal government. Why we haven't started that process yet is truly baffling. Instead states are now bidding against each other over limited resources all because companies are concerned about profit margin.

[QUOTE=L.C.]
As a FWIW, I have yet to lay off any employees. We've cut hours in half for everyone, though, and are using rotating vacations with multiple people out every week so that the others can get more hours. No one is complaining. They realize that we are all in this together. We can keep this up for a month or two before we have to take additional action. The people of America are wonderful, and we should never forget that. We need to work together, and we CAN get through this.

Keep in mind this: If I lay off employees, who will end up paying them during the time they are laid off? Me, of course. The nominal unemployment tax rate is 3.5% here, but as you build up a fund, it goes down. I haven't laid anyone off in 30 years, so my fund is large enough that I haven't paid any tax in years. If I lay off my entire staff, my fund will vanish quickly, and go negative, which will mean that for the next few years I'll have a 10% tax rate to make it up, and continue to pay excess tax until my fund is back to where it is now. So, if my employees draw $100,000 in benefits chargeable to me, I'll have to pay $100,000 in excess taxes over the coming years.

I never plan based on potential government bailouts. I plan to survive without. I feel like I'd be better off without bailouts because I feel like I can survive better than my competitors. In any case, keeping my staff together is my goal, and I'll resist layoffs as long as possible. As a result, I do feel like businesses that are quick to lay off should be forced to replenish their fund.

Yes. Some that's exactly how the unemployment fund is supposed to work. Businesses that are more stable, and less likely to have to lay people off pay less, and people that have to lay people off more often pay more. The rates can vary from 0% to 10%. I have no problem with that. As I said, depending on how long it goes, I will eventually have to lay people off. My business is off about 60%, and dropping more every day, so I wouldn't call that very "normal". My expectation is that I will have to lay people off, and when I do, I will have to later replenish the fund. [/QUOTE]Yes, I'm aware of how the unemployment fund is supposed to work. I think any rational assessment of it makes it quite clear it's not a sufficient backstop given what's currently facing. I do not think a solution that demands increased payroll costs from the businesses that have been hardest hit by this shut down makes any sense. I get you're fine with it. I disagree and think it's bad policy. To be very clear, mine is not amongst the businesses who have been hardest hit by this. I would expect a very minor increase to my FUTA/SUTA rates after this. My concern is for businesses who have lost 80 and 90% of revenue -- if not 100% -- who will, after all of this, have to pay up to 10% on every dollar down the road because the shut down stripped away 100% of their customers.

Many states were already having difficulty funding UI programs, even before this. North Carolina, for instance, only actually pays unemployment benefits to 11% of its unemployed residents. They don't reject so many claims because they're flush with cash. In 9 states, the duration of benefits have been halved. They didn't do that because of all of the money they had laying around. Some states provide as little as 21% of wages. And that's before the newest influx of unemployment filings. There were 2.25 million last week. The largest number during the 2008 recession in a single week was 660 thousand. At the rate we're going, even a 10% payroll tax isn't going to replenish the fund. Hence the 250 billion dollar injection.

Doesn't sound like a solid solution to this problem to me.

[QUOTE=L.C.]
No, what you have written is sanctimonious bullshit. This is not unprecedented. There have been things like this throughout history. How did the US survive 1918? We didn't have bailouts then. Yet, somehow we survived. We didn't have bailouts in any of the many depressions of the 19th century, yet we survived. It's not a common situation, but neither is it unique, nor even unexpected. Consider this talk by Bill Gates from a couple years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

...We got through past depressions and recessions by introducing new and better legislation. The Great Depression led directly to social safety net programs, including unemployment insurance and social security. What I'm suggesting is that we consider attacking this problem through better legislation and changing systems that clearly don't do enough.

As for whether or not this is unprecedented, can you find me an unemployment claims chart from our history that looks like this: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/21/21188529/initial-unemployme...

You've gone from Americans are resilient and we'll get through this to we're a doomed empire in a handful of posts. Interesting evolution there.

There's only one difference between your generation and the newest: what they want to spend the money on. Younger people think we should spend on housing, a social safety net and guaranteed healthcare. Your generation thought trillions of dollars dumped into literally endless wars was a good use of the money. Different strokes, I guess.

But it is funny how only one of those groups is written off as naive, while the other gets to treat 609 billion dollars in annual military spending as an inevitability because they made it one.