The Viral Economy

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Octavious
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Octavious »

I can't even grasp what the heck is going on right now. All I know is that I have a pile of money in savings that I'm not touching. Seems the Feds are determined to nip this job thing in the bud. :P
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Zarathud »

It was explained to me that the Fed Reserve knows how to fix a recession, not inflation. With the discovery of supply chain weakness in China, we’ve shifted to more reliable — and more expensive — manufacturing partners. So some inflation is inevitable from the supply chain change.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

Zarathud wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 6:07 pm It was explained to me that the Fed Reserve knows how to fix a recession, not inflation.
This isn't quite true. This Vox piece is decent reading on the subject. One explanation why they've seen a different outcome so far is that underlying causes are very different.
With the discovery of supply chain weakness in China, we’ve shifted to more reliable — and more expensive — manufacturing partners. So some inflation is inevitable from the supply chain change.
FWIW this has not been a major part of the contemporary discussion amongst leading economists. I mean there are small pockets of this but the supply chain issues are widespread beyond China and it's not the only problem. It's better to think of this as the overlap of many shocks that have occurred simultaneously. Not everything is one tidy package. For example, inflation caused by a shortage of microchips impacted motor vehicles but had little to nothing to do with energy price issues. We also had all sorts of logistics problems from COVID (e.g., that led to dramatic mismatches with demand and capacity to process imports at our ports).
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Kraken »

malchior wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 6:14 pm
Zarathud wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 6:07 pm It was explained to me that the Fed Reserve knows how to fix a recession, not inflation.
This isn't quite true. This Vox piece is decent reading on the subject. One explanation why they've seen a different outcome so far is that underlying causes are very different.
With the discovery of supply chain weakness in China, we’ve shifted to more reliable — and more expensive — manufacturing partners. So some inflation is inevitable from the supply chain change.
FWIW this has not been a major part of the contemporary discussion amongst leading economists. I mean there are small pockets of this but the supply chain issues are widespread beyond China and it's not the only problem. It's better to think of this as the overlap of many shocks that have occurred simultaneously. Not everything is one tidy package. For example, inflation caused by a shortage of microchips impacted motor vehicles but had little to nothing to do with energy price issues. We also had all sorts of logistics problems from COVID (e.g., that led to dramatic mismatches with demand and capacity to process imports at our ports).
Let's not forget that corporate profits are setting records. Inflation is a good excuse to jack up prices just-because.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

Kraken wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:14 pm Let's not forget that corporate profits are setting records. Inflation is a good excuse to jack up prices just-because.
Watching the business news every day, that does not appear to be the case. It was the case but then free money dried up and getting and retaining employees became problematic. So what corporations largely did was jack up prices pre-emptively because they could or because they did it because they had no inventory. This increased profits until it didn't when wage inflation and no free money caught up with them. It'll be interesting to see what 2023 first and second quarters look like. Especially as they started scaling back on payroll, again pre-emptively.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by noxiousdog »

Profit is up mostly because inflation is up. Profit margins are about where they've always been.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

noxiousdog wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:17 pm Profit is up mostly because inflation is up. Profit margins are about where they've always been.
Profit margin is profit margin and it has been persistently above the 5-year average. The good news is that it has been moderating from highs reflecting less ability to drive profits by raising prices which indicates that it 1) was a component driver of inflation and 2) that pricing power is flagging.
The market continues to be concerned about higher inflation. Consumer prices increased by 8.2% in September, which marked the 7th consecutive month the percentage exceeded 8% (year-over-year). Given these concerns, what is the S&P 500 reporting for a net profit margin for the third quarter?

The (blended) net profit margin for the S&P 500 for Q3 2022 is 12.0%, which is below the previous quarter’s net profit margin and below the year-ago net profit margin. However, it is above the 5-year average net profit margin (11.3%).

If 12.0% is the actual net profit margin for the quarter, it will mark the fifth straight quarter in which the net profit margin for the index has declined quarter-over-quarter. On the other hand, it will also mark the 7th consecutive quarter that the net profit margin has been 12% or higher. Prior to the current streak, the net profit margin only hit 12% in one other quarter (Q3 2018) in the previous 10 years.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by noxiousdog »

I should rephrase. It's different where you'd expect it to be different (communications, IT), and roughly the same where you'd expect it to be the same (consumer products, industrials). Oddly, medical profit margin is about the same and utilities are up significantly.

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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

Everything is fine:
"There's definitely a shortage in over-the-counter children's Tylenol and pediatric formulations for ibuprofen, cold medicines," UCSF infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong told ABC7 News, "And we've been hearing this all over the country."

...

"It really speaks to the fact that we're not really good as a country for determining, before it gets short, when things are on the verge of getting short," Dr. Chin-Hong said. "So nobody says, hey federal government there's an increase in order of these particular drugs, so somebody can take something out of the stockpile."

...

Until then, what should you do if you can't get Children's Tylenol or a similar generic brand?

"If you have any questions, talk to the pharmacist but there are other tricks that people can use as well like taking 200mg or an adult form, and depending on the size of the kid, mixing it, crushing, mixing it with chocolate milk," he said.
No, we're not living in a dystopia. Just a country where adults refuse to wear masks to try and reduce the uncontrolled spread of multiple respiratory illnesses. Much more reasonable to just advise them to responsibly crush up adult doses in measured portions and mix that with chocolate milk. Or hope a wet towel helps your child.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by gilraen »

Kids in this country are stuffed with too many fever-reducing medications, though. Even for a low-grade fever, which in otherwise healthy kids should just be allowed to run its course. And yes, that means the kid should stay in bed, not run around and play so the parents feel better that the kid is "recovering" - no, you are just suppressing the symptoms and not allowing the body to use its primary defense (fever) to fight the disease.

Obviously that doesn't change the fact that our just-in-time economy is once again proving to be a house of cards.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LawBeefaroni »

gilraen wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 4:43 pm Obviously that doesn't change the fact that our just-in-time economy is once again proving to be a house of cards.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/04/manufac ... lapse.html

U.S. logistic managers are bracing for delays in the delivery of goods from China in early January as a result of canceled sailings of container ships and rollovers of exports by ocean carriers.

Carriers have been executing on an active capacity management strategy by announcing more blank sailings and suspending services to balance supply with demand. “The unrelenting decline in container freight rates from Asia, caused by a collapse in demand, is compelling ocean carriers to blank more sailings than ever before as vessel utilization hits new lows,” said Joe Monaghan, CEO of Worldwide Logistics Group.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

I suspect we're going to hear a lot more about this in 2023:
In other words, at a time when job openings are near an all-time high, long Covid is reducing the supply of people able to fill those positions. The dynamic may have large and adverse effects on the U.S. economy.

Long Covid "is certainly wind blowing in the other direction" of economic growth, said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan who served as chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor in the Obama administration.

Estimating the labor impact of long Covid — also known as long-haul Covid, post-Covid or post-acute Covid syndrome — is a somewhat fraught mathematical exercise; it's complicated by the nebulous nature of the fledgling illness and a dearth of data tracking how people with long-haul symptoms flow in and out of work.

Economic models suggest that hundreds of thousands of people and potentially millions are out of work because of long-haul symptoms after a Covid infection.

"At a minimum, long Covid is adding a lot of uncertainty to an already very uncertain economic picture," Paige Ouimet, an economist and finance professor at the University of North Carolina, wrote in September.
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malchior
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

I'm glad people are finally starting to talk about this at least. Not like we'll do anything but at least we can maybe supplant some of the moralistic scolding we've been hearing. Maybe.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

Part of the issues continues to be a the lack of a definitive set of diagnostic criteria. Without a single test or agreed upon set of symptoms, we're still casting a wide net to try and capture the number of people that are legitimately suffering. And it could be that eventually we'll see it's multiple things - more like West Nile Virus, perhaps. Here, overwhelmingly most people will recover fully after ~3 weeks. But there's going to be a smaller percent of all people then that have health impacts for up to ~3 months or so. And then an even smaller subset that experience issues 3+ months and longer.

And it's not that I think there's been an intentional attempt to obfuscate what's happening either. I maintain we're still learning about it all. That said, it seems more and more likely that it's truly a vascular illness spread via the respiratory route. And for the chronic impacts to manifest (stroke risk, organ damage, etc...) it's going to take months and months of post-exposure data to quantify exactly what's happening. All while there's pressure to ignore the potential for long-term issues and just get back to doing whatever.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

More on the changing demographics of where people are living:
Lee is one of the quarter of Americans who live in multigenerational households. According to a 2021 Pew Research study, such arrangements (defined as two or more adult generations living together) have been on the rise for the past 50 years. The trend is growing fastest among those between ages 25 and 34.

Families with lower incomes, nonwhite families, and folks without high school degrees are more likely to live in multigenerational households, says Natasha Pilkauskas, associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. She says the growing popularity of multigenerational living won't end anytime soon.

...

Many Gen Zers and millennials were living on their own before the pandemic, but almost a third of them moved back home after COVID struck, according to a 2022 LendingTree survey. Two-thirds of those who moved home are still there, and many are still trying to strike a balance between child and roommate.

Lee makes less money, and has had to adjust to living without the independence and privacy she once enjoyed. Many of her employees are also young people who live with their parents.
This furthers my belief about the "shadow" economy - where parents are funneling money to their kids and/or sharing expenses, which helps explain why they might be under-employed while job openings continue to dominate the discussions.
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Re: The Viral Economy

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They're never coming back:
The big picture: Economists have theorized for a while about the impact of COVID deaths on the labor market. Now, research has started to emerge and key public figures like Powell are starting to talk about it explicitly.

"Close to a half a million who would have been working ... died from COVID," Powell said while talking about the U.S. labor shortage.
Go deeper: In a footnote to a speech he gave on Nov. 30, Powell estimates that 400,000 working-age Americans died in excess of what was anticipated pre-pandemic.
And:
Compared to pre-pandemic projections, there are around 3.5 million people effectively missing from the American workforce, as Powell explained in that speech at the Brookings Institution. This number includes older workers who left the labor force earlier than expected. "These excess retirements might now account for more than 2 million of the ... shortfall," he said. The other 1.5 million comes from a decline in immigration and "a surge in deaths." Overall, 1.09 million Americans lost their lives to COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins data.
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Re: The Viral Economy

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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

I wonder why people don't want to go see Broadway shows:
The very nature of live entertainment — its reliance on large crowds packed tightly indoors — meant it was essentially banished during the pandemic. Small venues were only allowed to open at partial capacity in spring 2021, over a year after the initial shutdowns. Crowd sizes and revenue are also down at institutions like the Metropolitan Opera House. 

“Nobody wants to admit that they’re not selling tickets,” said Karen Greco, who worked in public relations and communications for off-Broadway theaters for two decades before leaving the city in 2020. “Because of COVID, now Broadway is sort of admitting … sales are down, audiences are not coming back. And I think it’s the same for off-Broadway, and off-off Broadway, but nobody wants to talk about it.” 

The pandemic was “the great accelerator” to an existing issue in New York City theater, Greco said. Theatergoers were attending shows with less frequency, in part due to rising ticket prices on Broadway. Off-Broadway shows offer a more affordable option, but usually cater to a much smaller, more niche audience.
Like everything else, I'm sure it's a combo of COVID-19 and the prices associated with going to a Broadway show - not just the tickets but everything surrounding getting to and from the show. Unless you're up to your eyeballs in discretionary funding, it's pretty easy to skip on total cost alone.
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Re: The Viral Economy

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Morena Baccarin's husband testifying on crypto.

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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Unagi »

Well, I will say that he very articulately is saying what I've been arguing to backyard neighborhood partygoers, inarticulately, for the last couple of years... so he must be right.
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Re: The Viral Economy

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He didn't become Police Commissioner of Gotham for his good looks.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

I'm sure we can all remember times in our collective lives when this happened before:
The nation's two largest pharmacy chains are limiting purchases of children's pain relief medicine amid a so-called "tripledemic" of respiratory infections this winter.

Both CVS and Walgreens announced Monday that demand had strained in-store availability across the country of children's formulations of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, both of which aim to reduce pain and fevers.

CVS will limit purchases to two children's pain relief products in CVS stores and online. Walgreens will implement a six-item limit on online purchases (sales at its physical locations are not limited).
Why?
"Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever reducing products are seeing constraint across the country. In an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases, we put into effect an online only purchase limit of six per online transaction for all over-the-counter pediatric fever reducers," Walgreens said in a statement.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 1:46 pm I'm sure we can all remember times in our collective lives when this happened before:
The nation's two largest pharmacy chains are limiting purchases of children's pain relief medicine amid a so-called "tripledemic" of respiratory infections this winter.

Both CVS and Walgreens announced Monday that demand had strained in-store availability across the country of children's formulations of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, both of which aim to reduce pain and fevers.

CVS will limit purchases to two children's pain relief products in CVS stores and online. Walgreens will implement a six-item limit on online purchases (sales at its physical locations are not limited).
Why?
"Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever reducing products are seeing constraint across the country. In an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases, we put into effect an online only purchase limit of six per online transaction for all over-the-counter pediatric fever reducers," Walgreens said in a statement.
More chains have announced restricting purchases and as far as I know the result has been more parents making defensive purchases making things more scarce.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Isgrimnur »

TP run of 2010 gives way to drug run of 2023.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Daehawk wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 7:34 pm Morena Baccarin's husband testifying on crypto.

He got high and wrote a book about crypto and parlayed that into a testimony before Congress. Good on him but it's an embarrassment to Congress that he's a star witness.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:25 pm TP run of 2010 gives way to drug run of 2023.
There was a baby formula run of 2021/2022 that overtook the TP run of 2020.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LawBeefaroni »

New car run.
Used car run.
Semiconductor run.
Oil run.
...
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Re: The Viral Economy

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Can we get them to announce restrictions on vaccines?
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

Where are they getting the idea that the US employable population at large are getting paid 40,000-50,000 a year to stay at home and not work? (Joe Kernan made the claim again this morning (God I've come to hate his crazy uncle, smary, thinks he's funny, lovable, and the very essence of right, but isn't any of these things and just make you want to punch him in the nose personality). He will eventually get me to turn off CNBC, which will then be the last straw to cut the cord. So I'll be able to thank him for saving me money))
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

LordMortis wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:44 am Where are they getting the idea that the US employable population at large are getting paid 40,000-50,000 a year to stay at home and not work?
They are making it up. If I was being generous it is a misread of the current situation. There are still some excess savings still out there but that is across the entire population. Part of re-opening shortages was pent up demand that is working its way through the system. However, I don't think they are misreading. I think they are intentionally using some of these impacts to tell this completely bullshit story.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Octavious »

Every right wing source this week has been running the same story about how there's tons of free money being tossed around. They have been using NJ unemployment as an example. The max payout in NJ is something a little over 800 a week. So they are taking that and saying two people getting 800 a week is 1,600 and that they are living large! Ignoring that it's only for 26 weeks, that they had to be making A LOT of money to qualify for that (Each person would have been making 150,000 a year). That if they want healthcare during unemployment it will eat probably more than half that money. Seriously I just want them to all drop dead. God forbid people that work hard for a living are given 5 seconds to try and recover. The sin...

They are also ignoring that if someone is on unemployment it's because they were terminated at will. It wasn't their choice to quit. I really hate the side of this country that buys into this bs.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, my impression was the "Welfare Queen" story somehow morphed into the "Virus Queen" story of the pandemic.

They're probably confusing what some people on Social Security are collecting right now vs the people that are allegedly sitting around and avoiding work.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

Octavious wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 11:49 am Every right wing source this week has been running the same story about how there's tons of free money being tossed around. They have been using NJ unemployment as an example. The max payout in NJ is something a little over 800 a week. So they are taking that and saying two people getting 800 a week is 1,600 and that they are living large! Ignoring that it's only for 26 weeks, that they had to be making A LOT of money to qualify for that (Each person would have been making 150,000 a year). That if they want healthcare during unemployment it will eat probably more than half that money. Seriously I just want them to all drop dead. God forbid people that work hard for a living are given 5 seconds to try and recover. The sin...

They are also ignoring that if someone is on unemployment it's because they were terminated at will. It wasn't their choice to quit. I really hate the side of this country that buys into this bs.
So that number is coming from unemployment then? Well, even if it's obviously BS and misrepresentation of BS, at least I can see where they are getting that number from. I was perplexed at where this line for 50 grand a year is at, that millions of people are benefiting from. By people, they mean households and by 50k a year they mean like $400 taxable a week for the first few months of stay at home, when TFG signed off on it and then still had to have states themselves sign off on it.

I couldn't arrive at the idea that they mean unemployment. And why the fuck don't they just say people are collecting unemployement, then? Why is it so hard to say what you are trying to say. Not once have I heard that 40-50k associated with collecting unemployment. Not one single time.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Octavious »

I don't have time to track it down now, but if you look at this one they say welfare and then use NJ Unemployment as an example.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/big-wel ... ax-dollars

In New Jersey, for instance, a family of four with no one working can receive unemployment benefits equivalent to a job paying over $96,000. That’s more than the median household earns in wages and benefits combined.

And it's also totally a lie as you don't get unemployment for an entire year unless there are very specific circumstances. And both people would have had to be making 150,000 a year at minimum and both been fired without cause. In NJ you can get it extended for education under certain situations, but you have to work with a person in the state to do it. And they are saying that getting a small subsidy to help pay for ridiculous HC costs is part of that 96,000. Total right wing bullshit. I hate them so much. Nevermind that if a family of 4 went from an income of 5,700 a week to 1,600 they are probably totally fucked. :P
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Kraken »

States with sketchy social benefits ignore the fact that the (blue) states with generous benefits also have a higher cost of living and pay higher taxes to fund those programs. $50k per year is poverty for a family in Boston, where a living wage starts at around $75k. Not even a single person can live large on $50k, although they can squeak by.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LawBeefaroni »

If you want to know how it's being framed, here's Fox Business:

There are numerous reasons that unemployed Americans aren't entering the workforce, including ongoing fears of COVID-19, disabilities such as "long COVID," and other care responsibilities. One factor that is contributing to the relatively low labor force participation rate is the combination of unemployment benefits and recently expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, according a new study by the nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

In 14 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies for a family of four with two people not working amounts to an annualized equivalent of $80,000 a year in wages and benefits, the study found.
They're counting ACA subsidies, using a "total benefits" model.

Also note the tone when talking about COVID.
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malchior
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:29 pm If you want to know how it's being framed, here's Fox Business:

There are numerous reasons that unemployed Americans aren't entering the workforce, including ongoing fears of COVID-19, disabilities such as "long COVID," and other care responsibilities. One factor that is contributing to the relatively low labor force participation rate is the combination of unemployment benefits and recently expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, according a new study by the nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

In 14 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies for a family of four with two people not working amounts to an annualized equivalent of $80,000 a year in wages and benefits, the study found.
They're counting ACA subsidies, using a "total benefits" model.

Also note the tone when talking about COVID.
Also note this story is downstream of a Heritage study. It's the usual bullshit they use to justify supply-side economics. It's not premised on any real foundation. This is the usual vein they tap as we enter the 40th year into an economics social experiment that's still the predominant driver of policy.
Last edited by malchior on Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Octavious
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by Octavious »

*Looks it up and sees Larry Kudrow* Who would have guessed? :P
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by LordMortis »

That still makes no sense to me. Maybe it's a Michigan thing but even subsidized at 4 months work work this year, it was the same price to be on COBRA as it was to enter the ACA on a Silver plan and my COBRA benefits are better than a ACA silver plan. Essentially, my COBRA gets me a low level PPO with wide coverage and dental for about $600 a month with a max OOP of $7500 beyond that. ACA sliver gets me a small HMO coverage network with a reduced formulary and no dental subsidized for about $600 a month and a max OOP of $8500 beyond that. The bronze plans were not only garbage, their deductibles were so high, that if you actually use your health care, then you might as well be on a silver plan anyway. Next year when I get kicked off COBRA, I'm going to have to figure out if the ACA Silver is worth it at a better subsidy or if I apply for medicaid, wherein I truly would be leaching off the system for limited crap care. But it's not like I hadn't been paying into that system for the last 40 years.

What is the most that could cost the tax payer? A full subsidy, which I won't get, for a subpar healthcare plan might be $8000 a year at the absolute most.

Again, thank you for helping me understand what they wouldn't say. I don't watch FoxNews so I never get a primary source. I just get talking heads like Kernan and Santelli and others spouting this 40-50,000k referenceless number like there is place to a $4,000 a month check mailed to you, no questions, no strings. All you have to do is refuse to work.
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Re: The Viral Economy

Post by malchior »

LordMortis wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:46 pmAgain, thank you for helping me understand what they wouldn't say. I don't watch FoxNews so I never get a primary source. I just get talking heads like Kernan and Santelli and others spouting this 40-50,000k referenceless number like there is place to a $4,000 a month check mailed to you, no questions, no strings. All you have to do is refuse to work.
It's not referenceless in the sense that they aren't citing. They are still making it up. We can try to back into their "numbers" by looking at local numbers but there is no reality here. This is the sort of nonsense that gets injected intentionally to manipulate our politics. It's not great that misinformation is being spread by "trusted" voices. Sure people can run them down and figure out its bullshit but most don't.
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