Let's Talk Politics

You can't find them in my bank accounts anymore.

PPP loans as they were designed, lasted about 2 months. Revenue is off by 50%. Those of us who took the PPP loans and kept our employees are now having to face laying them off AFTER the enhanced UI ran out. Not only that, we personally now live off of $600 per week less from my wife's expired benefits. Plus the much smaller state benefits expire soon too.

And worst of all is that any employees I lay off will be immediate family members who might want to move back home!

Her place has laid off the entire staff except one manager, one chef and her. She works 12 hours per week which is deducted from her state UI benefits so she makes the same whether she works or not. But it's not a disincentive at all because if she were to decline to work, she would lose the benefits entirely.

I'm about to throw down on some really cool new technology that's really going to change my field. It's expensive but I can borrow the money cheap and it will bring it in fast, I think. If we're all going broke, I'd rather be one of the ones who owes money than the ones who don't get paid.

We are fortunate to be almost debt-free but really need to be saving that money for retirement if I can before I'm 90.

It's past time for an adjustment to capitalism, imo.

The value of capital vs. labor is badly skewed as shown by the growth in investment income vs. wage income. A rising tide is supposed to float all boats, but when the stated goal of a corporation is to provide a return to the shareholders, not to the employees, it leaves labor at the bottom. Successful companies should share the wealth. Labor shares the risk, they deserve to share the reward, too.

I wish there were a better way than the tax code to get a more equitable distribution, but relying on the good nature of investors hasn't resulted in the "capitalism with a face" that was so evident in the mill towns of old.

If you get nothing but have to pay more than your fair share, you must not have kids in the local schools. Hopefully, they are educating the kids so that they are not a burden on society and there is value in that. That's what I've been telling myself for the 20 years or so since mine went to college to receive remedial training after "graduating" from one of the best high schools in Virginia.

Virginia didn't get any money until fairly recently and it is just now starting to flow. I'm not really sure where it is going, though. I suspect it is paying bills for things that have already been done, though.

I hear that many states are laying off employees left and right at a time that they are needed the most. I guess all the money that they have gotten so far has just been for the Covid relief effort, huh?

Americans are not going to allow a complete shut down. Harping on that is not productive. It will never happen. End of.

Now that we are all back in reality, the thing we need to decide is how to go back to work as safe as possible. I am in a sector of the economy that did not shut down. In fact, we grew over last year. I know people that got covid but none of them got it at work. They got it in churches, family gatherings, parties, etc. Workplaces can enforce face coverings and social distance protocols. Working from home has proven to be efficient.

No one should be getting paid more to stay home than they got paid working. Brief shut downs of hotspots has also worked. Focus on those areas and get them back up when appropriate.

You have to deal with what is possible and give up on impossible ideals. That will only frustrate you.

I'm sorry you think that is the end of...because it's not.

Americans are going to have to realize that this is a time for sacrifice and the results we get are determined by our willingness to make that sacrifice. We have shown very little willingness so far and we have gotten horrible results. The worst in the world. If we are too stupid to recognize that the path we have chosen is the worst way of any civilized nation in the world, then we really are in trouble.

Australia shut Melbourne down for 6 weeks when they got 286 cases in one day in the city of 5,000,000. Outside of Victoria, the rest of the county has extremely low infection rates. We could have done that early and contained the spread very effectively. Now, it is all over the country so we are going to be running around from place to place chasing our tails. They estimate that is will cost Melbourne about $6.5 billion (aust.). A bargain. We're now arguing over whether to add another $3.4T or just another $1T to the $3.5T we already threw at it.

If we had completely shut down in March, we could have come back safely in June and be focused on licking our wounds and pointing fingers by now.

Instead, we are much worse off-working from a baseline that is uncontrollable with testing, running up against the limits of society's will to borrow money, broke as $%^, and facing pending homeless and food crises from evictions and expired benefits.

I guess it's just more of that slippery slope, though.

"and that's definitely not going to happen"

Exactly. End of.

What &%$ing difference does it make? Does anyone even tally the deficit anymore?

The 10 Steps of Wealth InequalitY

1. Government uses central bank to print money to facilitate borrowing.
2. Fed prints money, corporations and rich are best positioned to quickly borrow at low rates.
3. Corporations and Billionaires bid up financial assets as they are the last harbors for yield.
4. Stocks and home prices rise, outpace average worker wages.
5. Wages are suppressed as speculation is seen as a better allocation for capital as assets continue rising.
6. Slow inflation march (think 2% Fed target) slowly strangles the average worker's widening gap between stagnant wages and rising living expenses.
7. Consumer debt grows unsustainably forcing excessive borrowing, bankruptcy.
8. Social unrest manifests, though usually under the banner of something other than root cause of the inequality.
9. Elites/Central Bankers gaslight the public into "new plans" which is a variation of "more of the same" while typically trying to make their critics the villains of the problems they created.
10. Rinse and repeat.

--Brad Huston