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Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment
- varbhat 6y agoCan UBI(Universal Basic Income) scheme help to overcome Unemployment crisis ?
- imchillyb 6y ago> Can UBI scheme help to overcome Unemployment crisis ? @varbhat You realize that UBI requires monies, right? The US Federal government, and most states, are bankrupt. There is no money for this years bills. There was no money for last years bills, and we keep borrowing at exorbitant interest rates. Our deficit (shortfall for this year) is -more than- 2.7 trillion dollars. Our debt (shortfall for previous years) is -more than- 4 trillion dollars. We can't pay unemployment claims because there's no money... Where the hell is anyone getting monies for UBI?!?!?!
- gilrain 6y agoWe could try taxing the rich a bit more. They're doing just fine.
- saint_abroad 6y ago> You realize that UBI requires monies, right? Like the $1.5trillion tax cut that had "no major impact on businesses' capital investment"? https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/1-5-trillion-tax-cut-had-no-major-impact-business-n963411 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/1-5-trillion-tax-cu...
- refurb 6y agoGod damn I hate the media. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere in that article does it clearly state that's $1.5T over 10 years. So in fact, it's a $150B tax cut annually. For a $3.7T budget that's costing about 4%.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago> Where the hell is anyone getting monies for UBI?!?!?! In times of crisis like this you just print it and claw it back through higher tax rates .
- charwalker 6y agoIf MAGA means 1950's values and culture, does that mean 40%+ tax rate for the wealthy?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoIf only
- scrollbar 6y agoMoney is created by the government, and creating more of it to distributed equally across individuals just redistributes the relative purchasing power from people with more than average to people with less than average.
- superkuh 6y agoNot just the government, not really the government at all unless you consider the Federal Reserve Banks lending money to regional banks "government". The majority of the M0 money supply, that bit of currency we use to get things done in our economy, is created by fiat at any of the ~4500 commercial banks (in the USA). Every time they give out a loan they create the money out of thin air as debt on their balance sheets. They are only required to have a tiny fraction of the money they 'loan'/create (fractional reserve). If instead of letting only these banks create money, if the new M0 money supply was distributed to ~300 million human people instead of ~4500 corporate people, there'd be plenty for basic income. It'd be universal basic income then instead of commercial bank basic income. And banks could just be banks and get by on their actual services instead of being money machines. ... and that's not even acknowledging what the NY Fed have begun doing since October of last year, 10s to 100s of billions a week swapped for worthless items from corporations who can't pay their bills in Reverse Repo operations: a shallow attempt to pretend it isn't just giving money away (https://apps.newyorkfed.org/en/markets/autorates/temp https://apps.newyorkfed.org/en/markets/autorates/temp).
- scrollbar 6y agoThanks for all the detail, agreed on all your points.
- Amezarak 6y agoReal interest rates on treasuries are negative. That is, adjusted for inflation, people are giving away money to the government when they loan it money. That's the opposite of exorbitant. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=realyield https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/i...
- charwalker 6y agoYeah, we had $5 trillion to drop on bad market bets. We had something like $10trillion over 10 years to give as tax breaks to the ultra wealthy. We can deal with a few trillion to establish basic income replacements for general benefits, universal healthcare, affordable college/education, and other programs to better our citizens vs the rich and stock market.
- gizmo686 6y agoNeither the US Federal government, nor any state government are bankrupt. Under current law, it is impossible for any of those entitys to declare bankruptcy. There was a proposal by McConnell to allow states to declare bancruptcy; but it was widely ridiculed as a stupid idea (and I doubt seriously considered by him). "No money" is not a meaningful concept for the federal government. It has two options for what to do with the money supply: increase it, or decrease it. Leaving the money supply unchanged is just a degenerate form of these and generally bad economic policy (deflationary). Currently, there is a massive drop-off in the velicity of money, which, if not countered, would have a deflationary effect. Increasing the money supply has an inflationary effect to counter this. In fact, the federal reserve has been increasing the money supply to maintain target inflation. Currently they do so by giving money to banks (and recently, by buying bonds directly). Why shouldn't they run their monetary policy by giving money to individuals instead.
- 25mph 6y agoFrom the gov's point of view, citizens and companies are shareholders in the "US corporation". Right now, the poor citizens own a 10% stake in the corporation. UBI is about giving them maybe 20%, at the expense of diluting the share of bigger shareholders. The board members don't want to dilute their own share, but if the corporation goes out of business, their own stake won't be worth anything. The absolute numbers are irrelevant: what matters is the stake percentage, not whether it's measured in billions or trillions of shares.
- saint_abroad 6y agoThe concept of UBI is harmed by treating it as an unemployment benefit. UBI is most effective when it helps people pursue /better/ jobs.
- ethanwillis 6y agoOur government has failed in their response at local, state, and federal levels. The other thing we're going to be seeing soon is that these Unemployment programs have failed to do what they're ordained to do. This is an anecdote, but my brother was furloughed and has been waiting on any money (including the first stimulus) for literally months
- claudeganon 6y agoMost unemployment systems in US states were designed with the intention to keep people from getting benefits or getting them off them as soon as possible. Unsurprisingly, such systems are minimally robust when they actually need to be used, en masse. Maybe we will learn a lesson from this, but the number one political priority right now seems to be indemnifying businesses from pandemic-related harm caused to their customers and employees, so I’m not optimistic.
- draw_down 6y agoYes, this is working as ultimately intentioned, though of course not according to its ostensible purpose.
- alexpetralia 6y agoDo you have any sense of how people are managing? I sort of assumed that people _must_ be receiving money because there's no way Americans in the lower deciles of savings would be able to pay their bills consistently without work or stimulus. If there's no stimulus and no work, how are they paying bills? Is it on credit? Was there actually some savings?
- claudeganon 6y agoPeople are coasting on tiny savings, eviction freezes, not paying bills, and moving in with their friends or families. Or at least my friends anyway. The fall/winter is going to be an absolute disaster because you can’t fix anything about the economy without getting the pandemic under control, which a large percentage of our leaders in the US have decided they have no obligation to do.
- NiekvdMaas 6y agoMeanwhile the S&P 500 is 5% away from an ATH record. Unemployed people = gambling with stocks + FOMO?
- llamataboot 6y agoI would guess that most unemployed people don't have money in individual stocks in the market. In fact, 85% of all stock is owned by the richest 10% of Americans. While it is true that a slim majority of Americans have some stock, the vast majority of that is in retirement plans, not brokerage accounts.
- kiplkipl 6y agoI've heard the following theory: Most trading volume is algorithmic, so it only takes a small number of real humans doing unusual trading activity for markets to move. I've phrased it like this because I don't have expertise.
- option 6y ago“ only takes a small number of real humans doing unusual trading activity for markets to move” - WHAT? Link? Proof? Obviously false unless “small number of people”=folks like Buffet
- derivagral 6y agoI think the concept is similar to how BTC (and other crypto) have major price fluctuations that get reported and acted on via liquidity from a vanishingly small proportion of the actual total BTC. There's reasons, differences, nuance, etc, but I think that's where the thought starts. If most capital is in rarely-traded funds (I think 90-95% are passive?) then by definition those last 10%-5% active investors are going to set the market, at least in the general day to day.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe theory's going around, but it doesn't ultimately make much sense. Algorithmic trading is still set up and managed by humans on a day-to-day basis, so it can't by itself explain persistent market highs.
- spuz 6y agoThe source of this figure is here and includes graphs that can help put the numbers in perspective: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago"Government doesn't work. Elect us and we'll prove it!" --One of the two major political parties in the US. We get the government we voted for, so I guess that's the one we deserve.
- ironman1478 6y agoThe majority didn't vote for this government. We do not deserve this.
- roamerz 6y agoThat is by design. I wish our state (Oregon) was of similar design so that all interests are represented. As it is now the populous centers, mostly Portland and Eugene, dictate their values to the rest of the state.
- axaxs 6y agoI've met two 40-50 something ex-Oregoners who've said the same thing. They were extremely libertarian, and truly unlike anyone I'd met before. Almost like they came from some foreign(to me) culture. Both complained about how the population influx of Portland ruined the state, whatever that means, and both left looking for new adventures. I'm really curious what Oregon in the 70's-80's was like. The way they described it almost reminds me of Appalachian culture.
- selimthegrim 6y agoYou will still find those types in Roseburg, Medford, parts of Clackamas county (I'm looking at you, Damascus), etc, where they refuse to pay for things like local libraries. Ask them why Coos Bay is full of drugs and see what sort of look you get from them.
- paulmd 6y agoRural areas are already heavily overrepresented in the american system. We certainly don't need to put the thumb on the scale further. The ultimate problem is that "the rest of the state" (for virtually all states) is empty, hardly anybody lives there, and letting a minority override the will of everybody else is tyranny of the minority. Taken to the extreme, this is ultimately what killed South Africa and Rhodesia and other countries - a relatively small minority imposing their will on the majority, things getting worse and worse with no recourse for the people whose lives were actually affected until things boiled over. At its core, this is ultimately an argument for anti-democratic principles.
- j7ake 6y agoIs this a spike compared to last few months? Where is best place to get the latest chart of unemployment over time for 2020?
- charwalker 6y agoBLS: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf They release a jobs report on the first friday of each month with asjustements as data from prior months made it in. They survey businesses and process a lot of other data to deliver these reports and have been generally apolitical and data focused though the current administration has tried to influence numbers to their advantage, effectively undermining a critical component of our democracy.
- jcranmer 6y agoYou can get exact numbers in table form here: https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/wkclaims/report.asp https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/wkclaims/report.asp The latest jobs report, which has a graph of the year's data, is here: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf The numbers here are basically on an exponential decay curve from ~6M new claims in the last week of March. (FWIW, the pre-2020 record for new weekly claims, seasonally adjusted, was ~700k in 1982--we broke that in March and haven't stopped breaking it since).
- j7ake 6y agoReally great thanks.
- mdorazio 6y agoThis source kind of sucks for good info. To put this number in perspective: - It's almost exactly the same as new claims last week (1.31 million) - Total continuing claims not including this week are at 17.4M (dropping weekly, somehow) It's worth noting that the PPP plan for employers was extended to a 24-week period rather than the initial 8 weeks, which to me has some interesting implications and loopholes. States re-locking down due to surges in cases will probably have a bad impact on employment as well. The supplemental unemployment payments have not yet been renewed and will end at the end of July.
- bitxbit 6y agoAugust will be brutal if unemployment stimulus ends. I don’t think Washington understands the dire nature of the situation.
- hyperbovine 6y agoHalf of it does.
- coronadisaster 6y agoJust keep printing money... Can't wait to see what effect it will have.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]