COVID-19 virus thread (formerly Wuhan coronavirus)

[Timsup2nothin]

Is rather rich. I was trying to make a claim about macroeconomics and you took the opportunity to attack young people.

You were dismissing all disagreement as "garbage" well before I said that, but FWIW I regret the harshness of tone.

 

[El_Machinae]

The point was that if your boss was put in that position everyone else would be too and there wouldn't be a problem with being out competed. I used a cell phone in my business because everyone else did, not because I wanted to. If I could have organized a cartel and gotten an agreement not to use them in place I'd have been a lot happier.

Yeah, we're talking past each other. My point is that my boss gets all the benefit of a cellphone (despite not really being able to operate it*) because he has a pool of poor people to work it for him. It's a subsidy. His wage is higher and mine is lower because somehow having a widespread and useful knowledge base hurts the people with the knowledge.

*Though I was originally talking about software.


AAAAAND I'm dropping it! I think we understand each other!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I work for an established company in the business of library software that's been around for a few decades that would not do business as well as it does without using mobile phones. We also have landlines, physical offices, internal conferences and other more classic forms of business communications, but the convenience of a mobile phone is vital to both sales and account management / retention. We primarily do business with universities, which are renowned for sticking to older tech stacks, and are definitely not down with the youth

Honestly, if we are to be trading anecdotes, these are the ones I'd prefer to trade.

I agree. I also concede that if you use the phrase "do business as well as it does" the position becomes inarguable. The clients in my business were (and still are) much better served post cell phone than they were before.

Yeah, we're talking past each other. My point is that my boss gets all the benefit of a cellphone (despite not really being able to operate it*) because he has a pool of poor people to work it for him. It's a subsidy. His wage is higher and mine is lower because somehow having a widespread and useful knowledge base hurts the people with the knowledge.

*Though I was originally talking about software.


AAAAAND I'm dropping it! I think we understand each other!

We did all along...but it was a fun conversation.

 

[Zelig]

Don't use PPP numbers. They're even more useless than GDP numbers, and that's a feat! If that table were true, China would be producing more than the rest of the world combined. It isn't.

No it wouldn't. Per that table with PPP numbers China's about a third of the rest of the world combined for industrial output, less overall. (In fact, less than their share of the world population.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

I won't answer the question because I didn't say anything about wealthy people. I meant that Americans over 65 have a much larger share of national wealth than their share of the population.

Why won't you admit that your claim that older people have always been the wealthiest throughout history was a load of crap?

so now you have changed your wording around.

So when you talk about "older people holding most of the wealth", you are not talking about wealthy people? And you now explain that what you actually meant was "Americans over 65 have a much larger share of national wealth than their share of the population." Ok. But that doesn't change my argument at all.

You somehow think I said "all older people are wealthy people" and need to retract that. I have never said that. Please quote me. My point has always been most of a nations wealth is held by the elderly. They are not at all the same. I'll turn my view around to make easier: The richest people in a nation will be among the older people. That does not mean that all older people are rich.

 

[Arwon]

It's a bit passé to keep harping on it but this man is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people because he's a narcissist, an actual idiot, and a thin skinned tyrant

 

[Birdjaguar]

I say the GOP should pack the churches on Easter Sunday. Idiots.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I heard this on the radio but their site stinks so I found a CBC link instead:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/corner-brook-woman-arrested-covid-19-1.5509212

A woman in Quebec was arrested some time ago, too.

Is it hoarding if people buy 2 week supply instead of 1? Is it hoarding if people buy 1 week instead of their usual 3-4 day supply?

In some things, hoarding is in the eye of the beholder. A long time ago I bought something like a couple of dozen boxes of cat litter (mix of 7 kg and 12 kg sizes), and I still haven't used all of them (getting down to the last few). Some would call this hoarding, but on the other hand, I went over a year between having to buy cat litter. I did pick up a pail now and then of the store brand where I shop just to see if Maddy would prefer it, but I didn't actually have to.

Did that inconvenience anyone? Maybe for a couple of days until they got more in. Did I have a challenge to find room for it? Yes. But now, I'm grateful that at least cat litter isn't something I need to worry about for about 2-3 months.

Hard to put school cafeteria food on a supermarket shelf. Just totally not packaged the same way, and perhaps not even the same supplier. Grocery stores can't just take apples from the school and put it on their shelves. There's profit, liability and other legal issues.

Some schools are still making meal drop-offs to those that order it, but yes, the school now has tons of food likely to be wasted. Some of it can just be saved (breakfast cereals, meat frozen), but the milk and fruits will go bad.

Institutional packaging and portions are different from regular goods for sale to the public. Institutions also have different safety standards. If the schools wanted to be good corporate citizens, they should have donated the surplus to places like food banks, homeless shelters, women's shelters, or group homes.

Right, but if you target "the wealthy", it ends up being "the old" anyway, because statistically, they're the wealthy ones.

They're also disproportionate beneficiaries of government spending.

How selfish of the people who built or originated much of our province's infrastructure to be helped when they're no longer able to swing a hammer or build a highway or do the myriad other things that built Alberta. There's a place that exists in Red Deer because my mother's father helped build it. It had many purposes during the decades of its existence; the one I remember most fondly was when it was a movie theatre. In fact, the last time I ever went to a movie (December 30, 1999) was there.

Old people having most of the wealth doesn't mean all old people are wealthy.

This is something a lot of younger people don't seem able to understand. There's an appalling amount of "let the old people die" on the news site comment pages, as well as "put the old people and the at-risk people in isolation and let the rest of us get on with our lives."

I still remember how to fax and use snail mail. I also have pads of lined paper around and pens to go with them. But my kids ignore me when I use them. I once sent a check to my son that he kept lying around for 5 months because dealing with it meant a trip to a bank.

Snail mail is no problem, at least as long as I can find envelopes.

Fax machines are things I never did learn to use. It annoys me greatly when even the case workers at the agencies I deal with tell me to "fax me the papers I need" and I'm left wondering why they think I live in an office. Fortunately the manager here doesn't mind faxing stuff for me, but some things are private to the point where my landlord doesn't need to see them.

On the flip side, my son's business model would not function, at all, without cell phones because it is built by youngsters who really have no comprehension that life didn't come equipped with them so they never even considered things like offices and land lines to be anything but archaic trappings.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone about TV shows and without thinking, I said "I usually tape that show and watch it later" and they had no idea what I was talking about.

I guess when you're the generation that was already young adult when VCRs came along, some concepts just won't leave.

 

[Birdjaguar]

No, because you'd still have to work in order to afford a modest lifestyle. And you don't even have enough to retire on and live a modest lifestyle (I don't think anyone minds that happens, it's the goal of every UBI advocate). It's not part of the compounding problem. No one minds if someone can retire. What we mind is that as retirement progresses, they own more of the real economy than the people who are working.

You cheated. you know what you are talking about and that is not fair.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone about TV shows and without thinking, I said "I usually tape that show and watch it later" and they had no idea what I was talking about.

I guess when you're the generation that was already young adult when VCRs came along, some concepts just won't leave.

In language, definitely. My kids are just old enough to recognize "tape" as a synonym for "record," but have to interpret to their friends sometimes when I'm around because things like that happen in every conversation it seems.

You cheated. you know what you are talking about and that is not fair.

I really cheated. I checked the share price and saw that you are talking about approximately $185,000 and I know most people would recognize that as a nice bump to get them through but hardly enormous wealth.

 

[Synobun]

This is something a lot of younger people don't seem able to understand. There's an appalling amount of "let the old people die" on the news site comment pages, as well as "put the old people and the at-risk people in isolation and let the rest of us get on with our lives."

It is interesting that they think the undesirables already live apart from those who "want to work." To them, it really is as simple as the right people going about their business and the wrong people staying where they are. They are completely under the belief that there is no overlap, no interaction, between the two categories unless it's we undesirables daring to mix within their ranks in society.

Their suggestion has no merit unless they're suggesting forced isolation of at-risk populations, and you can only do that by physically separating us from the good people of society.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I really cheated. I checked the share price and saw that you are talking about approximately $185,000 and I know most people would recognize that as a nice bump to get them through but hardly enormous wealth.

Three weeks ago it was $300,000. They do pay about $0.55 per share in quarterly dividends. That's $11,000 a year.

 

[Kaitzilla]

It's a bit passé to keep harping on it but this man is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people because he's a narcissist, an actual idiot, and a thin skinned tyrantView attachment 549994

Heh, today I was listening to the guy filling in for Limbaugh (recovering from a dose of chemo/radiation for lung cancer) on the radio, and he said "the media is not talking about how more people are recovering from the virus than dying from it."

"The propoganda of silence."


I am stunned speechless.

 

[Lexicus]

You were dismissing all disagreement as "garbage" well before I said that, but

Not "all disagreement," just BirdJaguar's point.

FWIW I regret the harshness of tone.

Fair enough, I'll say I regret responding in kind.

You somehow think I said "all older people are wealthy people" and need to retract that. I have never said that. Please quote me. My point has always been most of a nations wealth is held by the elderly.

Yeah, and I have already shown this is not true. For the time period in which we have good macroeconomic data (ie, roughly the 20th and 21st centuries) the phenomenon of old people having most of the nation's wealth is atypical. And it isn't going to last much longer because, as I said, today's old people are beneficiaries of growing up in a time when wealth was much easier to accumulate than it is today. In 20 or 30 years' time the wealth/age distribution of the US is going to look very different than it does now.

To quote from that Forbes article again:

The relative affluence of today’s elderly is historically unprecedented. Never before have the 75+ had the highest median household net worth of any age bracket. Today, the typical 80-year-old household has twice the net worth of the typical 50-year-old household. As recently as 1995, they were about equal. Earlier, 50-year-olds were worth more—with the disparity growing larger the further you go back in time. The Silent came of age in an era (the 1950s and the early 1960s) when the elderly were vastly more impoverished than younger Americans, which ultimately triggered calls to declare a federal “war” on their destitution.

and the article's conclusion:

Barring any dramatic market or policy changes, this golden age of elderly affluence should continue with early-wave Boomers. But starting in 2025, these senior cohorts will start to fill with late-wave Boomers who have underperformed early-wavers at every age: They’re less educated, less wealthy, less likely to qualify for retirement benefits, and have more debt. This socioeconomic reality, combined with growing calls for policymakers to forward the interests of the young, means that this “golden age” for seniors will soon start to fade.

This also directly contradicts your point that old people are expected to hold more wealth than young people (again, not meaning every single older person is wealthy, just that in the aggregate they have more wealth than younger people) simply because they have had more time to accumulate it.

You said that I may be wealthier when I'm older. That's certainly possible, but it will be largely a function of the cushion of privilege I derived from my white, upper-middle-class background and not just because I will have had more time to accumulate wealth. Many of my peers are drowning in debt and will likely never become homeowners or enjoy a leisurely retirement, at least not without massive public policy changes supported by politicians like Bernie Sanders.

That does not mean that all older people are rich.

I never claimed that it did. Indeed, old people who for whatever reason were not able to take advantage of how easy it was to accumulate financial assets when they were younger are now in an even worse position than many young people, and dependent on government transfer payments for bare survival.

Again, for me this is a macroeconomic argument, not a generational-war argument.

 

[tetley]

Heh, today I was listening the guy filling in for Limbaugh (recovering from a dose of chemo/radiation for lung cancer) on the radio, and he said "the media is not talking about how more people are recovering from the virus than dying from it."

"The propoganda of silence."


I am stunned speechless.

Wow, only 49% are dying from it! Let's all step outside, kiss everybody we see, and celebrate!

 

[Cloud_Strife]

It's a bit passé to keep harping on it but this man is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people because he's a narcissist, an actual idiot, and a thin skinned tyrantView attachment 549994

This man is sick, so are his sycophants

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's a bit passé to keep harping on it but this man is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people because he's a narcissist, an actual idiot, and a thin skinned tyrantView attachment 549994

Don't forget 'delusional'

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Their suggestion has no merit unless they're suggesting forced isolation of at-risk populations, and you can only do that by physically separating us from the good people of society.

That is exactly what a couple of people were suggesting on CBC.ca last night (I don't remember which article).

These people didn't even understand the concept of "multi-generational households" (children, parents, grandparents living together). That's a situation I lived in for most of my life, until my grandparents died. Then my dad and I were still living together until he had to go to the nursing home. It's only since 2007 that it's been me and the cats, and it was a very difficult adjustment.

For that matter, three of the cats I had were a multi-generational family (Tomtat, his mother, Lightning, and her mother, Maggie).

 

[Lexicus]

This is something a lot of younger people don't seem able to understand. There's an appalling amount of "let the old people die" on the news site comment pages, as well as "put the old people and the at-risk people in isolation and let the rest of us get on with our lives."

I have been appalled by this too, believe me. It is double foolish because the whole idea that only older folks are at serious risk from the virus appears to be false, but in any case that would only be true if we take serious measures to reduce the spread of the virus. If the healthcare system is overwhelmed the death rate will be much higher than the 1-2% people are talking about.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Trump and the gop only care about money, they don't care if your family dies, they JUST. DONT. CARE.