Posts by Bj229r

  • Trump says it 'doesn't seem fair' that 30 million Americans are uninsured and suggests he may expand Medicare or Medicaid

    WTF


    https://hotair.com/archives/ja…s-take-covid-19-patients/



    California Is Forcing Nursing Homes To Take COVID-19 Patients

    Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but that doesn’t mean those measures are always smart or even effective. As part of a struggle to clear out ICU beds in California to make room for swelling numbers of COVID-19 patients, the California Department of Public Health has ordered all skilled nursing homes to take in patients regardless of their COVID-19 status. Considering the brutal death toll at other nursing homes where the virus has taken hold, this has a lot of the staff at nursing homes around the state understandably upset. (Los Angeles Times)

  • No googler! Identify the quote

    -gg- wrote:

    I exhibited all the classic symptoms of the unemployed, the redundant man. First you don't shave, and it's not to grow a groovy beard, it's because you cannot be fucking bothered. Anger, deep anger sets in, with everything, with yourself number one, and with everyone else in the world number two. And justifiably so because I was being screwed by my mates. […] I might get up and stay on the bed a bit and not know where to go, and get back into bed. Then if I did get up, I'd have a drink. Straight out of bed. I've never been like that. There are lots of people who've been through worse things than that but for me this was bad news because I'd always been the kind of guy who could really pull himself together and think, oh fuck it, but at the time I felt I'd outlived my usefulness. This was the overall feeling: that it was good while I was *******. I was useful and I could **********, I could ******* for them to ***** and for me to *****, and we could make *****of them. But the minute I wasn't *****any more it became really very difficult.

    Fuck I HAVE a job and I do most of that

  • Trump says it 'doesn't seem fair' that 30 million Americans are uninsured and suggests he may expand Medicare or Medicaid

    I had to cancel my vacation at the last minute, so I still have 3 1/2 weeks. Hopefully it won't come down to that--company is studiously avoiding making its feelings known about that. From a LONG term view, all these business shutting down is drying up local tax collections, which is what pays us to build their jails and prisons. 2008/2009 was fucking ugly for my industry. We were going all the way to Mass for work

  • Soo.. when will the economy come back?

    https://issuesinsights.com/202…-it-matters-to-all-of-us/


    It took only 15 days after the coronavirus outbreak was confirmed in the U.S. for Boba Guys, a popular San Francisco bubble tea chain with 400 employees and 17 locations, to shut its doors.

    With an average daily income of only $7 above daily expenses, the typical small business has a median cash buffer of 27 days of burn before it runs out of money.


    Karen Mills, prior head of the Small Business Administration (SBA), said recently that “20%, even 30%, of small businesses could fail even in a good scenario.” Without immediate support to buffer the cash flows of stalled businesses waiting for the economy to reopen, it is a matter of days until millions begin to shut their doors, driving unemployment up significantly and sending the economy into a tailspin.


    Small businesses make up over 99.9% of businesses, employ about 59 million people (about 47% of the U.S. private workforce in 2015), create over 41% of new jobs, and account for 45% of GDP.

    A Goldman Sachs survey of 1,500 small businesses found that 96% of owners were already feeling the effects of COVID-19. More than half said their business would not be able to continue operating for more than three months because of the economic stresses caused by the pandemic.


    With 47% of the private workforce facing potential layoffs, unemployment could rise rapidly into the double digits, substantially driving down the 45% of GDP that small business represents, and lasting for a substantial, years-long recovery.


    The ramifications on employment could drive decreases in spending and substantial repercussions, as 69% of Americans have less than $1,000 in ready savings. Additionally, even 25% of families making $150,000 or more a year live paycheck to paycheck, with one in three having nothing saved for retirement.


    The number of new enrollments in unemployment benefits posted the week of March 21 were already five times higher than any week since records have been kept.


    In 2009, I participated in the distribution of over $30 billion in Department of Energy stimulus funding. I learned that no matter how motivated administrators are, it is exceedingly difficult to push large amounts of funding into the market in the time frame and fashion needed to save small businesses.


    After Hurricane Sandy, a much smaller event in economic terms, it took an average 46 days from completed SBA loan application to approval, then more weeks or months to fund the loans. And only 24% of businesses requesting support were approved. With 27 days of cash available to an average small business, the $349 billion available through the SBA won’t be fast-acting enough.


    Think about it as attempting to put out a house fire with a garden hose: There is plenty of water to put out the fire in the pipes, but no possible way for it to get to the fire in time to save the house.

    We need rapid deployment of capital from local and national financial institutions supported by the SBA and “immediate need” one-click solutions analogous to PayPal’s business loans, for instant relief until the larger loans can be made.


    If small businesses see a 30% bankruptcy rate (18 million businesses) as per Mills’ projections, the U.S. will see unemployment of 14% (18 million jobs) from small businesses alone, as well as a decrease of 13.5% of GDP.


    If we lose 18 million small businesses to bankruptcy, there is no future bailout that turns them back on overnight. This could in turn reasonably lead to the worst economic scenario most Americans have seen in their lifetimes, greatly increase wealth inequality and social instability.