[wayne_skylar]

Without knowing as much about the topic I really feel the same way too. This pandemic might take a "long" time but it will end and we will find ourselves with the same knowhow and infrastructure that we had going in. Surely things will get shaken up but there is a strong desire to go back to life as it was before. It's mostly a question of how that happens.

[ethbro]

The biggest consequence will be creating two tracks of people: those who immediately lost their job, and those who could work remotely.

3+ months of earning is non-trivial, and they'll never get them back.

Hopefully any stimulus will be aimed at recently un- or under-employed folks.

If I, as a working software developer, end up getting a check... the system is seriously unfair.

[cmurf]

Even three weeks of earnings is non-trivial. e.g. hair salons are shut down by government order as non-essential. Barbers and stylists typically rent their chair, are considered self-employed, and do not qualify for unemployment income. They are screwed right now.

They are being told by their landlords they have to keep renting their chairs, perhaps at a discount, because it's a lease. They are being encouraged to get SBA loans by the government, and their landlord. This is vile and immoral. The mere suggestion is unethical feudal nonsense.

Make some people go into debt in order to help secure the income of their lord? It's uncivil to say it out loud. Turning it into official policy is an abomination. It indicts the whole culture of a society to do this.

I think as a class, they should declare bankruptcy. Force the next higher class to find redress, by mortgagees taking haircuts on loans, all the way up to pensioners and 401ks. The entire point of the free market is that it's supposed to account for these risks, and absorb them equitably. If the market or government demands some low rung people experience worse misery than others, it is a recipe for widespread loss of trust in a system, that quite frankly right now does not deserve trust.

[mgkimsal]

> If I, as a working software developer, end up getting a check... the system is seriously unfair.

What if you end up losing your employment a month or so down the road? The 'everyone getting a stimulus check' isn't great, but the effort to means test and make those somewhat arbitrary decisions is non-trivial, and there will always be someone who really did need it, but didn't seem to need it based on some algorithm.