[modsWork4appl]

"elected officials call to close the warehouse"

How out of touch and uneducated are these people? Pandemics can't be stopped outside a vaccine. We are all going to catch it or be quarentined for 18 months.

Want to flatten the curve? I could go to Walmart and interface with 50 people to get ibuprofen, or I can interface with 1 worker?

We need to stop electing marketers and start electing people that understand math.

[Mountain_Skies]

Most people are terrible at math. How would they ever be able to evaluate a candidate's math skills?

[modsWork4appl]

You make a good point.

Only thing I could think of is credentialing.

[weddpros]

The plague was stopped before vaccines existed... Same with many other pandemics. A pandemic is an epidemic that affects a larger area, not an unstoppable monster

[ferzul]

the plague rolled around for like half a millenium, it was constantly present in europe for more than three centuries. is that your plan?

[alteria]

I was looking through this list last week, and it was truly shocking how many epidemics were plague, even into the 19th (!!) century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

[jmalicki]

I guess you missed the 20th and 21st century bubonic plague outbreaks? It's still around, and is still found in places like the southwest US!

https://www.cdc.gov/plague/resources/235098_plaguefactsheet_...

[weddpros]

I'll be glad if we get a vaccine. If we don't, we must fight it nonetheless. In 2003, we stopped the SRAS epidemic, another coronavirus. We stopped it. There's no vaccine yet. The 2015 MERS isn't completely extinct but it's under control. Also I think Korea and a few other Asian countries will be virus free soon (those who thought the 2003/2015 epidemics)

[ta134273]

Don’t take ibuprofen or any NSAIDs

[flexie]

Sad that Amazon is allowed to take an even bigger share of American online retail.

They are raising their wage to $17 per hour. That's around $3,000 per month in stead of their usual $2,500 per month.

Little vacation, few sick days.

[twblalock]

They are earning their market share by providing better service than other retailers. That's how it's supposed to work.

[lkbm]

> They are raising their wage to $17 per hour. That's around $3,000 per month in stead of their usual $2,500 per month.

According to Google, that beats Walmart pay[0]. Less clear for Target[1]. Of course, if reports are even remotely accurate, Amazon warehouse working conditions are considerably worse.

I don't know what other retailers pay, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're comparable.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=Walmart+associate+pay

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Target+worker+pay

[nostromo]

Politicians right now are in, "it doesn't matter if we do the right thing, it matters that we look like we're taking authoritative action" mode. This happened after 9/11 too.

Right now, 0.1% of the US has had Covid-19. For heard immunity we need that number to be at least 500 times larger.

So, what's the plan here? Wait for a miracle that isn't coming? Stay in quarantine for a year and risk societal ruin?

[petra]

We're starting to see medical treatments, antibody testing, tracking, large scale respirator manufacturing, etc...

Those building blocks will be needed if we want a plan that isn't too painful.

[balls187]

> Right now, 0.1% of the US has had Covid-19. For heard immunity we need that number to be at least 500 times larger.

Would deaths scale linearly with a 500x increase?

How about the impact on our medical system, would that scale linearly with a 500x increase?

[nostromo]

And how will our lives look if we continue this quarantine for a decade -- which at our current level of infection (which has leveled off) is the minimum time it would take to gain heard immunity?

[balls187]

> And how will our lives look if we continue this quarantine for a decade

Probably look at Iraq and Afghanistan has dealt with post 9/11.

Speaking strictly in terms of the US, we'd be able to weather a 10-year lockdown. America is rich in natural resources, and has a large agricultural base.

Our government can handle the basics:

Drinking water

Food

Shelter

The rest would be economic shifts, such as reduction in costs of living to account for a new economy that has shifted away from the ability to get together.

I would speculate we're better off with the entirety of the economy being in shambles, than we would be by having rather high mortality rates, and overwhelming our health services.

Let me post another question:

What if you did not need to work to have your any of needs met?

[SpicyLemonZest]

I have socialization needs which shelter-in-place orders forbid me from meeting.

[balls187]

The current laws would need to be adapted to allow for some socialization.

Processes and procedures would need to be put in place to ensure safety.

Society would need to adapt to meet those needs.

[Invictus0]

Herd immunity is not the only way out; there is a lot of room between a decade and the time to get a vaccine to market.

[usaar333]

> Right now, 0.1% of the US has had Covid-19

By any reasonable estimate, it's over 1%. Highly infected areas like NYC likely exceed 10%

> So, what's the plan here?

It's not feasable to get herd immunity in a world as open as 3 months ago. The hospitalization rate (and duration) is too high -> it would take longer than the optimistic time for vaccine development.

Electronic contact tracing, heavy testing, traveler quarantines, mass gathering restrictions. It's not going to get contained, but you can have a world where isolated bursts effectively get squashed.

[Reedx]

Really hoping we can get away from marketers. Andrew Yang gave it a good shot, but the DNC and media weren't kind:

https://www.axios.com/andrew-yang-2020-media-attention-acc26...

https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-me...

The whole structure of the debates and 24/7 news coverage is more about reality TV than any kind of substance. It's geared for soundbites and drama. So someone like Yang doesn't fit into that, but shines in long form formats like podcasts.

[dangus]

Andrew Yang is a nice guy but his "math" isn't actually all that good.

His plan to use a VAT to pay for UBI is a regressive tax. People with lower incomes spend a higher percentage of their income on consumable goods. Putting a higher VAT or sales tax on everything to UBI puts a lot of the burden on the lower class to pay for this program. Someone with a much higher income has a number of ways to avoid this tax - they can invest in companies instead, they can buy real estate, they can take a jet to a different country and buy expensive stuff there instead of buying it in the country with a high VAT, like how people in Massachusetts buy their computers in New Hampshire.

So, he "did the math," but that doesn't automatically make it good policy.

The concept of UBI is a good idea to explore in the future. However, we shouldn't just assume that it's definitely going to work as intended, either: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-news/heikki-h...

[Reedx]

His plan was to exempt such goods from VAT, so it wouldn't be regressive.

That said, I wasn't entirely convinced by the Freedom Dividend and wish it hadn't been the centerpiece. What I was more interested in and really appreciated was his overall approach and focus on problems and solutions. An actual problem solver and uniter, not someone perpetuating the WWE reality TV show that is our politics.

[dangus]

Actually that's true, I wish I could take back my original comment at this point or modify it (too late).

"Assuming all goods are subject to a VAT and the entire VAT is passed on to consumers, an individual would have to buy $120,000 worth of items before the extra costs associated with a VAT “use up” their UBI."

That is...true, yes. Everyone's still getting the extra $1,000 a month.

Using all of that up by spending on a 10% VAT puts you at spending $120,000 a year.

So, while a VAT is not progressive, funneling it into UBI turns it into being progressive. That makes sense. You don't even need a goods exemption for that to work as intended.

I am also not convinced on the idea of UBI. There needs to be more studies including large scale studies if possible. I am not convinced that the largest rent-seekers with limited competition and supply alternatives wouldn't just suck those income gains away - jobs with labor supply surplus might pay closer to the minimum wage, landlords might simply all agree to raise rent, Comcast will raise bills across the country, colleges raise tuition, etc. UBI sometimes feels like an oversimplification, one of those "easy solutions" that doesn't take a long time to write down and fits in a campaign slogan.

[JoshTko]

What problems has Andrew Yang solved? My main concern with him is that he lacked any significant accomplishments for a presidential candidate.

[leetcrew]

a regressive tax used to fund a progressive policy can be either net regressive or net progressive. if rich people buy enough stuff that they pay more VAT than they receive in UBI, the whole system is still progressive.

[timerol]

For a good example of this, see Social Security (OASDI) in the US. The funding method is very regressive, taking a flat percentage of income only under a threshold (12.4% of income under $137,700 with half paid by employer and half paid by employee). People who make more than that pay less tax.

But then we use the tax to directly fund one of the most progressive programs in the US, which directly pays people who need it most.

I think most people would think of Social Security as a net progressive policy, even though it has a very regressive funding model.

[Symmetry]

And really, a VAT might be slightly regressive in practice because poor people tend to spend a larger fraction of their income but it's still pretty close to being a flat tax. If you were to try to fund a UBI with a head tax that would indeed be pointless. As long as rich people tend to spend large amount of money, in absolute terms, than poor people a VAT+UBI combo is going to be progressive.