[deathcalibur]

I'm not saying you're wrong when I say consider the following: if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work, then the next day they drive to the store and there is no one working... what do they do? Didn't you just cause a ton of inflation?

At the end of the day, money doesn't solve problems. Work being done solves problems.

How that should affect policy... I have no idea but I can see both sides of the problem.

[toxik]

It would have to be A LOT of money for people to stop going to their jobs.

In a more realistic scenario: Maybe some people would quit their jobs because they gained some independence. Is that bad?

[deathcalibur]

The problem isn't really people quitting actually because like you said, that could be good. It's more like the business can't pay to stay open because there aren't enough customers to cover the variable costs. So now the business is closed and you have no where to spend your money... This realistically only affects small businesses like your local grocery store or whatever. Once the pandemic lifts, all that cheap property gets bought up by the Walmarts of the world and the concentration of power to the top 1% continues.

Right? I could totally be wrong here.

[pwillia7]

It's weird how the 'infallible invisible hand of the market' folks don't believe in it in practice. All the 'isms' seem like convenient excuses to justify selfish behavior in whatever way suits the argument and not these well thought out concrete theorems like we were lead to believe.

[tick_tock_tick]

The context of this discussions is the government giving free money to people.... I don't understand how you equate that to people not believing in market forces.

[aqme28]

If you give everyone free money, why do you think people will stop working?

We justify giving money to rich people because it will make them work harder, but we fear that giving money to poor people will make them lazier.

[deathcalibur]

I don't believe giving money to poor people will make them lazier, nor do I believe we should give free money to rich people.

Ultimately, they want to give money to people that need it and will put it to good use (for whose definition of good, I don't know... also, we HOPE that is the case but obviously people are biased, politicians included). Sometimes it's individuals who need money, sometimes it's businesses (which is why they did both).

I will tell you that I personally did not need any of the individual stimulus money, but I got the full amount because I don't make a ton; however, there are others who need the money because they have expenses much higher than mine, e.g. they have debt of some kind.

Not trying to muddy the waters. I am trying to say it's not always clear who needs money and who doesn't.

[zetsurin]

>if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work

It would be predicated on the amount wouldn't it?

Presumably 65M distributed equally among the people of the state wouldn't be enough for everyone to stop working.

One thing we can say without going into counterfactuals, the execs probably didn't work 28M harder, or produce 28M in value.

[deathcalibur]

Oh I totally agree in this particular instance nothing good came from this "bailout". I'm merely trying to say I understand why small businesses need bailouts in addition to their employees.

[whatever1]

Or businesses can increase their unlivable wages.

I am certainly willing to pay 30 cents more for my Big Mac so that the employee gets $15/h instead of 8

[deathcalibur]

Isn't this mainly a game theory problem? If you don't force a minimum wage, then competitors will undercut each other.

As much as we like to believe WE would go to the "more ethical place", unless the average person did then ultimately the undercutter will win. Now real life is not that black and white obviously. Costco pays a pretty decent wage allegedly but they make up for it in creative ways (like having the warehouse also be the storefront).

[whatever1]

Labor cost at restaurants is rarely the determining factor for food prices. It is the real estate cost. But we don’t talk about it.