Quick question, how much would all that cost per month? Pay the wages of every employee? How much is that?

You should ask the governments that are currently doing that very thing. They would know.

A small restaurant nearby has temporarily converted to a bottle shop, and after a long walk I picked up some excellent beer that's hard to find normally. A bit later on my wife and I put in an order with another nearby bar which I picked up and got a pint of draught in a mason jar to go. The latter is pretty illegal but I don't think anyone cares right now. I actually hope some of these changes stay! They are in legislation until January which means they are likely to be permanent - apparently Ontarian's can deal with normal alcohol rules!

Most places I like are doing ok, thankfully. My favourite breweries are actually making more money than before (the distribution system here actually worked in their favour for once). The "lockdown" here doesn't really seem that restrictive aside from bars and hair salons, really. Stuff like record and clothing stores are closed but are all doing online sales which is better than nothing. There have been some failures with small business support from upper levels of governments but from what I know they are being worked on. All streetfront retail will be open for curbside pickup as of next week. Some of my friends in the food industry have been called back to work already as takeout business is doing well. Many are also moving away from uber eats to their own systems again which can only be a positive thing (uber is predatory and sucks).

I'm not on the rabid "open up at all costs!" side, but from what I can tell there are some weird inconsistencies in the US. Stuff in New Brunswick here will be open before it is in Toronto and I think that makes complete sense. The last thing that will open will be borders, including inter-provincial ones (I realize this is a non-starter in the US, even though I don't understand it). I'll be back sitting at the bar after work on a Friday before I can travel elsewhere, and work will likely still be the laptop on my kitchen table.

Despite the negatives I'm cautiously optimistic.

On the jobless side, assuming 25 million jobless and $2,000 per month, the cost would be $500 billion per month. A couple months of that would be $1 trillion.

If 2 million small businesses need $25,000 per month on average (since wages are already addressed), that would be $100 billion over two months.

In other words, what I said would cost a fraction of the stimulus bills we've gotten so far.

Thanks for the nice, soft lob.

What do you think the overall-population IFR is?

Sure, it would probably be <10k if we locked up all groups with an IFR > 0.1% for a year. But... I'm not sure how we do that. Free hotels for all old/sickly people living with healthy people?

Here are some links about the German model, which is seeing increasing adoption in Europe:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...beit-us-europe

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-up-quicktake

Yeah the American stimulus program is ridiculous. Sure, my wife and I will take $2,400, but we certainly don't need it as much as people who have lost their jobs...

Because the federal government is supported by taxes (i.e., all of us). The longer this goes on the more of our future output is going to be siphoned away to pay the bill.

What should happen as a result of this is progressive taxation based on age. Older people should pay more tax at any level of income in order to pay their “fair share” of the cost of efforts to mitigate the effects of the economic shutdown that was imposed to protect them. Their lives are protected but they will need to engage in a little bit of belt-tightening going forward. After all, we have decided that lives are more important than material wealth.

It’s ridiculous that it goes to retirees on pensions or social security who haven’t had their income reduced at all.

Manhattan is young, affluent and fit. It will have fewer deaths per capita than a place that is similarly exposed to the virus but is old, working class and fat.

Great plan! America is so good at doing this so far.

Let’s see, businesses are on hold for hours when they apply, and large numbers either weren’t approved or the program ran out of money because it is on a first come, first serve basis. And, of course, Universities like Harvard got shit tons of money meant for small businesses (which they’ve since returned, but still).

Meanwhile, while waiting for this shitty plan to stem their losses dying businesses are told that if you try to work, you’re a really bad person and you will go to jail because the Governor-King hath declared it so.

Americans are such horrible people for having a problem with all of this.

Texas has one of the lowest per capita death rates in the country

Incorrect.

The money allocated to Harvard was from the CARES Act - the $14 billion Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. Harvard never applied for the money, it was auto allocated by the government.

This was typical Trump smoke and mirrors. It's kinda like your car is racing towards the edge of a cliff and the brakes are broken yet you rage on on the dust on the dashboard and who didn't clean it last.

I don’t think Texas is a particularly old state, in fact I would expect it’s the opposite.

None of this changes the fact that lots of businesses got nothing. And they are getting wiped out. Getting back to mhays’ point that I was responding to.

Plain and simple, regardless of anybody’s politics, if you are economically struggling and you are vilified for trying to work to pay your bills—and haven’t gotten adequate Government help—then the system is being cruel to you.

It sure would help if insensitive people would stop adding insult to injury by shaming them and telling them that they are bad while they are struggling. It’s a callous and dick thing to do.

Family friends of ours have a cottage on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. They're American, and hearing that the borders will be open by June 1, and plan on visiting soon thereafter. I don't know if this is based on anything substantiated, however.

Maybe the person that came up with the small business help program went to Trump University?

The first year curriculum was:

1) How to declare bankruptcy
2) How to lie
3) How to deflect responsibility
4) How to blame everyone else for everything
5) How to have no plans
4) How to stay in physical shape lol

Thanks, but you are calculating that a little differently than what will happen in practice.

This won't last just two months. People won't magically all be rehired after two months. Also, the government will be dying from the lack of tax income. The avalanche of hurt will go from businesses to government at the exact same time that we were relying on government to pay everyone's wages. Also, there are 33 million unemployed people. This will only go up in May, my guess would be that there will be an extra 6-8 million more unemployed, so around 40 million people to pay for. This isn't possible. So it will be about 1.5 trillion over two months and that would be just the start. I saw one restaurant industry association leader say that for every month of closure, it takes 6 months to recover.

It ain't looking good.

If you mention %rump, you get your post deleted, it's political. Can't help yourself, can you?

Ah good point. Ill put it in the Trump thread!