shangrila wrote:Hornet Mania wrote:Optimus_Steel wrote:All hail the free market God for which he/she always fixes things they screwed up in the first place.
Why do people in this country treat the markets as it's some supernatural being that knows everything and solves everything?
Indoctrination, mostly.
Luckily the unprecedented nature of this emergency is helping a lot of politicians get their minds right, just witness the Republicans (of all people!) coming around to the Yang plan of direct cash payments to keep citizens afloat. I honestly don't even care that this shift is only spurred by naked self-interest ('Don't blame me, I gave you some money!'), I just hope they actually help their citizens when they desperately need the boost.
Corporations have never been shy about lining up to ask the government for free money or loans with ridiculously low interest no normal consumer could ever access. Ideally they prefer to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
Yang's plan was in response to a level of automation that was years away and would have been costing the country billions if not trillions in the mean time. Currently they're trying to keep the economy afloat. Bit different.
Of course the situations aren't identical, but I think the theory for why this would help is basically the same in both cases. Yang's argument was that the slow-rolling disaster of automation and jobs moving overseas, but mostly automation, had been a drag on consumer spending and this would only become much worse as more jobs were mechanized. His proposal of a 'freedom dividend' was designed as a way to boost discretionary spending for citizens/consumers and provide stability even as more and more jobs are permanently lost (not endorsing his views, just laying it out as I understand it). The theory of why free money for the Covid quarantine would help is much the same, it would put money into the hands of consumers to fill the gap of their lost purchasing power. Except in this case it's not automation or China that is killing employment and discretionary spending it's a contagious disease.
The approach may or may not work, we'll probably soon find out, but I do think the reasoning for adopting it is similar in both cases. I understand what you mean about Yang's hypothetical automated future still being a few years ahead of us, and that's why I think this idea would have been mothballed for a decade or more if not for this unprecedented situation. Circumstances have dictated every option be on the table, and his idea isn't the worst one if we insist that consumer spending (and not collective action/rationing) is the only way to make the economy spin.
everyone that looks healthy - put on a mask or pillowcase or scarf when you go out in the public