So.........

Yeah.......

Bishop who said "God is larger than" Covid-19 has died from the disease

 

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

They not only don't they want to raise taxes Dave, just a couple years ago they cut taxes.  And now a 2 trillion + dollar giveaway.  And when all of this is over and businesses are struggling to recover and many people unemployed how are they going to recoup that?  This has the makings of inflation as the government prints more money to give away.  And that hurts the people at the bottom of the economic ladder the most.

I will be getting a check soon for $2400.00 that I don't need.  It's crazy.  There is no political partisanship here as both parties are going full steam ahead giving away money during an election year.  You do the math.

If any of you here are getting the 2400.00 and don't really need it I suggest St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and the Shriners Children's Hospital can both use help.  They treat kids with cancer at no charge to the parents.

Noel 

The reason price inflation exists is because of this scheme, i.e. governments continually must borrow huge amounts of money, some of which is "printed" by the central banks, but they also have to keep interest rates low.  On top of that, most govts. also need their currencies to be weak to make their exports cheaper.  The central banks accommodate all this by injecting vast amounts of newly created money into the system via banks and the govt. 

This is why we have continual price inflation, which for many items is well above the 2% nonsense the govt. promotes.  Food prices have risen much more than that over the years.  It's not just because of supply and demand, but also because of all the money printing IMO.

As far as taxes go, here's the truth: if we all want the govt. to continue to provide all the things it does now, taxes on *everyone* would have to be increased substantially.  Just "taxing the rich" will never be enough simply because there aren't that many rich people.  The real money is with the middle class because there are so many of us, and that's who would get taxed.  Just ask the Europeans whose middle class(income < $50,000/year) on average pay about 25% in income taxes, plus high payroll taxes on top of that, plus sales taxes of 20+% -  and it's still not enough as most countries in Europe are heavily in debt just like the U.S.

I'm more of a small govt. guy, but if a significant majority wants to have a lot of govt. spending on things they want, e.g. big military, subsidized healthcare, subsidized education, etc., then all I would insist on is that we at least pay for it instead of driving our debt level to the moon and beyond while devaluing our currency ever closer to zero.

Dave

Edited April 15, 20206 yr by dave2013

If anyone is interested in the opinion of the Helmholtz Initiative "Systemic epidemiological analysis of the COVID-19 epidemic",

Experts of the Helmholtz Association assess the current situation in Germany, you can read here: Statement of the Helmholtz

press the below button " To the statement" for the whole read.

Germany is at Rt1 right now, even with Rt1.1 our our health care system would be overloaded in August, and with Rt1.2 in July,

and now these relaxations in the comming days/weeks, to be honest i don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, this will be a very long fight.

Edited April 15, 20206 yr by Nedo68

Right after WW2, Dave, the top marginal rate was 94%.  Look at the tax rates for 1944.  https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1945

There were some small cuts in 1945 after the war but the top marginal rate was still over 80% from incomes over 200,000 dollars. (About 3 million in today's dollars).

We built the interstate highway system and sent thousands of returning GIs to college on the new GI Bill.

Noel

6 hours ago, birdguy said:

Whenever I gave one of my troops a task I told them they owned it.  Make your own decision on how to do it.  If you run into trouble call me.  Otherwise don't bother me until your finished.  I also told them not to be afraid of making a mistake.  Just never make the same mistake twice.  Learn from it.  I would never criticize them for making a mistake I would just tell them to figure out how to make it right and I would assist them if they needed it.

We've disagreed about a lot of things and I'm sure we'll continue to, but you're exactly the kind of leader I always wanted to work for, or work with.

And @HiFlyer said:

Quote

I sat quietly in those boardrooms then calmly went to my people and told them what was up.

And that's the way to do it.

23 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Right after WW2, Dave, the top marginal rate was 94%.  Look at the tax rates for 1944.  https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1945

There were some small cuts in 1945 after the war but the top marginal rate was still over 80% from incomes over 200,000 dollars. (About 3 million in today's dollars).

We built the interstate highway system and sent thousands of returning GIs to college on the new GI Bill.

Noel

Very true, and I'm not saying that having a very high marginal rate on millionaires wouldn't help finance things, but it wouldn't be enough.

In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, we didn't have Medicare or Medicaid, plus Social Security was still pretty new and folks didn't routinely live to be 80+ years old.

By the way, I'm not a high tax advocate, but I'm actually for raising the payroll tax cap to $250,000/year from its current roughly $125,000/year.  We should also look at raising the full retirement age gradually from its current 67 years to 69 years, and look at small increases in payroll taxes if that's necessary.  These actions alone would put Medicare and Social Security on a sustainable path.  We want these programs, we gotta pay for them.

Dave

Edited April 15, 20206 yr by dave2013

Sigh....... Standby for max CYA.

South Dakota facing coronavirus outbreak after refusing to shut down

 

1 hour ago, Nedo68 said:

Experts of the Helmholtz Association assess the current situation in Germany, you can read here: Statement of the Helmholtz

...

and now these relaxations in the comming days/weeks, to be honest i don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, this will be a very long fight.

Thanks for sharing.

I've spent the past three days working on a paper on covid-related economic forecasts for a big consulting firm.  They're grim.  Short version - they agree with you and Helmholtz.  So do I.

12 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Sigh....... Standby for max CYA.

South Dakota facing coronavirus outbreak after refusing to shut down

Oh, yes.

To borrow Wilfred Owen's description of soldiers trying to put on their masks under gas attack, the whole response continues to be an ecstasy of fumbling.

Edited April 15, 20206 yr by Alan_A

1 hour ago, Nedo68 said:

If anyone is interested in the opinion of the Helmholtz Initiative "Systemic epidemiological analysis of the COVID-19 epidemic",

Experts of the Helmholtz Association assess the current situation in Germany, you can read here: Statement of the Helmholtz

press the below button " To the statement" for the whole read.

Germany is at Rt1 right now, even with Rt1.1 our our health care system would be overloaded in August, and with Rt1.2 in July,

and now these relaxations in the comming days/weeks, to be honest i don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, this will be a very long fight.

Very interesting, thanks. 

I dont follow it though!!   

It states that Rt is 1 but then links to this model which suggests that its much lower

https://stochastik-tu-ilmenau.github.io/COVID-19/index.html

Click on Germany to see an estimate of Rt over time.

That suggests that you have a bit more headroom to relax with?

 

10 minutes ago, SteveFx said:

It states that Rt is 1 but then links to this model which suggests that its much lower

That's interesting.

In the bulk of the paper, they seem to be treating Rt=1 as a baseline - that is, they evaluate the three scenarios based on whether Rt stays at 1, goes up, or goes down.

But you're right that the model shows Rt rolling off after April 1.

Maybe @MartinRex007 can help interpret this.

the model derives it from the change in cases a week ahead which all makes sense.  The imperial group thinks Rt is 0.7 in the uk although this model disagrees but that may be because we are changing our testing scope as  more capacity is available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, SteveFx said:

Click on Germany to see an estimate of Rt over time.

That suggests that you have a bit more headroom to relax with?

 

Thans for the Link!

well, we will see in the next days/week what will happen,

about the relax part, i just heard in the news about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the connection with Sars-CoV-2, oh dear.

 

Alan - It appears after a cursory read of the paper that the author gives what would be the social, and critical healthcare needs of Germany depending on whether Rt is 1, 0 or 2. A Rt greater than 1 the epidemic will continue to grow, and a Rt lower that 1 will eventually die out. Each one comes with a social and monetary price. Currently looking at the graph Germany is doing very well with a Rt of  0.3. Also looks like the World in general is under 1 which is the direction you hope for.

Martin

Edited April 16, 20206 yr by MartinRex007

51 minutes ago, Nedo68 said:

i just heard in the news about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the connection with Sars-CoV-2

It's been circulating for a bit, and there's enough to it that David Ignatius, a senior Washington Post columnist, picked it up.  There was a discussion about it in another thread that got shut down because seemed to go in a conspiracy theory direction.  But the basic facts have some weight.

I'm not sure how much difference it makes, though.  I mean, it does, in the sense that you need to get at the origin to know what to prevent, and how.  On the other hand, whether it's the lab or the wet market, you've still got an animal vector, you've still got a slow, secretive initial response, and you've still got staggering lack of preparedness and continuing missteps in countries around the world.  So the shape of the pandemic remains largely the same, sad to say, however it got started.