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Settle in, shelter-in-placers, we’ve got another super-sized (and shall we say, impassioned) edition of the Ricochet Podcast. In addition to the robust debaters, we’ve got Deb Saunders (self-quarantined from an undisclosed location) and Arthur Brooks who provides some much needed optimism in these dark days.
Music from this week’s show: Life During Wartime by Talking Heads
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Yes, this is the fault in the WeWork model. They’re taking an arbitrage risk, of a long term lease vs short term rentals.
I dont particularly like it, but Iam kinds of attached to it.
Peter clearly cares about human beings. Let’s start with that, which should be an easy point of consensus.
Then let’s say we have less death than predicted. The virus is whipped by… when? Summer? In a year when there’s a vaccine?
Great!
It will be very difficult to show how much impact “unpopular measures” would have truly made per the pursuit of good outcomes without the same omniscience you rightly imply is always missing, and then the health of the economy will be very pertinent to a good many survivors.
Whst I’m saying is, isn’t it all supposition?
In reality, I don’t think anyone is saying all unpopular measures are unnecessary in this circumstance either. For instance, I’m happy to concede that epidemiologists know way more about this than I do, so I’m doing as they say and not even visiting my parents. I understand our government is in a seriously difficult position, too. I believe they are trying to do what they think is best.
But I also know it’s not sustainable for (currently) 40% and rising (!!!) of our economy to be put into a coma—metaphorically again—for truly long periods without considering exactly how much damage that “cure” is inflicting apart from the virus on the economic body that is essential to American life.
I believe that is all that is being proposed, and it’s certainly on more minds than just mine.
Mostly, I just don’t buy the equivalence that many people are applying, even if they might say they don’t mean to, of “unemployment” with “DEATH.” Even if people lost their income for months, that really doesn’t KILL them. We have plenty of people at any given time, who are without an income, yet they SURVIVE. But if people DIE, they can’t EVER recover, economically.
The analogy of wuflu deaths versus annual traffic fatalities doesn’t really apply. If nothing else, bottom line, people can decline to participate in automobile transportation and still live, get around, at least enough to have a life. The only way to really be sure to not contract a contagious disease, is to stay home all the time and have contact with nobody.
But where is the demarcation line that separates these costs and the costs of universal healthcare? Like a lot of things, this virus is more likely to kill the elderly. I can assure you the overdose rate will go up, as they do during hurricanes. This kind of overreach won’t kill people, but it won’t necessarily save that many and it will definitely create more misery.
For a lot of this country, an automobile is about as much of an option as would staying home for fear of all potential accidents that occur if you leave the house and participate in society. A lot of those number will surely be down during the lockdown. I just don’t see how this isn’t another instance of people with a vested interest in concentrating on nonexistent or hyper-inflated problems for which they can’t be held accountable on their performance, making decisions for which they will not feel the consequences. “Saving lives,” while actually taking on television is a better gig than being judged on how you manage a city and enact policies that allow it to thrive- which will allow for comparisons of the results.
P.S. The “WeWork” episode of GLoP is still one of the best ever, and not just of GLoP.
I saw comments like this earlier too, which led me to wonder, if we’re going to be really concerned with depression and suicides etc, shouldn’t we outlaw sad songs, and liquor?
I wonder how many of the young people hospitalized for COVID-19 are pajama boys. Their affliction is sad, regardless. But perhaps their youth does not factor in their sloth, which lessens the strength of their immune systems.
If so, that trend would be seen with many diseases and not just the coronavirus.
I think a more apt analogy might be to force them outside or into facilities – something this is done with much greater discretion that what’s happening now.
I think that would be a bad idea too.
Maybe so, but the arguments I’ve heard such as that shelter-in-place etc will cause MORE death because more husbands will beat their wives if they have to stay home, are pretty ridiculous too. That just isn’t a basis for public policy in a situation like this.
My mom had a stroke in her home (in Calgary) last Jan. She’s made a remarkable recovery, is fully mobile (with the occasional help of a cane) no long term speech impediment or other ailment. She got rapid, effective and excellent care from the hospital, and the ambulance crew. The one thing that a single payer system does, is ration care – there is no over capacity at all. There are no extra hospital beds, there arent extra nurses on call. No extra doctors. If there was a single high injury event – like a bus crash – the medical resources of even major cities would be stressed by a dozen of urgent care cases.
medical specialists have waiting lists months – if not years, long. Single payer systems reduce costs, that is true, but the trade off is restricting capacity. Unlike a free market system, which because of competition, does build an over capacity.
Agree wholeheartedly. No wonder we’re so sad.
I’m not going to get into a big argument about this, but this is not what I heard. What happens during this time is, the herd immunity curve improves and spreading curve declines. Tons of people that catch it don’t get that wiped out. The virus dies on people that have the herd immunity.
Whether they did this soon enough, or long enough is another question. They won’t know until weeks later. If this was North Korea we could just shut it down until we saw the numbers go down. (This is why it’s better if your government “saves up” for pandemics.)
Also, peter seems sadly obsessed with the issue that his children can’t get high-end jobs right out of school. Welcome to the every-day world of many other people, peter and children! A lot of people had to deal with that for YEARS, not simply weeks or even months, just because Jimmy Carter was president!
If we hadn’t spent the last 30 or 40 years over printing, over borrowing, and overspending, and underfunding our old age actuarial systems, we certainly could. The government can be as much of a buffer against a pandemic as you want, as long as you think ahead. We had every opportunity after the Soviet Union fell and we blew it. Now we have to be very careful because of the debt to GDP ratios.
The whole world turned deflationary after the Soviet Union fell and computers came on board. Trade and automation. Our government and financial system is based on inflation and credit growth. We are too stupid to undo it except by accident.
The other thing is, it is absolute madness to not adjust this policy when we know everyone is having fewer kids for whatever reason.
There are just some really brutal videos about this stuff on Real Vision if you want to get a pass for it.
Procreate For The State Comrades! Bail Out The Collective (‘s stupid policy decisions) With New Workers!
They are excluded from the world health organization because the WHO is dependent on the Chinese communist party. They assumed both of them were lying and incompetent and acted accordingly. It’s an incredible lesson. They had some unique check in system for every citizen in the country. They had an app and you had to check in every single morning.
The WHO is a scam. The guy that they always have on TV is a Maoist.
This is funny as hell. Epic rant about pandemic distance learning from the point of view of the parents.
Or–even though I was talking metaphorically–one can look at the data on actual deaths that are the result of economic circumstances in the US.
Considering whether or not this problem is an actual thing is exactly what Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two Nobel prize winning economists from Princeton, did. They looked at how white Americans between 45 and 54 have had a traceably declining life expectancy per factors related to lack of jobs, which can be translated into actual, measurable loss of life. In fact, they tie more than 150,000 deaths per year to the destruction of economic opportunity in blue collar pockets throughout the country.
For me, a lot of that is intuitive. Therefore, I thought the Trump economy was wonderful in part because it was starting to reverse these trends and lift up those people who have long felt desperately behind.
Which brings me to a point.
Case and Deaton have painstakingly shown that “deaths of despair” are tied to the health of the American economy… to the ability of Americans to access work, which creates social stability. They’ve proven what I think anyone with common sense can see is true if spending time outside the white collar suburbs.
This is also a distinctly American problem, btw, so it’s not surprising that anti-capitalism narratives with anti-capitalism “solutions” have been created on top of the Case/Deaton studies. Some seem completely reasonable, too, until one thinks about how the creation of jobs during the last three years was actually reversing some bad mortality trends…. how having a job has been the proper cure for many who were ailing.
So it’s completely legitimate to engage in a vigorous debate about how to best address the specific sorts of deaths that have been identified in a way that does not inadvertently create other problems that might prove dire for the wider population, i.e. social programs that seem good but cause different ailments.
That’s different than simply being flippant:
People will die from Covid-19. How do we alleviate the suffering caused by that without also causing irreversible misery (and even death) elsewhere?
If the “cure” destroys jobs, it will actually destroy people. Well intentioned doctors will have also violated their creed of “do no harm.”
It’s a very difficult context.
One other thing. I’ve watched hedge fund guys talk about this stuff on Twitter. When the government starts spreading money around from borrowing or printing, what literally can’t happen for it to work is, people paying down their debts. Every time a debt gets paid off or goes into bankruptcy, it is a decrease in money circulating. We can’t have that during the pandemic, and in the long run that’s how our whole system works, which isn’t sustainable.
Also, if Trump didn’t say “Chinese virus” the media – or a lot of it, anyway – would be putting “Trump Virus” on-screen day and night.
Well as mentioned elsewhere, the US could use the baby boom some predict after people have to stay at home for weeks. Sadly it’s too late for them to get $500 per child in stimulus money THIS time, but when the NEXT pandemic comes around, well, Ka-CHING!
Where do you get “irrevcrsible” from? And along with my earlier comment, where was all the concern for people DYING because of the unemployment etc under Jimmy Carter? And Barack Obama, for that matter. They weren’t even trying to prevent people from spreading a deadly virus! This sometimes seems oddly Trump-specific.
I have no argument with the concept of a civilization needs to procreate more citizens. Dennis Prager always calls having children a “value”. So it’s a value not something you necessarily want to do, which is an interesting way to look at it. You can have that argument or discussion. I get it.
What I’m saying is, all kinds of horrible government policy decisions were made knowing the birth rate was going down. It’s just laughable. Everyone should have been in full panic by 1980, and then when the Soviet Union fell that was the big opportunity to do something.
The Democrat party solution of course is The Life Of Julia and massive immigration, which gives these socialist parasites and mandarins unlimited and irreversible power.
One other thing about immigration. I pay pretty close attention to Michael Walsh, who has been on the show. He is insanely smart and educated. He said something the other day that I thought was pretty important. The country was founded by yeoman (whatever that is. I think that’s what he said) and farmers. But basically these were very independent, productive, and moral people. You always hear about the Swedish that bolted for here in the 1800s were pre-disposed to dislike socialism and all of that stuff. The ones that liked it stayed.
Walsh’s point was, immigrants that come from cultures that originated from colonialists running them around like slaves are going to be problematic for integration unless you really want to switch to a big government system. Supposedly a bunch of countries have copied our constitution and it’s gone nowhere. It’s like every single time. Corruption and big government, or alternatively they have sort of vertically integrated cartels in the country that the government can’t do anything about. It’s not criminal, it’s just a way of people organizing to protect each other. It retards economic progress.
I really loathe saying this, but you really need to be politically incorrect about immigration. That’s the only way you’re going to get the rate right from each country.
Where do you get my lack of concern in those eras? I was very concerned. The only thing I’ve given Trump, really, is a compliment per how he was helping solve that problem.
As for “irreversable”… Fair enough. Let’s change this to “deeply scarring misery” that will be “irreversible” for some.
I also think that the point about going too far to address one thing at the expense of another per the podcast was correct. We were too political/economics focused in one phase of this crisis. Then we shifted to become too health focused in another.
What do I really want?
Balance.
I am not a philosopher king. I have great sympathy for the real complexities of these gigantic problems as faced by people like the president. I actually really like his press conferences every day. I find them super helpful. Even when he’s testy. (I’d get testy with reporters, too.) This doesn’t mean I’m going to discard all my own assessments of the situation, however.
Open debate gives voice to some of the problems that fall out of focus when they shouldn’t.
Maybe YOU were concerned back then, but I didn’t hear it then from the numbers of people that I hear now about “but the unemployment! oh the miserable unemployment!” The worst I heard in the 70s was that it might keep some people from achieving “the American dream” of home ownership. But far more common was that the “malaise” was “the new normal.”
By definition, really, there is ALWAYS “balance.” Because it’s not going to be the economy shut down FOREVER, or EVERYBODY DIES. What’s left is a question of whether you agree with the degree balance that others are working toward.
Also, trading with fascist China is a bad idea. We can import wage deflation and job destruction from somewhere else. All they do is lie and cheat from there underground volcano. 50 fascists. Screw that.
Clearly, you have never met a single person from my family. ;)
But there are certainly historians who looked at this. Even though I could–and would–argue with some of his framing and conclusions, Jefferson Cowie immediately jumps to mind.
I can help you with this one thing. (I teach US History.)
You’ve separated the terms. The guy surely said “yeoman farmers” meaning farmers who were landowners. The “yeoman” part signifies a middle class of sorts. In England, they would have been people like the Pilgrims and the Puritans who were neither nobility but not on the bottom either.
Keep in mind the society from which this term comes was structured quite differently, so don’t assume “middle class” necessarily means “middle incomes” per how we think about these things now. Some of the Puritans owned quite a lot of land and were powerful members of Parliament before the Great Migration. Maybe you could tie the middle-ness to a sense of values rather than wealth.
Anyway, Max Weber once looked at the yeoman farmers who settled New England and merged their ideas about religion and salvation with the “Puritan work ethic” that helped distinguish the “elect” from the “non-elect.”