Coronavirus COVID-19

[BDKJMU]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

Only 40 percent of Americans can afford an unexpected $1,000 expense with their savings. In fact, nearly 80 percent of workers are living paycheck to paycheck. It is no surprise that the probability of an economic recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic caused many to worry...

....Financial planners suggest saving at least 20 percent of take home income, while spending at most 30 percent on discretionary items. Yet too many workers still fail to think twice about spending entire paychecks for things they want but do not need.

Recent decades have offered us relative luxury. More than 80 percent of Americans own smartphones. The same portion of households own one high definition flat screen television, while over half of households own more than one. Over 60 percent of Americans dine out at least once a week, while nearly 20 percent dine out three or more times a week.

The current panic is refocusing us on what is important. We now stockpile the things necessary for our health. Smartphones, fancy televisions, and restaurant meals are usually luxuries rather than necessities. Living within our means is not just rhetoric. It is a means of guarding ourselves during times like these. We have so much to learn from those who came before us. How many of our grandparents fared the austerity of the World Wars and the Great Depression, discovering to save, mend, and repair?

The availability of credit gave us an opportunity with a great hangover. It made nice homes, flashy cars, and expensive consumer products within reach for earners across income levels. But purchasing on installment is often a trap and a major contributor to our $14 trillion in consumer debt. Financing items as diverse as furniture, laptops, clothing, and more with easily obtained credit opened the door to fiscal recklessness. Consider that average Americans spend $800 monthly on car payments.

It is not only low income and middle income earners who blow through their paychecks every month. Many high income earners also live above their means. Indeed, at least a quarter of households making $150,000 and above live paycheck to paycheck. Our fiscal irresponsibility means that when an unexpected crisis like the one today hits, Americans are unable to sustain their own families, even for a short time period.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

[Ibanez]

Spring Break Social Distancing

Can we just call Millenials the worst generation?
Florida college students test positive for coronavirus after going on spring break
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronaviru ... -of-tampa/

No because the current crop of college students aren't, by a vast majority, millennials. Most millennials are out of college. Some of us are closing in on 40 yrs old. The mid-late 90s seems to be the end point of the millennials.

[UNI88]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

Only 40 percent of Americans can afford an unexpected $1,000 expense with their savings. In fact, nearly 80 percent of workers are living paycheck to paycheck. It is no surprise that the probability of an economic recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic caused many to worry...

....Financial planners suggest saving at least 20 percent of take home income, while spending at most 30 percent on discretionary items. Yet too many workers still fail to think twice about spending entire paychecks for things they want but do not need.

Recent decades have offered us relative luxury. More than 80 percent of Americans own smartphones. The same portion of households own one high definition flat screen television, while over half of households own more than one. Over 60 percent of Americans dine out at least once a week, while nearly 20 percent dine out three or more times a week.

The current panic is refocusing us on what is important. We now stockpile the things necessary for our health. Smartphones, fancy televisions, and restaurant meals are usually luxuries rather than necessities. Living within our means is not just rhetoric. It is a means of guarding ourselves during times like these. We have so much to learn from those who came before us. How many of our grandparents fared the austerity of the World Wars and the Great Depression, discovering to save, mend, and repair?

The availability of credit gave us an opportunity with a great hangover. It made nice homes, flashy cars, and expensive consumer products within reach for earners across income levels. But purchasing on installment is often a trap and a major contributor to our $14 trillion in consumer debt. Financing items as diverse as furniture, laptops, clothing, and more with easily obtained credit opened the door to fiscal recklessness. Consider that average Americans spend $800 monthly on car payments.

It is not only low income and middle income earners who blow through their paychecks every month. Many high income earners also live above their means. Indeed, at least a quarter of households making $150,000 and above live paycheck to paycheck. Our fiscal irresponsibility means that when an unexpected crisis like the one today hits, Americans are unable to sustain their own families, even for a short time period.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

So Americans are kind of like airlines and other companies. They don't save and now they want a bailout to help them get through the hard times.

[ALPHAGRIZ1]

A real leader who is always 7 steps ahead of everyone.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[GannonFan]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

So Americans are kind of like airlines and other companies. They don't save and now they want a bailout to help them get through the hard times.

Yeah, but these are also voters too. Should we just tell them too bad, you guys sucked in terms of saving up, and best of luck?

Even further, and this is going down the rabbit-hole of selfishness and self importance, for the vast majority of people, this isn't going to be a hard time. Even if every American gets the virus, and even if the current mortality rate stays around 1%, that's 3.3M fatalities in a country of 330M people. So for the 99% of Americans that won't die as a result of this, it's a hard time because they are being told and forced by the government not to work. They are being told they're not going to get a paycheck. We want the 99% of Americans who won't die from this to sacrifice for the 1% of Americans that will die from this. Seems if we want the 99% to think of the greater good of the community around them, then the community around them should also avoid blaming them for not having enough money in the bank to weather this event.

[kalm]

Agreed on the rural vs. population centers but where do you draw the line? People are too stupid and selfish to follow the current guidelines. Plus they’d leave the cities in order to get a little freedom and create further community spread. I’d prefer 3 months of shelter in place if we knew that we wouldn’t run out of beds and could get back to normal quicker.

Well, that's why we go with local and state decisions when it comes to these things rather than a national policy - obviously the danger is different in rural areas than it is in densely populated ones. It's not a one size fits all problem. Places like NYC should be shelter in place for a long time, whereas places where you can't even see your neighbors house from your own should be significantly different. Heck, that's why we don't have bed problems in wide swaths of the country whereas we do (or will - I don't think we're there yet even in NYC) in the densely packed population centers.

As for getting back to "normal" quicker, unless the government (and this can be on the feds) comes up with a way to pay people not to work for 3 months and/or puts a freeze on all their bills for 3 months, there won't be a "normal". Economic devastation (and that's not an overstatement) can be very real in the absence of the government doing something for all of these people we are stopping from working. And it's not like a spigot, you just can't turn it off and then turn it back on again and expect things to go back to normal right away. I understand the very real concern to avoid being Italy, but there is a very real concern that the solution could be just as bad or worse than the initial problem.

1) Idaho is across the border from Spokane County. That state’s level of precaution and containment effects us. So far, they’ve done very little.

2). Theres a chance this is gonna require an economic intervention at least on the scale of the Great Depression. Choosing even the middle road of mitigation can create a longer economic collapse.

[dbackjon]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

Only 40 percent of Americans can afford an unexpected $1,000 expense with their savings. In fact, nearly 80 percent of workers are living paycheck to paycheck. It is no surprise that the probability of an economic recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic caused many to worry...

....Financial planners suggest saving at least 20 percent of take home income, while spending at most 30 percent on discretionary items. Yet too many workers still fail to think twice about spending entire paychecks for things they want but do not need.

Recent decades have offered us relative luxury. More than 80 percent of Americans own smartphones. The same portion of households own one high definition flat screen television, while over half of households own more than one. Over 60 percent of Americans dine out at least once a week, while nearly 20 percent dine out three or more times a week.

The current panic is refocusing us on what is important. We now stockpile the things necessary for our health. Smartphones, fancy televisions, and restaurant meals are usually luxuries rather than necessities. Living within our means is not just rhetoric. It is a means of guarding ourselves during times like these. We have so much to learn from those who came before us. How many of our grandparents fared the austerity of the World Wars and the Great Depression, discovering to save, mend, and repair?

The availability of credit gave us an opportunity with a great hangover. It made nice homes, flashy cars, and expensive consumer products within reach for earners across income levels. But purchasing on installment is often a trap and a major contributor to our $14 trillion in consumer debt. Financing items as diverse as furniture, laptops, clothing, and more with easily obtained credit opened the door to fiscal recklessness. Consider that average Americans spend $800 monthly on car payments.

It is not only low income and middle income earners who blow through their paychecks every month. Many high income earners also live above their means. Indeed, at least a quarter of households making $150,000 and above live paycheck to paycheck. Our fiscal irresponsibility means that when an unexpected crisis like the one today hits, Americans are unable to sustain their own families, even for a short time period.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

You mean like the Big Corporations that are screaming for cash a week after this started?

Current generations are saddled with Student Debt earlier generations didn't have to take (because school was much cheaper due to state tax support). Wages haven't kept up with inflation. But blaming "irresponsibiity" is the easy out instead of tackling long term flaws in our current economic models

[dbackjon]

Louisiana crossed the 1,000 case mark, adding 335 new cases. Also 14 new deaths, up 14

[GannonFan]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

You mean like the Big Corporations that are screaming for cash a week after this started?

Current generations are saddled with Student Debt earlier generations didn't have to take (because school was much cheaper due to state tax support). Wages haven't kept up with inflation. But blaming "irresponsibiity" is the easy out instead of tackling long term flaws in our current economic models

Current generations also chose poorly when it came to accumulating all that student debt. A lot of that debt came at the hands of private colleges that never had state tax support anyway but jumped on the same bandwagon that public schools did when the government made sure that student loans could be widely available to any and everyone regardless of the value of the education they were getting. No one is being compelled to take on all of this student debt, there are always more affordable options. It's almost like the first test of decision making ability, and sadly, many kids and their parents have failed badly at this.

[BDKJMU]

This nails it. Too many Americans don't bother to save, buy on want, not need, and live paycheck to paycheck

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... -americans

You mean like the Big Corporations that are screaming for cash a week after this started?

Current generations are saddled with Student Debt earlier generations didn't have to take (because school was much cheaper due to state tax support). Wages haven't kept up with inflation. But blaming "irresponsibiity" is the easy out instead of tackling long term flaws in our current economic models

High speed internet, smart phones, big screen HD TVs, eating out multiple times a week, vacations, nice cars, more home than should spend $$ on, etc, etc, etc, are WANTS, not NEEDS. Yet there are tons of people putting those WANTS ahead of saving up a few month rainy days fund (and for retirement).

Is there another country in the world that has comparable consumption and lack of saving?

[BDKJMU]

Democrats holding up the relief bill with poison pills that have nothing to do with the Chinese Virus.
-new collective bargaining powers for unions.
-higher fuel emissions standards for airlines.
-expanded wind and solar tax credits.
-eliminating up to 10k per person student loan debt.

[Ibanez]

Democrats holding up the relief bill with poison pills that have nothing to do with the Chinese Virus.
-new collective bargaining powers for unions.
-higher fuel emissions standards for airlines.
-expanded wind and solar tax credits.
-eliminating up to 10k per person student loan debt.

That's called a Pork Barrel Buffet.

[kalm]

Louisiana crossed the 1,000 case mark, adding 335 new cases. Also 14 new deaths, up 14

The states that weren’t quick to impose restrictions are about to get hammered. Spikes in Florida and Texas happening now.

[GannonFan]

Democrats holding up the relief bill with poison pills that have nothing to do with the Chinese Virus.
-new collective bargaining powers for unions.
-higher fuel emissions standards for airlines.
-expanded wind and solar tax credits.
-eliminating up to 10k per person student loan debt.

That's called a Pork Barrel Buffet.

Just when you think there's no way that Trump can dig himself out of a political hole, there go the Democrats, shovel in hand, trying to get deeper in the hole than the President. They did the impossible and lost to him in 2016, and darn it, if they aren't at it again.

[kalm]

You mean like the Big Corporations that are screaming for cash a week after this started?

Current generations are saddled with Student Debt earlier generations didn't have to take (because school was much cheaper due to state tax support). Wages haven't kept up with inflation. But blaming "irresponsibiity" is the easy out instead of tackling long term flaws in our current economic models

High speed internet, smart phones, big screen HD TVs, eating out multiple times a week, vacations, nice cars, more home than should spend $$ on, etc, etc, etc, are WANTS, not NEEDS. Yet there are tons of people putting those WANTS ahead of saving up a few month rainy days fund (and for retirement).

Is there another country in the world that has comparable consumption and lack of saving?

You just listed what drives our economy. Those corporations thrive off of low savings and irresponsibility.

[kalm]

That's called a Pork Barrel Buffet.

Just when you think there's no way that Trump can dig himself out of a political hole, there go the Democrats, shovel in hand, trying to get deeper in the hole than the President. They did the impossible and lost to him in 2016, and darn it, if they aren't at it again.

That’s my thought too. The only reason to fight here would be if the bill doesn’t do enough for average folk.

[GannonFan]

High speed internet, smart phones, big screen HD TVs, eating out multiple times a week, vacations, nice cars, more home than should spend $$ on, etc, etc, etc, are WANTS, not NEEDS. Yet there are tons of people putting those WANTS ahead of saving up a few month rainy days fund (and for retirement).

Is there another country in the world that has comparable consumption and lack of saving?

You just listed what drives our economy. Those corporations thrive off of low savings and irresponsibility.

And those corporations are made up entirely of people, no?

[kalm]

You just listed what drives our economy. Those corporations thrive off of low savings and irresponsibility.

And those corporations are made up entirely of people, no?

Yes they are. And the profits are appropriately shared.

[GannonFan]

Just when you think there's no way that Trump can dig himself out of a political hole, there go the Democrats, shovel in hand, trying to get deeper in the hole than the President. They did the impossible and lost to him in 2016, and darn it, if they aren't at it again.

That’s my thought too. The only reason to fight here would be if the bill doesn’t do enough for average folk.

This should be an easy one - make people whole. Heck, I don't need money, I'm still working, even in a state in the middle of a full on shutdown (PA). But for people who cannot work because we don't want them to work, we should cover them. Same with businesses (up to a point - not sure where I'd draw the line) that we told to close up shop and not operate indefinitely. Many places will never reopen - surely we can come up with a plan to address that and the people who won't work at those places again.

[GannonFan]

And those corporations are made up entirely of people, no?

Yes they are. And the profits are appropriately shared.

Define appropriately - what does that mean? Whatever you want it to mean?

[AshevilleApp]

Spring Break Social Distancing

Can we just call Millenials the worst generation?
Florida college students test positive for coronavirus after going on spring break
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronaviru ... -of-tampa/

Yup, pretty stupid of them. I'd likely have gone at that age as well.

[dbackjon]

Democrats holding up the relief bill with poison pills that have nothing to do with the Chinese Virus.
-new collective bargaining powers for unions.
-higher fuel emissions standards for airlines.
-expanded wind and solar tax credits.
-eliminating up to 10k per person student loan debt.

If businesses are getting billions, why shouldn't the workers get some benefit?
If airlines are getting bailed out, why SHOULDN'T we hold them to be more accountable
If Businesses are getting debt relief, why SHOULDN'T Americans?

Sounds like you want businesses to reap all the rewards, not ordinary Americans.

[ALPHAGRIZ1]

I want all of these big businesses to fail. Every single one of them. Break up the good Ole boys network and then average Americans have the chance to fill the voids.



Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[GannonFan]

Democrats holding up the relief bill with poison pills that have nothing to do with the Chinese Virus.
-new collective bargaining powers for unions.
-higher fuel emissions standards for airlines.
-expanded wind and solar tax credits.
-eliminating up to 10k per person student loan debt.

If businesses are getting billions, why shouldn't the workers get some benefit?
If airlines are getting bailed out, why SHOULDN'T we hold them to be more accountable
If Businesses are getting debt relief, why SHOULDN'T Americans?

Sounds like you want businesses to reap all the rewards, not ordinary Americans.

Stop it, you're just a parrot when you say stuff like that.

We've taken government action that directly harms these businesses and workers - we told companies to close their doors and stop doing business, we told airlines they can't fly anymore. This isn't that they planned poorly - what business can operate shuttered, for months at a time, and still pay all of their employees salary and health care? Again, like with kalmie, just calling them "businesses" and "corporations" hides the fact that all of these entities are made of workers. The airlines all founder, that's workers who suffer.

This should be easy - make people whole. We told everyone to shut their doors and don't work. All we have to do is cover the payrolls and debt service (or just freeze debt payments) until we let them open their doors again.

[kalm]

Yes they are. And the profits are appropriately shared.

Define appropriately - what does that mean? Whatever you want it to mean?

Well since BDK was complaining about lack of savings and rampant materialism how about enough to sustain consumer demand while simultaneously allowing increased savings and hedges against hyper-inflated necessities like healthcare?