The E wrote:Imaginos1892 wrote:Panic KILLS you dipshit, as do the government’s floundering attempts to appease the media wankers stirring it up. This panic is going to kill a lot more people than some lame-ass cold virus. Any large city is perpetually three days from famine and a week from food riots. Cities are maintained in that precarious balance by an economy that is far too complex to be centrally ’managed’ by fiat. An economy contains millions of parts, and the parts are people. They can’t be reduced to one-dimensional variables. Strangle that economy by locking people up so they can’t do their jobs and it all falls apart.
Germany is currently locked down. Businesses are required to be open to the least extent possible, people are working from home, taking vacations, are on Kurzarbeit or whatever other measures are available to reduce the amount of contact with others; Gatherings of more than 2 people are prohibited.....
And yet, there's no panic. Grocery stores are open and filled; now that the first wave of panic buys of non-perishables is over, it's easy to get everything a person needs again.
There's worry, yes, a lot of it. Noone knows how long this will continue to be necessary (definitely past the end of April though), and while the consequences of being out of a job are less severe for us than they would be for the average american, it's still going to be a problematic time for a lot of people.
Note, however, that it is explicitly just "problematic", not fatal.
And why is that? Mostly because, unlike US media, we never went through a downplaying or minimizing phase. Covid was always treated as a serious matter of some concern, and so none of the measures taken came as a big surprise; there were no big course corrections like there were in the UK, and having Italy right next door served as a prime example of why we need to do what we are doing right now.
Cities are three days away from a riot, yes.....
if the supplies run out. There is no crisis in production or delivery at present. Shelves are filled. Stock is available.
So, what does your perception that your country is close to rioting tell you about your handling of this pretty serious pandemic?
The problem is made worse here because in its infinite idiocy, the U.S. government has imposed taxes on ‘business assets’. Businesses would be taxed if they kept money in reserve for emergencies, but debt is rewarded with tax deductions. That alone would be bad enough, but inventories are also considered ‘business assets’. Raw materials, finished goods, even packaging are all heavily taxed. Stores are taxed for keeping food on the shelves. Distributors are taxed for keeping food in their warehouses. Bakeries are taxed for keeping ingredients on hand. Hospitals and medical suppliers are taxed for stockpiling extra masks, gloves and isolation suits. Bookstores and publishers are taxed for keeping unsold books. Millions of brand-new books are dumped in the trash every year because the taxes cost more than selling them would bring in. Manufacturers are forced to scrap tons of spare parts for the same reason.
You pivoting this into a rant on taxation is prime comedy material. It's not a lack of disaster preparedness, not a lack of any real form of security net that's the issue,
it's the taxes!
How many levels of libertarian brainwashing do you have to be on to actually believe that....
But still, the only answer you can imagine is “The government must make all the decisions and force everybody to obey or else!” — when those decisions are based on few facts, no understanding, and the self-serving greed of petty tyrants that see only an opportunity to grab unconstrained power. Don’t try to pretend otherwise; last week the Canadian Liberal Party nearly succeeded in ramming through an enabling act that would effectively suspend Parliament and grant them the power to enact laws by decree. Sound familiar? It should! IF you knew anything about history.
All I can say is: We started testing for Corona early and hard. As a result, we're currently on track to have one of the lowest numbers of deaths due to corona per capita on the planet. We couldn't have done that, and we wouldn't be able to weather this thing as well as we're doing so far, if we didn't have a comprehensive system of social security and a government that is slightly more capable than yours.
The stock market decline is not “Wall Street’s problem”; it is an indicator and a symptom of what is being done to the economy, the way a face turning purple is a symptom of being choked to death. Businesses, especially small businesses, are going bankrupt not because of coronavirus, but because of the panicking idiots. People are losing their jobs. Soon they will be unable to make their rent, house and car payments, because the government punishes savings and rewards debt.
And? We already know your system sucks hard if you suddenly lose your job, that's nothing new.
