JDiculous

Yea but this not a permanent shock, it's a temporary disruption. As soon as this passes over, rents will likely revert back to where they were before.

In NYC there are many vacant commercial spaces because landlords hold out for the highest paying tenants. You're overestimating the desperation of landlords.

I have to disagree with #2. Landlords can charge whatever they want, and there is little reason to suspect that they'll lower rents after this.

that type of stimulus would require an act of Congress, who apparently can't get their collective heads out of their own asses at the moment.

Yes that is the problem. I believe that the Fed's powers should be expanded to allow giving that money directly to the people, instead of only to banks and financial markets.

If we really cared about minimizing unemployment beyond simply paying lip service to it, we'd institute a job guarantee.

I don't disagree with this, but it's a shame we don't address the suffering of humans who've lost their jobs, or small businesses having to go bankrupt due to this crisis, with the same degree of urgency. I get that the Fed doesn't have the power to provide "liquidity" directly to the people right now, but they should. This is socialism/welfare for the rich, free markets for the poor.

Is the undergrad CS curriculum at a top-tier university really that different from that at a regular university?

Ending slavery could be considered "unfair" to a slaveowner who just spent a lot of money purchasing a slave. That doesn't justify slavery.

The state of student loans in the U.S. obviously isn't even remotely as despicable as chattel slavery, but it's still deeply immoral and not far removed from loan sharking + debt slavery. Ignoring the moral aspect, it's just wildly counterproductive and detrimental to society (particularly since the generation who allowed this to happen - the baby boomers - never had to deal with this themselves.

Can someone explain why bond yields are going up? Normally you'd expect people to be investing in safer assets (eg. bonds) during times of crises, especially with the Fed slashing interest rates and embarking on QE.

Yes UBI would not "fix" homelessness or poverty, but it dramatically improves things.

People that have the tendency be homeless are people that don't find their place in society, the lack of order actually brings them relief.

What an insulting generalization of homeless people. Is that how you rationalize it in your head - these people find "relief" in sleeping on the sidewalk because they couldn't find their place in society?

Did you ask those homeless people why they didn't want to go to the shelter? I remember speaking with a 60+ year old homeless woman in NYC once who told me she refused to go to the shelter because it was filled with crazy people. Also you have to check out of the shelter every day, and if you don't check back in by a certain time, then they can't let you in. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many would prefer to sleep on the streets than deal with that.

Best solution so far is a social one where people help them find a new sense of achievement and a place in society.

This is why I'm a proponent of a jobs guarantee. Anyone who wants to work should not be denied the opportunity to do so.

Drugs is also a big problem and probably where all the money from universal income would go to.

Yes, because all homeless people are drug addicts right? /s

Beggars with voting rights will vote for people who give them more and more

Given that UBI increases would be coupled with tax increases, I don't actually see that being the case.

Are you kidding me? We literally dump our mental health patients on the streets. [1]

How many of the homeless in SF/NYC that you see have kids with them?

The mental gymnastics people go through to justify homelessness and poverty is sickening.

https://www.kqed.org/news/10737399/nevada-to-pay-san-francis...

Shorting the market. If the world's going down the drain, might as well profit from it.

Employers in the U.S. can fire anyone at any time for practically any reason, cutting off one's livelihood. That feels more likely than a government doing the equivalent of cutting off someone's social security. A company's goal is to maximize profits, not provide charity to people it no longer deems useful to its bottom line.

I've always wanted the ability to just save my HTML/CSS changes in Chrome Dev Tools to the source files ("Future #3"). Why has that not been done yet? Would save a ton of time.

One day we will look at all the homelessness and blatant poverty in our society we allow in absolute disgust, similar to the repulsion people feel about slavery.

UBI isn't just about liberty and accelerating ourselves forward (though it's also about that), it's a statement that no matter how dire your circumstances, no matter how useless you are seen to our corporate overlords and private employers, that you belong to society, you are deserving of a modest respectable standard of living, and you are entitled to some of the proceeds of the wealth generated by the land with which you've been excluded.

The only real way to fix this in the U.S. is to allow rank-based voting, otherwise it is practically impossible for any third-party candidate to get elected.

So long as we have a two-party system, we will have dumbed down political policies pandering to the brainless masses with little room for innovative progressive ideas.

Australia is doing pretty damn well. The pay there is fantastic, and it's one of the few countries where you can work any honest job and still get paid well (I can attest that this is not the case in the U.S.). Many foreigners flock there in large part for this reason. 1 month+ vacation, strong healthcare system, good benefits, etc. And remember their population is only 24.6 million.

I'd say having a higher standard of living is more important than being the "innovation engine of the world", however arbitrarily defined that is.

Have you seen all the homeless people in SF or NYC lately? I'd love to see the reaction to some cushy FAANG engineer telling them "the time for UBI might not be now".

There is nothing inflationary about UBI. It's interesting how people think the onus is on UBI proponents to justify why their policy wouldn't cause inflation. Even if it did cause inflation, ultimately it's just a redistribution of wealth, and it still helps those most at the bottom.

You mention Venezuela which is a totally different scenario. They had an economy overly dependent on imports paid for by the revenue from oil exports, so when the price of oil crashed, so did their economy along with it. With resulting large amounts of foreign denominated debt, their only options were to 1. default 2. print money to pay off those foreign-denominated debts. They went with option #2, and their currency collapsed. Furthermore their country has extremely weak property rights (eg. businesses being seized by the government), enormously high levels of corruption, and ridiculous price controls.

Now what does any of that have to do with UBI?

but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

As opposed to what, private undemocratic unaccountable authoritarian institutions controlling peoples' lives?

nce UBI exists, people will rely on it for survival.

Anybody who's dependent on their employers' paycheck is dependent on their employer for survival. How is dependence on the government any more dangerous than being dependent on a corporation?

We already have UBI, but only old people can qualify for it, and the dividend amount is proportional to how much money you made in your lifetime. It's called social security.

Extending this dividend to the rest of the population is the next logical extension of this.

You could have a 2 minute chat remotely

Why haven't they done it in Asia yet then since Coronavirus originated from and is more severe there?

This is insane. What are the chances of this happening for Asia? I'm currently in Asia and it would be unfortunate to not be able to return home.

You assume anything any big corporation does is the optimal way of doing things?

These acronyms are getting ridiculous

Well yea, none of those anecdotes you referenced are office jobs.

but we need to get over this idea that WFH is the best option for everyone.

I don't think anybody is claiming this. The argument is more that WFH is best for people who prefer to WFH and are able to do so effectively.

Last time I checked, most big tech companies have little tolerance for WFH, only allowing workers to WFH at most once or twice per week. There's clearly a middle ground between "no remote workers" and "WFH is the best option for everyone".

The middle class will shoulder the bulk of it

Why is that the assumption?

QE is money printing to buy financial securities. It is money printing.

Long time night owl here - I just quit office jobs and exclusively work remotely now. I'd always joked that my life goal was to never have to wake up to an alarm clock, but really it is a huge boost to my quality of life.

Funny though as I write this I'm actually waking up very early, but that's because this week I flew somewhere 5 timezones earlier. Not sure how long this will last.

I guess the contention here is the definition of the word "few". When I think of "a few years", I think 2-4, not 7-10.