ERICOPOLY

Yes, this is why I called Gato's analysis the stupidest thing posted on this thread! Let's do this analysis for February. U.S. -> 1 death, no lockdown Canada -> 0 deaths, no lockdown Wuhan -> Thousands of deaths*, lockdown. Lockdowns are definitely correlated with deaths! But, I'm confident that Wuhan locked down BECAUSE of the outbreak. * numbers made up Lets take this further. Causation comes with timing. When did lockdown start in New York City? When did all the deaths come. Before or after? Well, most people die of the flu after the vaccine has been administered. Another correlation: most of the deaths came after Trump told us that he shut down the flights from China. And it all happened after Valentine's Day, so I'm wondering if all those Hallmark cards were involved.

I have been watching Florida Gov Ron DeSantis explain. He says increased contact tracing is revealing cases that would never have been found before -- asymptomatic young people running around with the virus.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office is refusing to enforce California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) order requiring residents to wear face coverings in public as part of an effort to combat the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. The Sheriff’s Office said it would be “inappropriate” to criminally enforce Newsom’s mandate or punish individuals and businesses for not complying. Additionally, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office also said it will not uphold the order, spokeswoman Angela Musallam said. “We do hope (people) will take the rule to heart, but we have no interest in arresting or penalizing people who aren’t wearing masks in any way,” said Musallam. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/19/ssacramento-sheriff-refuses-to-enforce-newsoms-mask-order/

Californians must wear face masks in public under coronavirus order issued by Newsom https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-18/california-mandatory-face-masks-statewide-order-coronavirus-gavin-newsom

That's not a bad thought. Keep in mind though that such technology allows our creative people to work in creative fields no matter where they live. I'm sure some bright people across America are working noncreative jobs as IT people for their local governments because it's the only tech jobs they have locally -- these people may be better utilized as creative engineers. I just noticed that I typed Trump rather than Musk. My fingers not listening to my brain. Weird. Okay, now it's a bad thought :)

Good point about the share of the worlds best talent. Will the pool of the world's best talent grow much faster than world population (perhaps via expanded and cheap online education)? I have a question: what percentage of today's best talent are currently impoverished and underutilized, not making it into engineering programs? When I was at Microsoft, I kept bumping into Indian engineers and it seemed as though not one of them grew up dirt poor, even though so much of the country is dirt poor.

That's not a bad thought. Keep in mind though that such technology allows our creative people to work in creative fields no matter where they live. I'm sure some bright people across America are working noncreative jobs as IT people for their local governments because it's the only tech jobs they have locally -- these people may be better utilized as creative engineers.

I agree. However, in theory it should be possible to tune our immigration policy towards cherry picking creative minds from elsewhere. I don't know if that can be pulled off to an increasing degree relative to the past. Musk is from South Africa. A lot of young people simply don't work creative jobs and those are the ones that are likely to be automated -- some of those people can be more creative through automation. I don't see robots taking care of old people. I see robots doing the non-creative work that younger people once did. And today's old people, and tomorrow's old people, once did those uncreative jobs themselves. That is an interesting thought. My comments are simply based on the fact that not everyone is creative, so having a large pool of people in those ages are more likely to produce more creative risk takers. If you had someway to bring them in, or at least attract them specifically, that would probably work too. One way to attract them, I think, is with low taxes and few regulations on business. Make the US the place to start, grow, and operate a business from start up right through to global corporate goliath. Having a local market and workforce is important now, but with travel, working from home, robots, and shipping all likely to get better and easier, if running your business from Singapore or some other tax haven is easier, cheaper, and makes more sense then people will go there not here. Musk didn't come here because the taxes were low, he came here to get a degree from Stanford. From there he was arms length away from all of the engineering minds that he needed to start Tesla. Also, California is nice. He didn't forego all of that for a lower tax jurisdiction. I mean, look at what we charge international students for tuition? I think there are ways to bring those people into the country For example, tuition assistance or waiver. Why leave your home country which pays for your tuition in order to come here and pay a fortune for that same education?

I agree. However, in theory it should be possible to tune our immigration policy towards cherry picking creative minds from elsewhere. I don't know if that can be pulled off to an increasing degree relative to the past. Musk is from South Africa. A lot of young people simply don't work creative jobs and those are the ones that are likely to be automated -- some of those people can be more creative through automation. I don't see robots taking care of old people. I see robots doing the non-creative work that younger people once did. And some of the old people once did those uncreative jobs themselves so losing them from the workplace to retirement is of no big consequence in terms of productivity.

Here is another question: In an impossible world where there are no 40 yr olds, would an increased number of 20, 30, 50, and 60 yr olds earn more to relatively offset the loss of the 40 yr olds? No change in overall income. We still have those high-paying jobs that the 40 yr olds otherwise occupied, don't we? I'm trying to think of the demographic as if it's silly putty. Put pressure on the middle and it bulges out the top and bottom, but the mass hasn't changed. But is it fair to compare people to silly putty?

This has been on the WFC thread but I wanted to start it's own topic to bring that thread back to WFC. Is it necessarily true that a demographic with a higher average age would be less beneficial to economic growth as compared to one with a declining age? What is it about the age alone that is negative for economic growth? I can understand quite easily that a slow rate of increase in the population will produce lower growth, but why fear the same result when paired with an increase in retired dependent persons more than the same result when paired with an increase in underage dependent persons? If spending translates to GDP growth, don't an added 5,000,000 75 yr olds translate to more spending as compared to 5,000,000 additional 5 yr olds. No? One argument is that a new baby boom would, in 15 or 20 years, create an overall more productive demographic. But any future forecasting can tell you that we'll have more robots in the future -- isn't a robot paired up with a 75 yr old just as good as a productive 30 yr old? And do we want the potential civil unrest if we have too many idle 30 yr olds displaced by robots? Sure, 40 yr olds are peak spenders in part because they have kids. What if they instead spend on elderly (through taxation) rather than kids? Or if that same amount of tax/spend is spread amongst all wage earnings to support that extra elderly dependent, is that any different from a GDP perspective than the impact of the concentrated spending of a 40 yr old with a dependent child? Again, I understand that the rate of overall population growth matters, but do we need to be so stressed about the aging component of it? Do we fear that robots are coming, or do we fear that they won't?

20% of the total 3,800 employees working in the clinics in her area are ‘unemployed’ in this manner. More still are home on ‘disability’ because their doctor said that their pre-existing conditions put them at an elevated risk for Covid-19

I didn't mention that. These 'unemployed' people are still getting their health insurance covered by the company. Also, the company is paying them negative-PTO, and allowing them to accrue negative 40 hours every other week. And they didn't put a limit on it. So this 'unemployed' person is: 1). collecting state unemployment benefit 2). collecting 50% of pay directly from the company (and accruing negative PTO to offset it) 3). still covered with employer's health insurance coverage 4). getting an additional $600 per week from the US government And if they leave their job after all of this, the employer can only recover the negative PTO in small claims court, but with a $500 corporate attorney, it just won't be worth it. Some of these employees who are doing this are staying home because they have a 17 yr old at home. It isn't legal for the employer to ask!

I got a $1,700 check, and I don't work anyhow. My wife works and got only a $1,200 check. That was a fun look she shot me when she realized this. I think it's called the Employment Development Department in California that set up the rules that are allowing a lot of Californians to collect unemployment benefits simply because, and due to COVID, their child's daycare closed, and they cannot come in to work even though their employer wants them to. So they are reported by the state of California as 'unemployed': Fired? No. Laid off? No. Unemployed? Yes! Who understands the unemployment number? I find it to be a confusing number. My wife works in HR at a large healthcare company and in some areas as high as 40% of the staff won't come in to work for this reason, and adding the $600 weekly check on top meant that they were paid better to stay at home 'unemployed'. Now that schools and daycares are allowed to operate again, some have come back to work. But school is out for the summer and many are still staying home, arguing that their daycares haven't reopened (and some never will). To be clear, their employer has been begging them to come back to work. They are instead enjoying time with their kids.

Probably somewhat trolling. I am afraid that liberals are going to ban anything they don't like as "hate speech" though. As I pointed above, banning flags of traitors and groups that committed atrocities are quite common and not brought to you be raving "libruls". Yes, but that's only because the union won. If the confederacy had won, we would be the "traitors." Indeed, if the Nazis would have won WWII, they would calling our side for the "atrocities" too. Trump reminded us of what we used to do to traitors in the old days... and now the flag of traitors flies at his rallies.

Greg, I don't need a thesaurus to know you are a racist. But just so are fully aware of how racist this word is: "'This word is our N-word': Indigenous teacher asks Urban Planet to drop racial slur" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/offensive-term-remove-urban-planet-1.5305540 Does he also chew with his mouth open? Is consideration of others a 'Liberal' value?

This may be due to people of certain lifestyles, such as that of the bus driver or the hair dresser, who are most at risk to contract the virus in the first place, and while they have the virus are likely to spread it to the greatest number of people. Such people probably test at higher than 20%-30%. If they don't, throw all common sense out the window.

True. However... we have (in my wife's name) a $450,000 mortgage that was taken out early last year and already the rate is down a full 100 bps if we refinance now. In other words, the lower interest payment offsets the deflation. And that's actual cash flow versus the deflation occurring on paper.

Saying he is 'disingenuous' is a bit harsh and there are other explanations for his remarks: disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does: Such as not first considering your points made here, and doing so because you had not yet made these points:

Regarding Winter, Doesn't indoor heating create low relative humidity and therefore longer virus particle suspension times?

Have the inflows of capital changed?

While Obama was POTUS, he said that he would support a 28% corporate tax. Biden has also mentioned 28% over the past year.

This is an extinction level event.

Next week the gyms and bars open in California. Daycares and schools open too, people with kids can go to work. Much is changing and the increased traffic on the roads makes it obvious.

I'm taking my ball and I'm going home because you won't play the game I want to play. One of those sentences is a factual unbiased statement, the other is an opinion with a partisan narrative behind it. Yay news! I applied his narrative for cutting the funding to the WHO, which ties into his own words today: "Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms" Meanwhile Trump did not join with Australia and Europe to pressure the WHO to investigate China. Trump did not stick around to see that effort out, he put spin on it and pulled out. In other words, he wants the WHO to do what he demands instead of having an actual investigation into China. They would not play the game that he demanded they play, so he took his ball and went home.