New answers tagged economy
3
Salary requests:Seasonal workers at the end of the season might go back to their country where there's a lower cost of life (at least for now).
Furthermore if they have to support a family, or save to buy a home, it is probably still at the prices of the country of origin, therefore they are probably willing to accept lower salaries.
Labour rights:Local ...
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Same data as other answers, but more abstractly...
Urban Sprawl -- unlike say 1800, modern communities have been either planned to, (or permitted to), develop into a way that drives small local farms out of business in favor of large farms near and far. Hence the existing pool of needed domestic workers live far from the farms, and the means of commuting ...
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There are significant efforts to recruit unemployed or underemployed locals for seasonal farm work.
In many cases seasonal farm work is actually skilled work, at least if it is to be done quickly and correctly (i.e. pick only the ripe fruit, not all of it). While that can be learned, teaching requires formal or more likely informal instruction. It won't be ...
20
I think these countries are in fact approaching this as a problem that has an obvious solution, as you suggest. The issue lies, however, with convincing their populace to work these seasonal jobs, and the inherent nature of seasonal agricultural work.
Firstly, the levels of unemployment are not necessarily going to be as bad as you might think, at least in ...
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I think, that you are hitting the very interesting theme.
Let's step aside a bit.
The core point of migrant's presence (I'm here referring to the majority, who are not highly-educated) in European countries is a huge amount of low-wage, easy jobs, which are not consumed/wanted by local youths who are much more committed to office work.
Their (those ...
4
France has since 2011 an official published plan to fight an influenza pandemic. It was prepared following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. As far as I can tell, it did not envision a complete lock-down of the type that has been put in place in many countries, possibly because the disease was not expected to overload hospital intensive care units to the same extent. ...
18
No, there are no detailed plans. Let me describe the current situation:
We are up in the air, flying by visual flight rules through a dense fog of unclear data. We try not to hit the mountain, but we don't know how high it is. Some people say it's just a hill like all the others. We don't even know our own altitude. We were forced to shut down one engine to ...
1
No, they haven't, and the reason is:
The epidemiologists know full well that the second wave is usually more deadly than the first, but they're reluctant to dwell on this because they have to focus on getting the population (and the politicians) to accept the restrictions that limit the effect of the first wave. The reaction to these restrictions, both in ...
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In New Zealand, where I live there is a pretty good long term framework as least if not a plan. Save lives manage the spread until a vaccine is available. The government has communicated that this 'Event' will last about 18 months maybe even 2 years. So has implemented a 4 Level system. https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-system/
Level ...
0
Argentina isn't officially in a state of 'indefinite' lockdown. Up until yesterday, the plan was that the lockdown would last until March 31st. Yesterday the president announced that the lockdown would be extended until April 12th.
Unofficially, the plan is very clearly that the plan changes according to the situation. But the official plan is that the ...
1
There is no real shortage of toilet paper production, though hoarding is going on at the distribution end, reinforced by media coverage of toilet paper issues.
The president may or may not have the levers to increase supply/production, I defer to other answers there. But perhaps a more relevant response, given that there is no shortage, would be rationing.
...
answered Mar 30 at 22:06
Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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12
To delve a bit into philosophy here, Trump demonstrates a distorted form of what Nietzsche called 'master morality,' which might seem alien to most people. Nietzsche's master morality values strength, power, beauty, victory, wealth: all the material/physical symbols of practical success are interpreted as moral goods, and all their opposites or lacks are ...
3
Unfortunately, in the current state of things the only "plans" that can be made are minor variations on
1) Hope someone comes up with a vaccine (real soon|someday).
2) Admit that if #1 doesn't happen, just about everyone is going to get it, lots of people will die, and we just have to hope that it's something you can only get once.
3) Lie to the public, ...
8
President Trump was able to do that with ventilators because of the Defense Production Act:
On March 18, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, President Trump issued an executive order that defined ventilators and protective equipment as "essential to the national defense", the standard required by the DPA.[17][18] Later that day, he indicated that ...
7
Yes, the IOC has such plan (yeah, I know it's not a country)
The postponed Tokyo Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8 in 2021, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed.
Of course, for a sports org is much easier to say "see you next year", relative to what country can do.
The US scrapped more immediate plans to "reopen by ...
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While discussions on lifting restrictions have already been started (here in Germany they were initiated by opposition parties), there is no sane politician that would announce a concrete plan. Even the opposition politicians initiating the debate do not want to name any dates, and would rather use a vague "as early as possible".
Nobody knows when the peak ...
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Trump is weighing the economy vs lives saved. That is his job
No leader wants to be in the position Trump is in. For instance, it has been stated that Winston Churchill knew in advance of a bombing raid on Coventry but chose to take no action. Ignoring the controversy over the assertion, this comment at the end is apropos
"But even if Churchill had known ...
1
A minor technical nuance that's bugging me is that the article is suggesting that the Federal Reserve can print money. That's misleading at best, and at worst just not true. The Federal Reserve can't print money (emphasis mine):
In terms of the actual, physical printing, no, the Fed doesn’t actually print or produce money in any form. Coins come from the ...
4
Reuters:
Dutch bank ING warns against further ECB money printing. [...]
“I don’t think QE is a recipe to support an uncertain environment,” Hamers told journalists, referring to so-called quantitative easing to print fresh money.
A lot of journalists just call QE "money printing", so there's your answer. (And yeah, what that NYT column you've ...
10
The Fed is the central bank of the United States, which is one nation despite the plural form in their name.
The ECB is the central bank of some (but not all) EU nations, and their operation is based on an international treaty. What the ECB can and cannot do is spelled out in that treaty, and the member states could always modify the treaty if they ...
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I can't speak for Rebecca's judgement in interpreting those words of Trump, but for instance a NYT article says:
“Our people want to return to work,” Mr. Trump declared Tuesday on Twitter, adding, “THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM!”
In essence, he was raising an issue that economists have long grappled with: How can a society assess ...
9
Japan has a strong industrial base and an export-led economy. Greece, beyond some tourism and some exports in the food industry, didn't have very much and imported a lot more than it could export. Some help was coming from the EU budget, and Greece had always been a net beneficiary of EU budget allocations, but it was not enough.
But the real weak point is ...
28
One little Japanese secret is this (alas the data was as of 2016):
Of Japan’s net debt of 130% of GDP, about half (66% of GDP) is owed to the Bank of Japan, which the government in turn owns.
By 2018 that percentage was down somewhat
the BOJ owns about 45 percent of the 1 quadrillion yen Japanese government bond (JGB) market, crowding out banks and ...
9
Percentages are misleading in this case. Looking at the raw GDP numbers paints a clearer picture (metrics from World Bank as reported by Google search)
Greece's peak GDP was 354B (0.35T) USD. It's around 200B (0.2T) now, and has been falling for about a decade.
Japan's GDP is just under 5T USD, with a peak just over 6T
The US (for comparison) has a GDP of ...
14
Brief - though partial - answer:
Japan is an independent state, which prints its own currency. Greece is a member of the EU, and its currency, the Euro, is controlled by EU bodies - It could not simply print more Drachmas to pay its debt as an (emergency) measure. The EU insisted it follow an austerity program, which only worsened the economic situation; ...
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Their economies are radically different otherwise.
Greece has a weak economy in most fields, with the exception of tourism. Japan is a manufacturing and scientific powerhouse.
Greece runs recurring high deficits and had rarely, if ever, shown inclination to stop doing so. While Japan was criticized at the start of their financial decline for insisting on ...
answered Mar 20 at 15:14
Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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1
Lowering interest rates brings future consumption to the present, it has zero net effect over the medium to long term. For example you can only buy a home to live in once in your life, if you do it now you won't do it further into the future. The central banks know this and they also know the day of reckoning will eventually arrive, where their pea and ...
3
The theory goes something like this:
If interest rates are lower, there's less reason to save. After all you earn less from interest.
If money isn't being saved, it's being spent.
More spending (= more buying = more business) helps the economy.
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By lowering interest rates the Fed's main goal is to prop up the stock market, and support US corporations.
This is achieved through the following effects:
- it encourages credit creation through bank lending, and because most money originates in credit it makes money cheaper and more widely available
- it lowers the rates of return on savings and thus ...
5
Cutting interest rates makes loans cheaper for banks. It's typically used in bad economic times
Why is it important? It helps keep banks liquid
The Federal Reserve cannot directly improve how our government is handling the novel coronavirus, and as I’ve written before, it can’t do a lot right now to stimulate the economy through low interest rates. Where ...
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The phrase exists in the sense that some people are using it with (between them if not the rest of us) some common or consensus understanding of what it means. That's how language works. One can grasp the meaning from the context too.
If you mean something like, "is it new or has it been in use for some time or how common is it?", you can use resources such ...
2
It's a term and it has been used
Steve Benen of NBC News used it recently
And finally, it's worth pausing to marvel at the right's occasional embrace of what I like to call "emergency socialism." Under emergency socialism, those opposed to socialism quietly put aside their entire political philosophy because of the urgency of the circumstances and the ...
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Depends what you mean by "an actual term". Any piece of language that is in use has been coined ( or "cooked up") by someone. that doesn't stop it from being an actual term.
The term "emergency socialism" seems to have some very limited currency prior to this year, for example in a document from 2017, dicussing the history of Socialism in the UK:
The ...
3
Google n-gram search finds zero mentioning of the term "Emergency Socialism" in any English literature since 1800. So it indeed appears to be a neologism.
But this does of course not say anything about whether or not it is appropriate to use socialist policies in response to a crisis situation. This is a matter of debate which should be settled by arguing ...
6
Cutting Social Security checks is political suicide for any party or politician. Cutting it to give a bailout to companies like Boeing is doubly so. Many people that receive Social Security rely on it to survive themselves, so cutting it would cause damage to the economy while trying to help the economy. Those receiving Social Security are by far the most ...
1
You have it backwards.
Inheritance is acquisition of wealth through no merit of one own. No personal choices or achievements factor to whom one is born. As such, it's inheritance that has no ethical basis or justification, which in turn makes correction for such injustice a right, just and ethical thing.
13
There's no loan here. What is happening is a buyback to inject money into the system (emphasis mine)
Today the Fed announced a $1.5 trillion liquidity provision to the interbank lending market — primarily in the form of “repurchase agreements.” The interbank lending market comprises the federal-funds market (in which the Fed actively participates on a ...
2
This very much depends on the architecture proposed and what the political drivers are.
A national consumer cryptocurrency intended to substitute cash operations while at the same time offering smart contract functionaltiy would need to solve the same problems that, for example, Ethereum 2.0 is still researching. Namely, scalability (number and frequency of ...
0
I can certainly understand where my own health insurance is concerned because with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), my health insurance premiums tripled in size the first year it took effect. Yes, there was a subsidy in place to help compensate for my expenses, but it still means that more money entered the health care marketplace courtesy of ...
0
Two quick things. I think health is going through two transition phases, one is baby boomers are placing huge demands on the sector and also companies are trying to maximise their profits for new drugs and devices while they can. Three hundred years from now drugs and medical equipment will be so commonplace you may have an MRI in your home
4
Cryptocurrencies have long been promoted as an escape from traditional, government-backed currencies, so the proposal of the Marshall Islands to create an official state cryptocurrency seems fairly odd at first. However, some research has been undertaken into how a nationally backed cryptocurrency could work - along with analyses of the associated positives ...
6
Because health insurance is intentionally designed to subvert market forces.
Competition of the sort that tends to lower prices requires meaningful consumer choices and accurate consumer knowledge. Health insurance subverts choice by coercing consumers into group policies tied to their employment, and restricting which providers the consumer can use and how ...
3
Existing cryptocurrencies have many problems, among them the fact that they are not really currencies for many legal purposes. Having a recognized, sovereign nation lend to legitimacy might help a bit.
Cryptocurrencies are just as faith-based as most other currencies, so moving early and establishing a name (and an unique selling point, see above) might ...
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A general reality is that under bad management, costs will always rise to meet or exceed the resources allocated. Pumping money into poor management only incentivizes and grows the bad management.
If your toaster oven is worth about $20 and you have a buyer at that price, but you can sell it to the government for $40 (half the price being taxpayer-subsidized)...
9
Let me answer the question at the end, which is really simple.
How do existing nationalized healthcare systems seek to mitigate this issue?
In most countries where healthcare is universal and free-to consumer (i.e. they don't specifically make payments for individual treatments) the funding comes from mandatory contributions, usually levied on employers ...
10
removing the ability of private health insurance companies to compete will give rise to a natural monopoly in the industry, leading to an overall increased cost to the taxpayer.
Emphasis mine - and this is where the free-market assumption is utterly wrong.
Private health insurance, private hospitals, and private everything has one focus in mind. Return on ...
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The price of healthcare has about quintupled since 1970. That's after adjusting for inflation.
We can speculate on why, but the question of the healthcare debate in the United States, maybe the only question, is how to distribute those losses.
And distribute them we must: neither the market nor the electorate (which are really the same thing in the end, ...
8
The premiums are there to cover the cost of drugs, hospital prescription drugs, reagents and lab testing compounds, and hospital machinery, mainly.
US pharma companies invest a great amount of their funds into stock buyback, purchasing their own shares to satisfy investors and pay corporate exec bonuses.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/...
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The wrong question is being asked. For starters, the term, "Universal health care" is a misnomer and is not what proponents of socialized medicine have in mind. What the OP is really asking about is why a totally government-run healthcare system is inferior to a totally free-market healthcare system.
What you'll find by studying the US healthcare system is ...
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Maybe I read too fast, but I didn’t see this. After working ten years for a large non-profit health care system, much of that in the financial department, it is my unproven opinion that part of it is because the insurance companies make contracts with doctors to accept certain amounts, and there’s a limit to how low a doctor will go before refusing the ...
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