
U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says - sndean
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-22/fed-s-bullard-says-u-s-jobless-rate-may-soar-to-30-in-2q
======
lordnacho
Here's something I've been thinking about for a few days.

Suppose the government does a massive bailout of everyone. They guarantee
jobs, they give everyone money so they don't run out.

And it works. In a few months from now, the economy turns out to have just hit
a speed bump and everything is back to how it was.

What does that say about the economy? I mean if we can stop working and
basically just lend ourselves money, and we're fine, what else is fine?

Why don't we borrow some money to fix climate change?

What about poverty, why would that exist at all?

Should we have a reckoning with all the people who said austerity was a good
idea?

~~~
vanniv
The shortage of money is not the problem.

The problem is that we have stopped making stuff.

Once the warehouses all empty, there will be no more products. All those nice
things you are used to buying to make your life nice and safe and clean and
fun will be gone.

The infrastructure to even make the stuff will decay and be gone.

Printing money doesn't make products. It doesn't repair factories. It doesn't
prevent the coming collapse of the prosperity we have enjoyed these last 100
years.

~~~
smacktoward
What it _does_ do is shore up demand, which is why all those products got made
in the first place. They got made because someone had an expectation that they
could sell them. Nobody is going to be making anything to sell if the entire
population has no money.

This is why it's essential that relief go to directly to people, and that we
free those people up enough from expenses that aren't directly economically
productive (things like rent, say) as we can. We want people to have money to
spend, so producers will have a reason to go on making things to sell them.

~~~
whatsmyusername
Call me a doomer but if the demand for Honey Boo Boo, Keurig Cups, and
Tuxedoes for Dogs died off I wouldn't be upset, economic devastation be
damned.

Climate Change says _tick tock tick tock_

~~~
na85
I'm certain that when you were coming of age your parents' generation rolled
its collective eyes just as hard.

Rest assured your pop culture of choice is just as odious to someone as Honey
Boo Boo is to you.

------
cultus
It's absolutely insane that the US isn't even guaranteeing sick leave in all
this, let alone a significant portion of lost income. I guarantee you it is
cheaper than a depression.

~~~
_bxg1
Or healthcare. Which that 30% will lose when they lose their jobs. During a
pandemic.

------
Mountain_Skies
For context, the highest unemployment rate was during the Great Depression,
24.9%. The methodology likely has changed since then but it's still sobering
to think we might soon be in that territory. Hopefully this will be shorter
lived and not have a great war as a catalyst for ending.

~~~
epicureanideal
It would be nice if they start a Great War Against Disease, and spend as many
trillions as needed so no one ever gets the flu, any cold, or any other
disease ever again.

People keep saying "that's not possible" but there are already a lot of
companies working on it.

Show me a place I can make $300,000 working on curing diseases and I'd happily
spend my life working on it. At the moment making websites pays better.

~~~
stubish
Meaningless jobs will always pay better. If IT jobs in disease eradication
paid $300,000, Silicon Valley would be paying $500,000 to keep the bright
minds keeping consumerism alive. You have to pay a lot to get people who want
to contribute to society to spend their time not contributing to society. cf.
Big Tobacco & Oil.

~~~
epicureanideal
I think it's more that something in the economic system is just mismanaged or
broken.

If I could take a pill and get an extra year of healthy life, I would pay a
lot for that pill.

If I could take a pill (or vaccine, or whatever) and never get sick again, I
would pay a lot for that pill.

If you could make 7.5 billion people never get sick, I assume that would make
you far richer than Jeff Bezos.

Surely these solutions and others are worth more than a lot of the other
things we buy. But our system isn't set up to develop them, it seems. We're
set up to pursue quarterly earnings statements, rather than 10 or 20 year
goals that would dramatically improve our lives.

Also, I'm not sure that our current meaningless software jobs are actually
completely meaningless. We are actually making tasks easier and faster, which
in some way does contribute to society advancing faster and maybe someday
being better able to pursue other goals.

Life is significantly different and at least in some ways better thanks to
Amazon (get anything anywhere), Google (search everything), Wikipedia (basic
knowledge about almost anything), the internet (communicate with anyone),
Coursera (learn basic skills on many topics), and so on. And even the simple
e-commerce websites for some family business, made by a "web developer" for
$500 in 1998, helped push us a little bit toward a more discoverable and
efficient economy. Which does help us get a little bit more efficient overall,
for goals we might pursue later.

Or at least that's how I convince myself to keep doing what I'm doing.

------
kdkdk0
Optimizing for the species survival is more valuable than some whiny landlord
demanding rent.

Growing up a poor person going to the city was a real trip.

Life’s exciting things are very different emotionally when you accept
Switzerland isn’t an option.

Not having health insurance didn’t stop us from playing with rockets.

Words and feelings are not necessarily a connection to reality. Internal
anxiety isn’t truth.

Western culture seems addicted to the notion the world needs it to spread its
gospel across the globe, or life isn’t worth living.

Consume in accordance with the demands of high finance!

An exceptional nation brought to its knees by the idea iPhone 2021 not being
released is a sign of the end times.

------
m0zg
I would like to see the exact, unedited quote if you expect me to believe
this. Right now this looks like fake news, like reports of Mnuchin saying
"we're gonna have 20% unemployment" the other day, which Mnuchin himself
denied.

There's simply no way someone in Bullard's (or Mnuchin's) position would say
anything as dramatic as the article implies as categorically as the article
implies.

There is no corroboration that I could find. Everything else references the
Bloomberg article, which, in turn, references nothing at all.

~~~
nkurz
Yes, a unedited quote would be useful. But I did find one corroboration that I
think elevates this above "fake news" status. On the St Louis Fed's website,
there's a list of James Bullard's media interviews. At the top is this article
with the "30%" figure in the title: [https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-
president/media-intervie...](https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-
president/media-interviews). While it's possible that was just an intern who
scans the news and adds things, this certainly makes it seem like Bullard
officially endorses the 30% number.

~~~
m0zg
It's a link to the same Bloomberg article. :-) It doesn't make it any less
fake.

------
smileysteve
The restaurants near me have all laid off their staff, closed doors, i suspect
they won't pay any outstanding bills; Their rent probably isn't even due yet.

I hope that on the reboot we require some "social security" in businesses;
healthcare benefits, 2 weeks severance, and retirement savings seem like
minimums; Frankly, these requirements should have been included in the 21% tax
cut.

~~~
marcofatica
If you suspect they won't pay outstanding bills, what makes you think they'll
pay severance and health benefits in a downturn?

~~~
lgessler
I think GP means the government should provide these.

~~~
smileysteve
and if not, require it as an accounting practice like pensions.

~~~
lonelappde
Which are an unmitigated disaster. What happens during inevitable bankruptcy?
Social security needs to be administered by society, not business. Tax
business if you want.

------
ReptileMan
The question is how fast it will come down to full employment once this is
over.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Denmark (I think) said that they'll freeze the economy, meaning that the state
covers everything. Once over, it starts as if nothing happens. People will
have no time to look for new jobs, they'll go to old ones and hopefully every
company starts spending to support each other

~~~
samsonradu
Sorry but I just can’t see this play out.

Consumption will suffer. When foreign tourists stop booking rooms in
Copenhagen hotels, how/why keep people on the payroll? Also, isn’t it
dangerous to distort the market to such a level? Maybe there are more
productive activities for those employees to engage.

There will be dislocations of the workforce. Considering the ongoing crisis I
would take official statements with a grain of salt also. They need to
convince people to comply with the rules.

~~~
hakfoo
If they're pausing the nonessential economy, I don't see where it stops "I
have a biology degree and experience, I'll transition from a paused job into a
research team working on Covid-19".

What it stops is "I need to perform some trivial make-work job because the
hotel/bar/unessential retail I used to work at shut down, and otherwise I
starve and get evicted, so I'm going to traipse around and weaken quarentine
procedures."

------
hprotagonist
January 23rd, 2021: President Biden has signed into law the COVID-19 Works
Progress Act as the first act of his presidency. It was passed easily in the
democratically controlled house and senate the day following his inauguration.

Calling for an immediate federal hiring surge at all levels of the newly
implemented public health services, President Biden said “This act will
restore salaries, dignity, and comprehensive health coverage with sick leave
to our nation’s brave citizens who have by no fault of their own been left out
to dry during the initial response to the pandemic. Employing many of the
currently unemployed to operate our fast turnaround testing clinics and
disease screening centers will drive our economy and our continued fight
against this disease.”

~~~
andrekandre
please correct me if i am wrong, but i haven’t seen any evidence that joe
biden would do such a thing

he’s been pretty against medicare for all on grounds it “costs too much” just
as one example, and just recently called for companies to stop stock buy-backs
during covid-19 [0] but nothing like that ↑ afaik...

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/biden-
cal...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/biden-calls-on-
ceos-to-refrain-from-stock-buybacks-for-this-year)

~~~
hprotagonist
[https://joebiden.com/healthcare/](https://joebiden.com/healthcare/)

“ Giving Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option like
Medicare. If your insurance company isn’t doing right by you, you should have
another, better choice.”

[https://joebiden.com/covid19/](https://joebiden.com/covid19/)

“ A decisive economic response that starts with emergency paid leave for all
those affected by the outbreak and gives all necessary help to workers,
families, and small businesses that are hit hard by this crisis. Make no
mistake: this will require an immediate set of ambitious and progressive
economic measures, and further decisive action to address the larger macro-
economic shock from this outbreak. Biden believes we must spend whatever it
takes, without delay, to meet public health needs and deal with the mounting
economic consequences.”

~~~
andrekandre
thanks for the links!

that most appreciated, and a little encouraging (as much as a campaign page
can be i suppose, caveat emptor and all that)

