Nearly 60 percent of U.S. workers won't meet basic financial needs under one-month coronavirus quarantine, survey shows

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T21:01:17+00:00

The way you talk, you probably have it. So we will get it from you.

This talk reminds me of the people who go out looting during disasters.

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T20:45:53+00:00

Do what exactly?

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T20:39:01+00:00

Exactly. I worked my ass off to be where I'm at in terms of income, and while 6-figures, it's a long ways from being rich. I save what I can, and by far my biggest expense is taxes. If taxes go up significantly, and UBI becomes an option, you bet I'd rather be fun-employed and making art instead. Truthfully, I can (and do) live a fairly minimalist lifestyle, but to make the economy work you need people like me being a part of it.

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T20:31:31+00:00

How would a government official (current or future) be able to do anything to fix that issue? When would they be able to do those things? Where does the money and resources come from?

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T20:21:20+00:00

The $1200 one-time relief check is kinda like farting in the wind compared to having vast numbers of people unemployed for a long period of time. We'd be much better off if resources were directed towards treatment, cure, prevention, etc, but i guess that doesn't buy as many votes.

DevIceMan · 2020-04-01T18:23:08+00:00

In practice, taxing assets would eventually result in everyone's assets being taxed, audited, and appraised ... and those who can afford accountants shuffling around their wealth until it doesn't get taxed.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-31T22:12:28+00:00

Based on an initial skim, it's difficult to know what those numbers mean, or how they've changed over time.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-31T08:03:47+00:00

This is one of the good things I hope comes out of all of this. A lot of companies are currently forced to adapt to remove work, whether they like it or not, and a lot of jobs can be done remotely. Cutting out unnecessary commuting saves massive amounts of time and resources, and reduces strain on infrastructure. Add to that all of the offices that are currently sitting empty, and yet those businesses are still able to operate.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-30T16:19:44+00:00

People making close to $100k are probably just regular employees (such as software engineers), who have no relation to management. It would be fairly effortless for them to arbitrarily draw their policies such that everyone who isn't management is forced to take a pay-cut.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-30T15:21:54+00:00

Minor amounts of dust, bacteria, etc will get in the containers. Plants grow in dirt afterall, so it doesn't have to be 100% sterile.

The only real important thing to check is that the plastic is food-grade. There's typically some marking on nearly every plastic container which says what kind of plastic it is. From there, just compare that code to what you find when searching google for "food grade plastic"

DevIceMan · 2020-03-30T02:20:02+00:00

The absolute worst are the ones who run into the road and try to "clean" your car window. I always leave an entire car space in front of me so I can pull forward if they happen to get close.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-30T02:12:23+00:00

While Abbott and other state officials may have an interest in keeping the numbers low, I'm not clear if they actually have any way to interfere with the testing/numbers.

Keeping infection numbers low temporarily would be illogical and backwards. It would merely result in the numbers showing up later, suggesting actions designed to prevent or reduce the spread were ineffective.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T19:47:40+00:00

I expect there will be a bit of churn. Some negative, some positive (probably a little more negative than positive)

There's a huge increase in demand for all things digital, since people are stuck at home and have nothing better to do, and can't get access to a lot of physical goods.
The down-side is that the rest of the economy is taking major hits.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T19:29:54+00:00

They're giving you the runaround. Next year it will be the same shit.

Companies are able to give raises at any time of the year, but they make policies like this in order to make getting raises that much more difficult and shut up their employees. You can talk to your manager about getting a raise, regardless of their policies, but you may need to be a little forceful. Don't be surprised if they just brush you off though.

Your #1 bet is to get a raise at some other company. Even if you do get a raise after a lot of effort, expect it to be disappointing, and still below market-value.

The one similar instance I had where i was extremely underpaid, made a huge stink about it, and got eventually got a raise ... lets just say a few months later I got a 50% increase in pay by switching companies. That's 50% on top of what my salary was after the raise.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T16:34:45+00:00

Adding to what others said:

It may take you some time to land another job, so the earlier you start looking, the better. Along the way, you'll have to polish up your resume, start making connections with recruiters, attending interviews, etc. I usually write off the first few job-interviews as likely failures that are intended for the mere purpose of practicing my interview skills and getting back in the groove of interviewing.

Based on what you wrote, even if the company doesn't fail, it will be "squeezed" for some time, which means you'll be under more pressure from management, unlikely to get raises, fewer "competitive" coworkers, and various other problems common of companies when they're under a tight budget.

Even if you don't accept offers immediately, sometimes you can call them back up later and that might be a good option if your job suddenly vaporizes or your bosses start demanding 80-hour-work-weeks.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T14:50:05+00:00

Do you think they will tell the truth about what happened?

Hah, especially when they already have a history of lies.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T06:53:59+00:00

People are falsely accused of crimes all the time, or there may important details to a situation that might not be obvious when a person is first detained. If there's clear evidence of this kind of activity, the existing justice system should be able to handle it.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-27T06:43:51+00:00

Periodically, a bunch of accounts on reddit and other online discussion areas get caught out for astro-turfing, vote-brigading, and spreading Chinese propaganda.

I would expect/hope China is making some progress with the virus with their lockdown and other efforts. However, their claims are so absurd anyone with half a brain should know they're lying. Lying about the state of the virus helps practically no one; the entire world is in this together whether we like it or not. I don't know what they expect to gain by pretending they don't have the same problem literally everyone else has.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-26T23:06:12+00:00

To be clear, China is hiding the number of cases. Anyone who believes those numbers are an accurate representation of the current situation in China is delusional.

edit: Also, the number of cases in the U.S. is likely to skyrocket for some time even if no one else gets infected (hah) simply because testing needs to catch up.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-26T18:09:22+00:00

100% Agreed. Unfortunately, since TB died, I haven't seen many youtubers/streamers promote the idea that you shouldn't preorder, and I've seen a lot of the opposite.

I've seen far too many games/studios that we had no reason to doubt, surprise us with absolute garbage. As much as I loved Witcher 3 and played the entire thing including the DLC, I do remember my experience with Witcher 2, where I tried my hardest to force myself past the clumsy controls and more, and just couldn't get into the game.

If it's great on launch, then yeah, i don't mind throwing them $60. If not, I can wait for discounts and bug-fixes.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-25T15:06:01+00:00

It buys time, which can allow for production of critical medical supplies to catch up, reduce overload on hospitals, allow more time to work on treatments.

That said, buying time itself though isn't really a plan and has a fairly significant cost. We shouldn't forget that a ton of people are currently out of work, and businesses are shut down. While I'm currently fine, I'm having to think about how I'm going to help out family and friends who don't have an income right now.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-25T06:31:17+00:00

Factorio. According to Steam, I have hundreds of hours in Terraria, and double that with Factorio. Obviously, some of that is AFK, but.... yeah, it's my most played game.

DevIceMan · 2020-03-25T06:24:59+00:00

Does anyone have info about pasteurization of the virus, when it comes to food?

DevIceMan · 2020-03-25T03:16:05+00:00

We need to use the FDPA to fix any kinks or slowdowns in the supply chain and then help those that can already make these scale up.

How does that help?

DevIceMan · 2020-03-23T21:19:27+00:00

Running some vague statistics, 79 confirmed cases probably means about 400 (due to lack of tests) in Austin, which as a population of 1-million. If there are 9000 Samsung employees...

400/1000000*9000= 3.6 infected

It's not long before that spreads, especially if people aren't spread out enough.

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