The media and the Walz administration – pardon, largely, the redundancy – is waving around a bunch of polls by a bunch of left-leaning pollsters showing overwhelming support for keeping the state’s economy shut down until…um, they’ll get back to you on that.
I’ve noticed that an awful lot of those supporting a vapor-tight lockdown until (insert yet another set of Walz Administration goals – I have a hard time keeping up with ’em) have steady incomes that aren’t going anywhere. State workers, employees of schools and universities, non-profiteers in sectors with revenues that aren’t going anywhere.
But all that might change soon. From yesterday’s Governor’s presser:
Gov. Tim Walz says he’s not ready to rule anything out _ including layoffs and furloughs of state employees.
I’m gonna suspect that starts some DFLers thinking critically about risk aversion.
I think that state revenues falling off of a cliff is what caused our governor to lift the curfew 24 days earlier. In mid April there were a few headlines about the gov laying off some state employees and imposing a 20% pay cut on the remainder.
Government employees are not stupid (well, many of them). Only the true-blue union slobs are living with the delusion that a real economic meltdown won’t eventually reach them. Sooner or later, some will just have to go.
And MN governments could cut their size by *at least* 1/3 without any detectable loss of services. Take Saint Paul’s Human Rights department, with it’s six figure director and multi million dollar budget… triply redundant with the state and Ramsey county maintaining their own victim offices within 3 blocks of one another.
Sheriff’s offices within urban cores are expensive, expendable and redundant; have the local city cops put crime prevention ahead of ticket writing, divvy up unincorporated areas on their borders with the state patrol. Let the Sheriff keep his secretary and enough people to run the county jails; they do not have to be sworn officers, either.
Extend MN DL’s to 3 years, shitcan 3/4 of the staff and go electronic…hell, even us hillbillies have electronic renewals.
That’s just off the top of my head. Given the opportunity, any rational person could cut the fat.
Woolly: The U.S. will borrow $3 trillion in the second quarter – 5 times what it borrowed in a single quarter during the 2008 financial crisis.
For context, the U.S. borrowed $1.3 trillion in all of 2019.
Makes you wonder if everyone has been overreacting to deficits all these years.
Swiftee: Minnesota can’t even get the in person renewal software working. No way could it be done online!
Think of the howls of rage as public employee unions accounts run dry…
Extend MN DL’s by 3 years, to 8.
FTFM
Hawaii’s DL’s are good for 8 years. Used to be four years, but the state realized that a lot of Hawaii residents are transient, so why not charge them double the price of a four year renewal? Many of them will leave the state after a few years anyhow.
I have two vehicles with registrations that expired in the past month. I renewed them online, easy-peasy, took me all of five minutes. No more waiting in line at the DMV for me.
Woolly: The U.S. will borrow $3 trillion in the second quarter – 5 times what it borrowed in a single quarter during the 2008 financial crisis.
Predicting the course of the economy is a fool’s game, Emery.
I believe the idea behind the borrowing is that the Feds need to replace the vanished value from the economy. If I have one piece of retirement advice, it would be to purchase an annuity with inflation protection. Or stick with blue-ribbon equities.
Nobody knows nuttin’.
smh, think of the blow-back against public employee unions demanding their jobs be protected while 25% of the state is unemployed and millions of former middle class families are destitute.
During the Depression of the 30’s, fed money was fed directly to state and local governments (which is what the reprobates want now). Of course that meant whom ever happened to be in power at the time was destined to remain there because they controlled the jobs and the money (which is that the reprobates want now), and the unions played hand in hand with the corruption which is why they became so damn powerful.
In 1933, Roosevelt’s (ptooey) New Deal increased the US Debt to GDP to 39%. When the Depression ended in 1939, it was 42%.
Right now, it is at 107%. We’ve been approaching the point where Treasury bond interest will be unsustainable, *before* bat flu. People that think the Fed will just print off more sawbucks are idiots. There is no bail-out money this time.
I think union thugs are in for a “New, New Deal” that they are not gonna like.
If I have one piece of retirement advice, it would be to purchase an annuity with inflation protection.
Dunno if I agree MP. I’m watching for a depression, not inflation. But of course our mammoth debt will throw another variable in there.
Swiftee – I don’t disagree there’ll be backlash.
I think it’s the economic consequences of the shutdown that history will remember, not the death toll. But in the immediate term it’s the latter that is the greater human tragedy and political liability.
Swiftee — speaking as someone who took two semesters of economics at a small state college, meaning I am not qualified to balance a checkbook — I share your dread of depression and deflation. I think that it is easier to get out out of an inflationary spiral than it is to get out of a deflationary spiral. On the other hand, the amount of debt is not as important as the cost of servicing that debt. If I could borrow a million bucks at 0% for an infinite of time, I would be stupid not to do it. But a rise in interest rates could bankrupt us.
On the third hand, we often forget just how wealthy a country this is. We have a moderate climate, mineral wealth, fossil fuel wealth, agricultural wealth, an educated populace, excellent internal communications by rail, road, air, and waterway, and both an Atlantic and a Pacific seaboard.
I think that it is easier to get out out of an inflationary spiral than it is to get out of a deflationary spiral.
No kidding. Especially when our economy is on a ventilator.
As you point out, it’s going to be investors faith in our our inherent capacity and infrastructure that keeps us floating, albeit low in the water. Keep in mind, the EU is bracing for it’s own disaster and we are about to enter a new kind of relationship with China; will it look like the rape of Nanking or more like the re-colonization of Africa that’s been underway…who knows?
We’re in completely uncharted waters now. We’re sailing without sextant or compass. We’re not sure where the edge of the world is, but we do know here there be monsters.
I’ve missed a few daily briefings. Maybe one of you can fill me in.
Governor Walz issued Executive Order 20-20 which banned non-emergency medical treatment on the grounds we needed to keep the hospital beds open for Covid patients.
He justified Executive Order 20-35 (the first extension) on the grounds that a Surge of cases was coming in Late May – June – possibly July. If we lifted the Stay Home order early, the surge would come rushing forward to overwhelm the hospitals. His computer models predicted the Surge with a 95% confidence level.
Executive Order 20-48 extended the Stay Home again, to keep the Surge at bay.
Without it, thousands would be infected, hospitals would be overwhelmed, people would die in hallways and parking lots, untreated.
Executive Order 20-51 says we can start doing non-emergency medical treatment. Wait . . . what? What happened to the Surge? How can we start filling beds now, just two weeks before it hits?
What changed?
Scott Johnson quotes Walz: “If we do this right it will look like we’re wrong.”
No one thought to ask him “Then how will we know if you are wrong?”
Woolly wrote: “I believe the idea behind the borrowing is that the Feds need to replace the vanished value from the economy.”
I’ve been enjoying this new and popular myth that money can be printed up and spent, and that no cost need be paid.
You’d have to be an economist to believe that!
A software engineer examines the code used to produce Ferguson’s pandemic model: https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
It is junk. Lot’s of groovy details at the link, apparently it produces different results when you give it identical inputs (including the random seed).
You’d have to be an economist to believe that!
Modern economics is still dominated by the work of John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics modified, but not replace, classical economics. Despite what some on the right say, Keynes was not a command economy person. In his equation for GDP, government spending has no positive multiplier. But consumer spending does.
Anyway, Keynes believed that the reason recessions and depressions were long lasting is because certain parts of financial exchange were “sticky.” Employers did not want to lay off workers, even if it could not profit by their labor. Unions could shut down production. If a critical supplier went bankrupt and shut down, bankruptcies could cascade as the critical supplier’s customers scrambled to find a new source.
Keynes believed that the government could parachute in and use its power to borrow money to keep things from “sticking.”
Was he right? I don’t know. Nothing works long term. I hope it works this time.
MP, Fauchi and Birk used Ferguson’s bogus model to convince Drumpf to crater the US economy. I hope this story finds legs, but am not confident about it.
Global warming cultists are using similarly flawed software models to crater civilization. Both Ferguson and AGW cult share a common red flag; neither wanted to share the source code.
Scientists have nothing to hide. Only snake oil salesmen hide the recipe.
MP, Fauchi and Birk used Ferguson’s bogus model to convince Trumpf to crater the US economy. I hope this story finds legs, but am not confident about it.
Global warming kooks are using similarly flawed software models to crater civilization. Both Ferguson and AGW kooks share a common modus operendi; neither wanted to share the source code.
Scientists have nothing to hide. Only snake oil salesmen hide the recipe.
Jezuz. 2 attempts to make a post. Removed every word I thought might make Berg’s Mod Bot angry. 2 Moderations.
We wouldnt be here if our government wasn’t fraudulent. Capitalism is based on economic consequences, When you try to hide the cost of something (like the cost of government) by borrowing to pay for it instead of letting citizens feel (via taxation) the cost of big government is plain fraudulent.
Trump proclaimed he had the best economy and yet he still borrowed a trillion a year (again we should feel the cost of government so we can vote accordingly).
Walz can try and lay off state employees. A judge will slap an injunction against it so fast he’ll feel as if he just had a cotton swab rammed up his nose.