My tax refund is $8. Next year (if I’m still here) I will have to pay.
Wow! A 3 month interest free loan. If interest rates were higher, I’d jump for joy.
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We have a separate thread for that topic, which like most tax matters and IRS stuff has its own special complications and convolutions. Couple of good posts over there.
Too bad the cause of the free loan also caused rates to be zero…
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Getting hard to keep track of all these topics that tend to cross into each other’s subject… I tried to find a more relevant one, but thought we kept the tax filing updates here since they were related to the virus.
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Agreed.
Sorry you had trouble. Here is a link:
Even posted a personal “hello” message for you over there! 
Your input will certainly be valuable and welcome.
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The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming
Novel “means it’s new. That there is no human being in the world that has immunity as a result of having had it before. That means it’s capable of infecting 7.8 billion of our brothers and sisters.”
“…did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. But what you’re hearing now [to self-isolate, close schools, cancel events] is right. Is it going to protect us completely? Is it going to make the world safe forever? No. It’s a great thing because we want to spread out the disease over time.”
“By slowing it down or flattening it, we’re not going to decrease the total number of cases, we’re going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there’s nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months. Eventually, we will get to the epidemiologist gold ring.”
“That means, A, a large enough quantity of us have caught the disease and become immune. And B, we have a vaccine. The combination of A plus B is enough to create herd immunity, which is around 70 or 80 percent.”
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I’ll just say if this drags out 18 months before we can leave our homes and life can resume, CPS is going to be one very busy agency… Three days in, and I went grocery shopping in an empty store for nothing in particular, just to get away for a bit.
But on the other hand, today’s young people seem to have been training for social isolation all their lives.
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Here’s today’s young people… Clueless Spring Breakers Vow To Party On Despite Coronavirus Warnings
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NYC hospitals already hitting capacity limits. Looks like they didn’t shut down soon enough.
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I already scheduled my tax payment for 4/15. Don’t see a lot of point to delay it for 3 months.
I really hope we don’t end up like Italy. It’s getting really depression and worrying.
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I thought herd immunity is more like over 90%+ vaccination or immunity but I could be wrong.
I sound like a broken record about testing but I just have such a hard time getting over such a huge FAIL. I’m sure someone was screaming their head off to hurry the @$!% up. I’m sure we will find out a lot more but it wouldn’t fix anything now except why is the number of test still so tiny after more than 2 weeks of emergency?
This gets into far more strategy than I think the government (regardless of who’s in charge) is capable of. But to an unknown extent, wide-spread testing can be counter-productive - a negative test gives people a false sense of security. It would inherently relax the measures (or, individual compliance with the measures) that are currently controlling the spread.
I’ve said before - the panic will prove to be excessive, but the panic itself is what will render it excessive. Widespread testing would remove a lot of the panic that comes from not knowing - and that’s when I would start to get really concerned.
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Yes.
“A successful shelter-in-place means you’re going to feel like it was all for nothing, and you’d be right: Because nothing means that nothing happened to your family. And that’s what we’re going for here.”
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That doc’s speech is great for people who aren’t taking the virus seriously, or those who just need a simple, overly dramatic, presentation. For people, already on edge (you know who they are),I believe it will only increase anxiety, depression, fear.
Unfortunately, that’s a lot of the point. The “desperate” measures like a lock-down, for me or you it might not have been necessary at all. It’s those people who are still packing the beaches every day that are to blame for the effects we’re seeing today, as much as the virus itself.
I still think it’s questionable to have closed schools, force restaurants to close, etc. But I understand that, to some degree, it’s happening because a certain segment of the population is leaving us with little other choice.
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The segment who might be spreading the virus without any symptoms?
Agree. If people won’t stay home, the only solution is closing the stuff they’re going out for. People in my city of New Orleans kept going out to bars well after it was prudent to stay home, but before the mandatory shutdown almost a week later.
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The United States needs large trade and fiscal deficits to maintain its standard of living.
If other countries aren’t producing surplus goods and services then there may not be enough goods to export to the United States. If it comes down to us getting goods or China getting goods, then China is going to keep their domestic production. If everyone figures this out they will hoard even more than they’re doing now. We will be left high and dry with empty shelves and not enough manufacturing capacity to support our standard of living.
Additionally, because of the large national debt and huge fiscal deficits we require countries to constantly buy our US tresuries. If countries don’t have surplus savings because they are spending money fighting the virus, then there is no excess savings for us to borrow. They might even start selling treasuries because they need the money to prop up their economy.
Previously all the inflation the Federal Reserve created went into the asset markets (real estate, stock market, bonds, bitcoin, gold, etc). That helped keep a lid on consumer inflation (besides the housing prices). All of the inflation the Federal Reserve is creating now is going into consumer goods and they are buying up everything.
Add in the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars of new money and all this could be highly inflationary… way more money chasing fewer goods.