[Snorlax94]

I'd be really curious if anyone on this board works in the payments processing industry. I suspect those folks have the best data on how much sales and transactions are down across various industries. 

I can speak for what I have been seeing in Santa Clara County. I still eat out about 4 times a week, and I can say visitors have been dropping steadily every week. The very best restaurants still have lines out the door for Friday lunch. Other very trendy restaurants have gone from a 30 minute wait to 80% full (ate at Must Be Thai tonight). Our local Boudin has gone from about 1/2 full to about 1/3 full. Now even the shelves of Target are largely empty (Costco was the first one to start selling out).

My concern about suggestions like tax payroll holidays is that they benefit the owners and not employees, they are not targeted so they waste a ton of money, and actually, keeping people artificially employed in the hospitality industry might be a bad thing. I'd rather encourage businesses to furlough employees as necessary, and if a region was declared a special zone (Hawaii, Seattle, Bay Area, NY, so far), then the government should pay double unemployment insurance to furloughed employees, and the period of unemployment payments should be lengthened. 

Think about the hotel industry in Hawaii and Vegas -- is it really a good idea to give tons of dollars to hotel owners to keep open at 100% capacity? They will offer bigger and bigger discounts to encourage customers from all over the world. Rather, to reduce the spread of the virus, many hotels and casinos should shut down and others should reduce capacity temporarily, employees should be furloughed, and they should receive greatly increased unemployment benefits during their furlough.

In terms of their waste, at this time, I would think there is very little to no business impact to the vast majority of the United States. In the states with no cases of coronovirus, why would we be sending billions of dollars to those areas? If Kansas has 1 case and Mississippi has 0 cases, do we need to spend billions of dollars there? Plus, with the tax cuts of 2017, the US was already running a deficit of about 1 Trillion Dollars (984B in 2019) with a federal funds rate of 1.75% -- WITHOUT ANY RECESSION, so there are fewer resources and less room now during an emergency, so moreso than usual, any aid or stimulus needs to be targeted and wisely spent.

[Snorlax94]

I'd be really curious if anyone on this board works in the payments processing industry. I suspect those folks have the best data on how much sales and transactions are down across various industries. 

I can speak for what I have been seeing in Santa Clara County. I still eat out about 4 times a week, and I can say visitors have been dropping steadily every week. The very best restaurants still have lines out the door for Friday lunch. Other very trendy restaurants have gone from a 30 minute wait to 80% full (ate at Must Be Thai tonight). Our local Boudin has gone from about 1/2 full to about 1/3 full. Now even the shelves of Target are largely empty (Costco was the first one to start selling out).

My concern about suggestions like tax payroll holidays is that they benefit the owners and not employees, they are not targeted so they waste a ton of money, and actually, keeping people artificially employed in the hospitality industry might be a bad thing. I'd rather encourage businesses to furlough employees as necessary, and if a region was declared a special zone (Hawaii, Seattle, Bay Area, NY, so far), then the government should pay double unemployment insurance to furloughed employees, and the period of unemployment payments should be lengthened. 

Think about the hotel industry in Hawaii and Vegas -- is it really a good idea to give tons of dollars to hotel owners to keep open at 100% capacity? They will offer bigger and bigger discounts to encourage customers from all over the world. Rather, to reduce the spread of the virus, many hotels and casinos should shut down and others should reduce capacity temporarily, employees should be furloughed, and they should receive greatly increased unemployment benefits during their furlough.

In terms of their waste, at this time, I would think there is very little to no business impact to the vast majority of the United States. In the states with no cases of coronovirus, why would we be sending billions of dollars to those areas? If Kansas has 1 case and Mississippi has 0 cases, do we need to spend billions of dollars there? Plus, with the tax cuts of 2017, the US was already running a deficit of about 1 Trillion Dollars (984B in 2019) with a federal funds rate of 1.75% -- WITHOUT ANY RECESSION, so there are fewer resources and less room now during an emergency, so moreso than usual, any aid or stimulus needs to be targeted and wisely spent.