<story><title>Canada extends financial aid for millions for two more months</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-extended-trudeau-1.5613782</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexashka</author><text>In the short term, it&amp;#x27;s great.&lt;p&gt;It really doesn&amp;#x27;t take much to tell banks to add numbers to people&amp;#x27;s bank accounts.&lt;p&gt;What it&amp;#x27;s really doing is subsidizing everybody that works in or is tied to  non-essential face-to-face service industry, by everyone else.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really not even that interesting, other than seeing how easily frazzled people are by the slightest calamity - why is non-essential services taking a vacation for a few months at the expense of everyone else supposed to be a major event with long-lasting consequences?&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have a family and you lose your job. If you have savings for a couple of years, you can take it easy for a while and then go look for a job and find one 6 months later. Was anything other than your ego bruised by the loss of the job? No, not really.&lt;p&gt;Why doesn&amp;#x27;t this analogy translate to what&amp;#x27;s happening with covid? I&amp;#x27;m guessing because not only have you lost your job, but you owe tens of millions in gambling debts and spent half your waking hours convincing various factions to give you some extra time to come up with the money.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what the economy looks like to me and I find it difficult to be sympathetic - people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time. It is within my lifetime that I&amp;#x27;ve gone from owning 2 t-shirts to 20 and I have no idea why. I can go back to wearing 2 and my life will be the same - I just hope others can see the silver lining in all this and not go back to living frivolously.</text></item><item><author>lux</author><text>As a Canadian business owner, we&amp;#x27;re super lucky to be in Canada right now, and for the supports that have been put into place for people and businesses alike.&lt;p&gt;Our company was luckily not hit badly enough to qualify for the 75% support on salaries (we did get a line of credit!), but I know several others who needed it and got the support they needed which is great!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not perfect - rent supports for storefronts, restaurants, bars, etc. could be better, for example - and it won&amp;#x27;t save everyone or every business, but it&amp;#x27;s made a difference in many lives and helped us stay home and quarantine more effectively without so much worry about making ends meet.&lt;p&gt;I just hope more Canadians remember it was the NDP fighting for a lot of these supports come election time :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tempestn</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s reasonable for individuals to aim for a few months of emergency funds.  It&amp;#x27;s not reasonable to expect main street businesses to have cash on hand to cover many months of near zero revenue.  Most small businesses just don&amp;#x27;t have the margins for that to be viable.  If you expect every individual restaurant to be able to weather a period of months when no one goes to restaurants without any kind of assistance, the only restaurants you&amp;#x27;ll get will be large chains.&lt;p&gt;Much like running government &amp;#x27;like a business&amp;#x27;, the analogy of running a business &amp;#x27;like a household&amp;#x27; only takes you so far.  They&amp;#x27;re fundamentally different things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Canada extends financial aid for millions for two more months</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-extended-trudeau-1.5613782</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexashka</author><text>In the short term, it&amp;#x27;s great.&lt;p&gt;It really doesn&amp;#x27;t take much to tell banks to add numbers to people&amp;#x27;s bank accounts.&lt;p&gt;What it&amp;#x27;s really doing is subsidizing everybody that works in or is tied to  non-essential face-to-face service industry, by everyone else.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really not even that interesting, other than seeing how easily frazzled people are by the slightest calamity - why is non-essential services taking a vacation for a few months at the expense of everyone else supposed to be a major event with long-lasting consequences?&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have a family and you lose your job. If you have savings for a couple of years, you can take it easy for a while and then go look for a job and find one 6 months later. Was anything other than your ego bruised by the loss of the job? No, not really.&lt;p&gt;Why doesn&amp;#x27;t this analogy translate to what&amp;#x27;s happening with covid? I&amp;#x27;m guessing because not only have you lost your job, but you owe tens of millions in gambling debts and spent half your waking hours convincing various factions to give you some extra time to come up with the money.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what the economy looks like to me and I find it difficult to be sympathetic - people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time. It is within my lifetime that I&amp;#x27;ve gone from owning 2 t-shirts to 20 and I have no idea why. I can go back to wearing 2 and my life will be the same - I just hope others can see the silver lining in all this and not go back to living frivolously.</text></item><item><author>lux</author><text>As a Canadian business owner, we&amp;#x27;re super lucky to be in Canada right now, and for the supports that have been put into place for people and businesses alike.&lt;p&gt;Our company was luckily not hit badly enough to qualify for the 75% support on salaries (we did get a line of credit!), but I know several others who needed it and got the support they needed which is great!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not perfect - rent supports for storefronts, restaurants, bars, etc. could be better, for example - and it won&amp;#x27;t save everyone or every business, but it&amp;#x27;s made a difference in many lives and helped us stay home and quarantine more effectively without so much worry about making ends meet.&lt;p&gt;I just hope more Canadians remember it was the NDP fighting for a lot of these supports come election time :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zrobotics</author><text>OK, expecting multiple years of savings is just flat-out unrealistic. Even the more hardcore financial advisers only recommend 9 months.&lt;p&gt;Plus, who owns 2 t-shirts? Are you doing laundry daily? Hate to break it to you, but that isn&amp;#x27;t exactly great for the environment either. My father grew up poor as hell on a farm, and even he had 6 shirts. To this day he will comment that they were darned to the point of being patchwork, but owning 20 shirts doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a huge extravagance. Even with homemade clothing, that isn&amp;#x27;t a ridiculous wardrobe.&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a consumerist culture and people buy stuff they don&amp;#x27;t need, but in the context of this article &amp;amp; the pandemic the people receiving this aid need it. I don&amp;#x27;t mean to be negative, but there are 0eople making the decision between paying rent and eating; calling out consumerism for this is in poor taste.</text></comment>