Or if individuals have resources they will create the jobs I agree that business didnt bring it solely upon themselves. But i wouldn't completely absolve them. After all, there are businesses that have been managed responsibly/ have adapted to the lockdown state. It all depends on the rescources of Households IMO . For people to have jobs to return to their employers will still need to have a reason to employ them. If they cant sell their good ( because no one is buying) then they arent going to employ people to make that product. IMO the way we have gone about this is ridiculous. We ( the government ) are paying business to keep people employed to do no work. why didnt we just give that stimulus to people and then let businesses decide whether to keep workers on payroll. The business can operate how they want and if they transition online then obviously they can pay their workers. Restaurants can pay the few employees they do need instead of trying to keep everyone on payroll. we have this fantasy that things are just going to snap back and having employers keep workers on payroll allows for an easier transition back .... that might be the case if the lockdown lasted like a week or two. But right now any small business that cant the funds are ****ed .... and its due to fixed costs and we are imposing an extra one. Our response has already been very pro business. out of these three groups .... big business, small business, and individuals which group has gotten the most help ? undoubtedly big business . I would love more help for small business and i cant help feel that giving individuals direct resources helps out small business too . Small business' now have extra demand through the lockdown ( the sentiment of supporting local business is pretty strong would you agree ) ( i.e more people trying to support local restaurants etc ) .... but IMO the biggest service direct cash to households does for small business is that those businesses know they have customers as the lockdown eases.
Certainly in the long-run, failed businesses will get replaced by new ones. But in the meantime, there will be massive job losses and upheaval. Everything flows both up and down - when businesses go under, they stop paying rent, which mean mortgages don't get paid and landlords go under. And employees lose jobs. Those spaces will take months or years to get re-leased and turned into new businesses. Governments stop collecting property taxes, meaning services have to get cut. And on and on. All for something that was created by government policy rather than a failing on the part of the business. I disagree. A surgeon who's not allowed to operate can't really adapt. A mall who's stores have all been closed can't do anything about their expenses. Groceries, some restaurants, etc have adapted - but largely because they were allowed to stay open. But it's basically luck of the draw on what industry you were in. Firing and re-hiring (potentially new) people is a nightmare for small businesses. There's immense training costs, you don't know who will be back, etc. It's much easier to keep the same people on board if possible. It's even worse for big businesses - if airlines let all their pilots go, for example, then when it's time to get back to flying, you have no idea who'll be back or how long it will take to bring on a new set of people. Keeping them employed lets them also keep their health insurance, pensions, 401-Ks, etc. Again, all of this would be new expenses that serve no economic purpose and don't benefit the country in any way. Agree on small business needing more help - especially rent and other non-payroll expenses. But people will have cash - the problem there is whether people will be comfortable going to movies or whatnot. Disagree on individuals - I think the ones in most need have gotten massive aid. All low-income employees that were laid off are making more now than a month ago - in many cases, about double what they were making prior. Student loans have been deferred. Many mortgages and car-loans are being deferred. Car insurance is giving rebates. Utilities are providing assistance. Since people don't have to go into work or anywhere else, they are saving on gas. Virtually no discretionary expenses. Those people are getting a chance to build savings and should come out of this way better financially than before - IF they have jobs to return to (thus the need to support businesses). Higher income employees are largely still employed - white-collar jobs are the ones most likely to be just transferred to remote work. The people that have fallen through the cracks are largely the low-paid essential employees who can't get laid off: people who work at grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, etc. They haven't lost money, but they aren't getting anything extra except the $1200. And then the highly paid people ($40+ per hour) that were laid off - they will net less in unemployment.
Of course, in a time of double digit unemployment I am going to leave a job to collect unemployment...
I just prefer to base my comments on reality, neither of which regarding unemployment seem to be rooted in.
The funny thing is, the one policy response that would've been viewed as the worst (no lockdown whatsoever), and that Trump was for at the beginning, probably would've lead to the best unemployment outcome of all. Granted, the hospitals might've been a total nightmare and the death count insanely high, but given the stats, 90+% would've either have gotten sick for a couple of weeks or not sick at all (if you are to believe the latest study out of Stanford showing that the true case count is 40-80x higher than the current registered cases).
Why shouldn't they? Trump said a billion gajillion times that he was resposnible for employment numbers. Now all of a sudden, after months of critical ineptitude, he is no longer responsible? **** that. You don't say "I alone can fix this" and "This american carnage stops now" and then weasel out when you help create your own nightmare world. If we actually had a legit crisis response we would not be experiencing a second great depression right now. Is South Korea experiencing 20% unemployment? No it is not. Becuase they had a legitimate response, and they will no doubt experience a dip in economic output but it won't be as severe as our brutal cliff. For us however, years of GOPneglect dating back to Reagan and 4 awful years of kleptocracy-Trumpism and the utter failure of the GOP's antigovernment policy has foreclosed that. The destruction of science, expertise, the safety net. If you're the type who believes it "had to be this way" in that the US had to have to very worst response in the developed world, you are doing it wrong. As a consequence a recesson turns into a Depression. Turns out giving trillions to rich people and "drowning the government in the bathtub" is not a sustainable strategy in terms of building a resilient society. WHo could have foreseen this? Oh right just everybody. **** yes we blame Trump. I blame the **** out of him. And if you don't, you simply haven't been paying attention, which is clear for most of his supporters.
LOL, just no. What data set leads you to believe you can have 2 million people die in 3-6 months and have "the best unemployment outcome"?
Because that would be the logical conclusion given the facts, no? In that scenario, as rooted in fantasy as it is, there is no shutdown, and it is a fact, no matter what dataset you use, that the vast majority survive this illness, either with mild or no symptoms at all. Not sure where I'm not connecting the dots on this. FYI, the latest study out of Stanford is claiming that the true case count is 40-80x higher that current registered.
Well it's pretty ridiculous to believe he is responsible for employment both ways. But that goes without saying. My comment was based in reality. Wait a minute, you are suggesting that Canada, the UK, Italy, Germany, and France all had the exact same response as Trump? Because their economies are absolutely in no better shape. South Korea is your answer? Do you actually know the details of their response? Do you think that level of invasion of privacy would've gone over here back in early February, when most didn't consider this a threat? Democrat or Republican. Hell no. Yes the response has been a gong show, but to say that prudent lockdown would not be catastrophic to the economy is not based in reality. Just ask Canada, they have 6 million people asking for some form of unemployment assistance. That is 25% of the workforce, and their response to this has been top notch.
I see, so your core assumption is that human behavior wouldn't change if there were literally dead bodies rotting in the streets due to lack of places to put them, the emergency health care sector entirely collapsed, and a huge chunk of the labor force couldn't function due to being suck or dead.... we'd maintain GDP, capital spending, employment etc at normal levels. People would just don plague masks and step over the bodies as they board their royal Caribbean cruise Seems like a "logical conclusion" to me!
Where did I say behavior would not change? Show me where I said economic numbers would be at normal levels? We were talking about the LEAST WORST EMPLOYMENT OUTCOME. Nowhere did I say that there would be no economic hit at all. You are totally skewing my comments and plain not reading what I wrote. No further comment. FYI - Huge chunk of the labor force dead? Again, not rooted in the facts. The vast majority of the deaths are not the working population.
No. To varying degrees they had better or worse responses. Italy had far less warning. UK, USA had that warning and are getting slammed because they are led by idiots that didn't heed the warning. . Germany was better prepared and is doing better. The US is among the very worst in the world by any metric. Yes, that is absolutely my answer. I would much rather be tilted towards the best containment regime than the absolute worst -frankly what the **** is this even supposed to mean here..... you would rather not have had a good early testing regime or any organized early response and instead have because 'murica? Privacy? Privacy is not even an issue when your regime is too incompetent to even provide tests despite nearly huge resources to do so. As for Canada their unemployment rate is half ours and their system is much more generous and inclusive. **** yes I would rather be them than led by an idiot who is the avatar of trying to destroy all of our defense mechanisms for this situation, and **** you if you think otherwise and for apologizing for it
We've been shut down since late March, though our customers dried up about 10 days before we officially shut down. It's sort of unclear right now if our industry as a whole will survive - escape rooms in some ways are an appealing alternatives to being in larger, less controlled entertainment environments (movies, restaurants, etc). But they also involve physically touching lots of things and being in enclosed spaces, neither of which may be popular in a post-covid19 world.
The argument that if we just let the virus run it's course versus lockdown I think is actually more of a Hobson's choice in that there will be significant economic harm either way. The idea that even if millions die most of those will not be productive members of society I don't think is quite so true. While the majority of deaths have been elderly this disease certainly has also taken many of those middle aged who still have decades of productivity and that even many people much younger have died too or been so ill it has taken out of the workforce while they fight the disease. We don't fully understand the disease but from what we know is that people with preexisting conditions are very vulnerable. Given how much obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions there is in the US among people of all ages there is a lot of risks. Even accepting that primarily the elderly are going to get ill and die it's not as though all elderly are just retirees doing nothing productive. There are plenty of people in their 60's and 70's that are still productive. Another issue is that elderly are our institutional memory and given that we still have a lot of old infrastructure and systems we still need that memory. For example. I saw a report that most computers processing unemployment checks were mainframes built in 70's and running the programming language COBOL. I doubt there are many below 50 who know how to program in COBOL or how to work a Zenith computer. If those people just die it will take a lot of resources to be able to train new people to maintain and transition to new technology those systems.. Also a massive health crisis of millions dying will overwhelm our medical system which counts for a significant part of our economy. It will also overwhelm our death system too of mortuaries, burials and while a lot of wealth might be spread out it will tie up much or our legal system in sorting out wills and inheritances especially from those who are dying without wills.
I hope the one thing that dies post-COVID is debt fueled Capitalism. The system should not default if demand drops.
