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A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

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Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#161

Post by clairity »

School-Cotton wrote: post #118
epistasis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely without precedent, in that the 1918 flu pandemic was only a century ago. We don't have a ton of good data, but some researchers are looking at its effects in the US: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/pandemic-... But I do agree 100% with taken current economic estimates with a huge brain of salt, as our economic machine is far different from the past.

Were virtually all businesses shut down for weeks or months during the 1918 flu pandemic? All I can find is reports of localized shutdowns in certain cities. If not, I don't think you can say it's comparable.

> "Were virtually all businesses shut down for weeks or months... If not, I don't think you can say it's comparable."

that's the (over-)reaction. the precedent is the more-virulent-than-usual infectious disease. the precedent is the need to break the infection chain to slow/stop the pandemic.

you wouldn't expect the reaction to be 'comparable' after 100 years. you'd hope that we'd have developed methods to better assuage fear and panic though.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#162

Post by credit_guy »

hilbertseries wrote: post #157
Jagat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish flu was very closely intertwined with the war, because of which people were kept in the dark almost everywhere. Lack of reporting translates to lack of awareness of the pandemic which translates to people working and shopping fearlessly. The difference now is that people know there's a pandemic, and many would be averse to go out working, or shopping even though the scale is much lower than that of Spanish fl…

During the Spanish flu pandemic, entire cities and towns would get sick and everything would stop. There were also shelter in place orders given during this time. 1918 wasn’t the dark ages, we had telephones and radios. People knew what was happening.

> and radios

According to wikipedia first news on radio came in 1920.

"The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio#20th_century

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#163

Post by throwaway_USD »

alexilliamson wrote: post #130
throwaway_USD wrote: post #84

It seems people don't realize how much $6T is and the effects of that kind of money being injected into the economy. Consider the 2008 housing bubble and financial crisis which was ultimately corrected with two stimulus packages totaling less than $2T...that money turned the economy around, put the economy into the longest bull market in history, resulting in a record stock market and corporate profits. Now its not t…

It's amazing how the unemployment rate gets treated as gospel in the media. I never see the actual jobless rate reported anywhere. Why is that? The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear. But why does the media never push back? Does "jobless" data - that is ACTUAL unemployment- not exist?

>The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear.

One of the funny things is when Trump ran in 2016 a big part of his campaign was acknowledging the fact that the unemployment numbers were a lie and being fudged. He made major promises, which I am sure appealed to a lot of people, he would shine a light on the unemployed workers who were not counted in the workforce...of course, then he got elected and began taking credit for the best unemployment numbers ever using the same accounting methods.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#164

Post by xyzzyz »

ska wrote: post #150
xyzzyz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the data exists. See eg. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S The issue people are talking about unemployment rate and not the joblessness rate is that people care about ability to get a job if you want one. The joblessness rate includes people who are looking for job but can’t get any, but also people who are supported by their spouses, retirees, and people living on government benefits who a…

> "For example, good amount of growth of employment rate in recent years is a result of many people, who previously drew disability benefits to compensate them for their inability to work, actually going to work, once the work became better option than government check." I've heard this before but have not seen good data on it, do you have cites?

I saw a good graph a while ago that matched growth in new workers with disability terminations, but this is pretty apparent when you look at the disability statistics themselves:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html

Number of people drawing disability benefits was rapidly growing at around 5% YoY up till 2011, then its growth slowed significantly, and around 2014 it started to slowly fall.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#165

Post by _curious_ »

bumby wrote: post #59
sremani wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Global Pandemic is NOT A BLACK SWAN. As matter of FACT, it was predicted by Taleb and according to him it is a WHITE SWAN. The true problem here is the so called Risk "experts" do not understand Risk, and that is the core problem.

I think the problem is how we look at risk in the context of our cognitive biases. Although given a long enough timeline a pandemic is all but guaranteed, on a annual or election cycle it scores pretty low on the probability scale. Our gauge of the severity may have been misrepresented due to the once-in-a-century nature of this event. Juxtapose that with issues that people face in the immediate term like budget shor…

Interesting perspective. It's as though the gov (read: we/us) have become distracted by the "risk" of a lot of the day to day social issues and minutiae at the expense of the real threats.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#167

Post by BookmarkSaver »

ska wrote: post #146
_curious_ wrote: post #129

It's a succinct and plausible set of positions held by the author, but I'm not sure this one holds up: "The disruptions in face-to-face work will be a drag on economic efficiency, leading to slower growth in revenues, lower profit margins, and reduced cash flow." Maybe I've been doing business remote/virtual for so long already that I see actual face-to-face as the economic inefficiency more often than not. Earlier,…

I suspect that we here on HN may suffer from selection bias, in that many of us do work that is most amenable to moving to remote. There is also an issue of transition, where there plausibly is quite an efficiency lag (months, at least) before people become get really set up, even assuming they are able to be as (or more) efficient.

I strongly agree. This extends to reddit as well. Whenever it comes up, there is the overwhelming consensus of "I love WFH/dumb middle-managers are wasting everyone's time to feel useful". And while I agree there is definitely a bias towards demanding in-office working which is probably excessive, and that many people can be very successful working remotely, I feel like much of this attitude is romanticization.

Personally, I struggle to focus at home, and I have a pretty ideal WFH situation. I am fortunate enough/foolish enough to pay for a trivial commute, but I'm simply more productive in-office. And I don't think it is just me, many many problems can be solved in-office quickly without having to set up online calls (or letting an email thread drag on for weeks).

And the larger attitude among my office was that working from home is a burden. We're all software devs, we all have no strict barriers to WFH, but most people prefer going into the office most of the time.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#168

Post by nostromo »

throwaway_USD wrote: post #84

It seems people don't realize how much $6T is and the effects of that kind of money being injected into the economy. Consider the 2008 housing bubble and financial crisis which was ultimately corrected with two stimulus packages totaling less than $2T...that money turned the economy around, put the economy into the longest bull market in history, resulting in a record stock market and corporate profits. Now its not t…

$6T has been created, but an unknown $X trillion has also been destroyed by a sharp and sudden decrease in economic activity, including a contraction of credit.

So... who knows. Maybe it's enough, maybe it's too much, or maybe it's too little -- it's too early to say.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#169

Post by vanniv »

fergie wrote: post #133

Strapline: "A full economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely, and the new version of normal for work and organizations is further off than we think" 2nd paragraph: "...it is likely that full recovery of economic activity, including GDP growth, jobs, and unemployment, will take at least a year, and likely much longer." At this point we are used to shoddy economic analysis and predictions that are so woo…

To quote Randall Munroe (https://xkcd.com/1052/)

By dubbing Econ "Dismal Science"

adherents exaggerate;

The "Dismal"'s fine -- it's "Science" where

they patently prevaricate."

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#170

Post by alexilliamson »

xyzzyz wrote: post #144
alexilliamson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how the unemployment rate gets treated as gospel in the media. I never see the actual jobless rate reported anywhere. Why is that? The incentive for politicians to prop themselves up with the unemployment rate is clear. But why does the media never push back? Does "jobless" data - that is ACTUAL unemployment- not exist?

Of course the data exists. See eg. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTUSM156S The issue people are talking about unemployment rate and not the joblessness rate is that people care about ability to get a job if you want one. The joblessness rate includes people who are looking for job but can’t get any, but also people who are supported by their spouses, retirees, and people living on government benefits who a…

Sure I agree that the typically reported unemployment measure is best for measuring how easily people who want jobs can obtain them. However, so often this is touted not only as an indicator of the overall economy, but even the well-being of society. The categories of people you mention that shouldn't be counted... all of those people live in and have an effect on society. If we're worried about the economy, it seems like we would want to know how much of our population (not just job seekers) are working, and how many people depend on the system without employment. And if we're worried about aggregate well-being, a number that takes into account the massive prison population seems better.

I'm not saying that the common unemployment rate is useless. Only that it's over-used, and used to answer questions it has no business answering. It feels like we're sweeping a lot under the rug and everyone is playing along.

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