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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

#281

Post by carapace »

AznHisoka wrote: post #171
AriaMinaei wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is the furthest thing from a black swan. A global pandemic was always a matter of when, not if (still is). That, by definition, is not a black swan. Plus, we in EU/NA had plenty of notice since January to prepare, and we chose to bury our head in the sand instead. Prominent people call this a black swan just to deflect responsibility, and perhaps to get a bit of bailout money on the side.

Indeed. A black swan is something you never thought could exist before because you've only seen white swans. We've had pandemics in the past, though not as serious as this one. This is not a black swan, and calling it a black swan just undermines what a black swan is.

> ...and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Everybody forgets that part (which sort of proves the point, eh?)

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#282

Post by pdr2020 »

The source is credible, but looking rationally at this, the cause of the interrupted economic flow was not some underlying or unstable monetary/country factor.

This is a self-induced economic freeze.

Yes, an unfreeze won't immediately revive the world, because some capacities will have been lost along the way. But once demand ramps back up, you'll have entrepreneurial individuals and companies findings extraordinary ways to meet that rising demand, including who knows, repurchasing/rebuilding the required capacities :)

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#283

Post by cjamesd »

gniv wrote: post #254
3xblah wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the truth may be it is certainly interesting how 20 million people can lose their jobs simply as a result of their employer reducing or stopping its operations for a few weeks. Regardless of the previous unemployement figures it raises the question of how secure were these "jobs". Is job security worth measuring.

For certain jobs it's better to fire the workers so they can get unemployment benefits, rather than keep them without pay.

Fascinating. Do you suppose there are businesses that actually could keep their employees but are just throwing in the towel because their human capital will be easy to obtain after people can go back to work?

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#284

Post by fg6hr »

sytelus wrote: post #255
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…

World GDP is $80T. An important fact: USD is world reserve currency. So no, I don't think that injecting, $6T is going to be super big deal. Just like in 2008, this additional money gets dispersed in to world economy or in other words the burden of US action gets transferred to other countries. This is precisely the reason why $2T injection has almost no effect on inflation within US but if any other country had dare…

This is the good old trick often done by startups: founders & investors create and generously give themselves a lot of shares, diluting the share of rank-and-file employees to zero.

Here's some deep analysis from a armchair economist. $6T goes to the US "board members": their share of the company (I mean, the planet's resources) grows, but the share of rank-and-file American employees (I mean citizens), probably shrinks. My guess: $5T will be hoarded by the US elites, $1T will trickle down to citizens, the world's GDP will shrink from $80T to $50T and the US's GDP will shrink from $20T to $15T. If these hand wavy assumptions are correct, the US citizens' share will grow by 5%, from 20/80=25% to 15/50=30%, while the elites will get an extra 5/50=10% share of everything. Everybody outside the 12 mile zone around the US land is going to lose.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#285

Post by fg6hr »

guscost wrote: post #276
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…

$6 Trillion is about $20,000 per person.

With skillful division and distribution techniques, it's only $5,000 per person.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#286

Post by david_w »

CydeWeys wrote: post #272
david_w wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those three nations are not that different from each other relative to the spread that exists between them and other nations. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-cases-traject... If you look at who has the LEAST per million (absolute number of cases are worse than useless and what most statisitic sites are showing) it's not nations usually associated with good governance, ahem... So what's going on. I…

It's not some foreign virus anymore. It's endemic everywhere. How many people die in any given place is now directly a result of the containment measures put into place there. You can't keep blaming this on China. Even places that have very tenuous connections to China are now experiencing massive death rates, because they aren't handling it well.

You're conflating ideas.

The virus started in China. The virus spread from China because of of the Communist Chinese Party's denial and lack of response.

Those are, in turn intimately connected to the fact that China is a one-party dictatorship that murdered the doctors who first tried to bring their attention to COVID-19 in the early days of the virus, lest the world forget.

Currently, Chinese epidemological numbers cannot be trusted because the Chinese Communist Party, on top of being a murderer of its own truth-telling scientists, is a pathological liar and manipulator of information, like all Communist regimes.

That's all I said about China; maybe someone said something more, so talk to them.

How many people die, the death rate from COVID-19, is about the same in most nations and mostly a function of age and previously existing health issues.

Aside from these facts, I don't even know what in my post you could be reacting to.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#287

Post by fg6hr »

empath75 wrote: post #277
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…

I don’t understand the theory for why injecting money into the economy is supposed to work. They’ve forcibly shut it down. The point of injecting money is to stimulate the production of goods and services. If you can’t make goods and services all it’s going to do is generate a lot of inflation.

Here's another observation from an armchair economist. Money flow upwards by forces of debt and contracts. If we short circuit the very top with the very bottom, money will start flowing inside this loop. If we don't form this loop, the powerful vacuum cleaner at the top will break this mechanism. In other words, the amount of money in the system doesn't matter much. What matters is that money form a steady flow pattern.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#288

Post by david_w »

dang wrote: post #216
david_w wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record, every single time I make a post even mildly criticizing China in any thread, it gets downvoted almost immediately.

Most people who do that are posting nationalistic flamebait whether they mean to or not, and the majority of readers here do not want flamewars on the site. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I'm afraid that your post upthread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834681 ) is an example. We don't need that sort of low-information, high-indignation arguing on inflammatory topics.

OK let me get this straight, just so I understand.

It's flamebait to recite the material and relevant facts about the Chinese Communist Party / dictatorship including the fact that they murdered the doctors who were trying to warn them and investigate it, after which this same dicatorship lied to the world about the spread of the disease and permitted tens of thousands of people to leave Wuhan provence, carrying what they knew to was a highly infectious virus with them. And now thousands are dead.

That is nationalism and flamebait and not the mere recitation of known facts ?

Seriously just trying to get my mind around the standards we're held to here at HN. We are supposed to deny or massage reality if it makes psychopathologically murderous and murderously irresponsible regimes look, you know, bad?

If that's not what you're telling me, then please, explain. Cite just one sentence or phrase which I wrote you think misrepresents reality and constitutes "flamebait".

I'm here all week.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#289

Post by dang »

david_w wrote: post #288
dang wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who do that are posting nationalistic flamebait whether they mean to or not, and the majority of readers here do not want flamewars on the site. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I'm afraid that your post upthread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834681 ) is an example. We don't need that sort of low-information, high-indignation arguing on inflammatory topics.

OK let me get this straight, just so I understand. It's flamebait to recite the material and relevant facts about the Chinese Communist Party / dictatorship including the fact that they murdered the doctors who were trying to warn them and investigate it, after which this same dicatorship lied to the world about the spread of the disease and permitted tens of thousands of people to leave Wuhan provence, carrying what…

You're assuming that reciting facts can't be flamebait. Actually it easily can. Your reply here is even more in the flamewar style.

These comments are clearly fighting a political/national battle, and you can't do that and have curious conversation at the same time. Those are two different states of the nervous system. We want curious conversation here.

In case it feels like I'm saying this because I secretly support the other side: I'm really not. Comments in the flamewar style the other way get moderated just the same, when we see them.

When you're inclined to use labels like psychopathological murder or murderous irresponsibility, it's probably better to wait until your system shifts into a different frame. In case it feels like I'm picking on your personally: we all have our version of this, definitely including me.

Re facts: the thing to realize is that there are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that. Which facts you select, which stand out to you as important, is not itself a fact—it's a consequence of how you see the situation and which side you identify with. Those on the opposing side select other facts.

If you show up in a thread with a bag of stones to throw at the other side, it doesn't make it ok if the stones are facts. What matters is the stone-throwing: it destroys the shared connection that makes good conversation possible. Actually, it's worse if the weapons are facts. They make harder stones, and harder hearts too.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#290

Post by thoughtstheseus »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #221
WanderPanda wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is afraid of „otherwise“ without anyone having witnessed it before. My guess is, we are trading short / mid-term stability for decreased long-term efficiency / productivity

Which in my opinion is acceptable, because it's the short-term chaos that is the most likely to bubble out of control and turn into a long-term chaos. Imagine the chaos that would besiege the world if there was a risk of bank runs and people not even being able to pay for food anymore. We're only three to six missed meals away from absolute anarchy and violence in the streets.

The Fed is doing a great job with current tools but they're a bandaid for bigger issues. It's not a question of if this becomes an issue it's a question of when. The longer you let the bubble build the harder it is to deal with it. Economic stagnation similar to Japan... is tough to deal with.
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