U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
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Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#2For many, their former workplaces are gone. So beating covid won't put them back to work immediately, and many will become the permanently (and eventually uncounted) unemployed.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#3Man, it's so frustrating seeing all these businesses shutting down (smaller ones are closing for good), meanwhile I'm sure Bezos and the Silicon crew are reporting record profits this year through food deliveries and amazon purchases.
I sometimes find it very _very_ hard to not see this all a transfer of wealth from the middle/lower classes to the upper classes - either calculated beforehand or just being taken advantage of now I don't think it matters.
We're jumping right into another Great Depression, although as a millennial, I would argue we should call it something more fitting and modern - maybe... "The Big Sad"?
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#4As I have watched these headlines, I have constantly been frustrated by the lack of analysis of what's really going on beyond the data point.
Which industries lost jobs? Are the losses temporary due to lockdowns or a sign of an accelerating recession? Which regions lost the most jobs? Which income levels are most affected? What percent of jobless people are being covered by unemployment? And so on.
A single data point is useless click bait. Who is building the Tableau dashboard and having an economist write weekly economic analysis for the general public? Without good information, our democracy is rudderless.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#5This is the picture that played out across Spain and Greece in the early part of this decade ((We're a 1/5th part through "this decade, wow)
Sudden, elevated incidents of economic catastrophe leading to a massive decline in economic output and the underlying opportunities available to a few generations of intelligent people. This led to a significant decline in wealth creation relative to the rest of the emerging world in these nations.
Unlike the United States, they did not have the massive power of the worlds biggest military underwriting their currency and had to rely on the graces of the EU and IMF, who, frankly, displayed why bureaucratic lethargy is widely despised.
Make no mistake, this is going to remake the economy in ways very few of us can even begin to appreciate. How we, as a nation handle this sets the balance of power in the world for the next half of the century.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#6Hardly surprising, the US strategy has been lockdowns (good!) but without consistent aid to people and small businesses (bad!). The stay home and don't spread idea is a good one but needs to be backed up by actual assistance or aid. Pitiful amount of assistance from the federal government. We had one round of adequate funding right as this started and then basically nothing else. Money ran out, Congress was deadlocked and only aid we got was piggybacked onto a normal spending bill.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#7Yet SPX is still hanging out at all time highs.
I don't understand how professional short sellers made it through the past few years. Everything from economy, social structure, and climate, all going to hell, but the stock market seems blind to all of it.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#8> government response to worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
Fixed the title. Unfortunately we don't have to be where we're at. We knows who's most vulnerable, we know how it spreads (low airflow crowded spaces), we know who's been vaccinated and/or who's had it. The fact that any organized response, even at the city or state level, across both blue and red states, shows the ineptitude of these appointed officials. In many ways the "hey we're at least doing x,y" is worse than doing nothing at all.
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#9We're a company of about 12 FTEs. Nobody here filed for unemployment, yet we've seen 5 fraudulent unemployment claims (for people that still work here) come across our HR department that creepily accurate information. What gives? And are those claims included in these stats?
Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses
#10Man, it's so frustrating seeing all these businesses shutting down (smaller ones are closing for good), meanwhile I'm sure Bezos and the Silicon crew are reporting record profits this year through food deliveries and amazon purchases. I sometimes find it very _very_ hard to not see this all a transfer of wealth from the middle/lower classes to the upper classes - either calculated beforehand or just being taken advan…
What else could you call it? You can't drop taxes on the wealthiest Americans who are seeing the lions share of wealth transferred to them and then have the government spend like a drunken sailor to try to keep the economy from tanking.
SOMEONE has to pay for those stimulus checks and it appears right now it's turning into a loan that our great grandchildren will bear the responsibility of so that Bezos and Co can see an extra 0 at the end of their net worth.