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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

#31

Post by eckmLJE »

exabrial wrote: post #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 off…

We can't even rely on citizens to wear masks. What makes you think that if government were competent enough to develop complex rules based on the factors you mention that we would be any better off.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#32

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

tejohnso wrote: post #7

Yet 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.

In my understanding professional short sellers rarely short the whole market. They'll tend to have a particular firm that they think is overvalued and short that.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#33

Post by ravenstine »

Every day I read a different article about how many jobs there are, and then I read one about how bad unemployment is, then I read one about how the economy is booming, and then I read one about how the economy is declining.

This is clown world, and I don't know how we've sustained it this far. Everything seems to be in conflict. Somehow investors have a seemingly irrational confidence in the market. What is going on? Collective insanity?

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#34

Post by sokoloff »

prox wrote: post #11
scohesc wrote: post #3

Man, 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…

The network effect is strong. If I post a comment to stop using Chrome (since there are better alternatives and Chrome is a near monopoly) we already see how resistant to change we are. If you order something, people don’t search for alternatives. If your tied into an eco system, you don’t move away from it. Personally I actively try to support local businesses, use only non-monopolies out of principle.

People do tend to use alternatives that they experience as better (which may not be the same as being better). You have to have a better experience and you have to get people to be aware, consider, and try the alternative experience.

A lot of us switched to Chrome because it was a better experience at the time. A lot bought from Amazon for the same reason. I’ll happily buy from a non-Amazon who gives me an experience better than Amazon, consider a browser that’s better than Chrome, or a search engine which gives better results than Google. Those three still get the majority of my in-category traffic though, because the experience is generally very good, quite consistent, and often best-in-class.

I think the hurdle to building a competitor to Facebook or Twitter is higher than the hurdle of selling me an electronic device instead of Amazon selling it to me. (BestBuy, NewEgg, MicroCenter [semi-local], and randos on EBay do it regularly. No one is casually going to beat Twitter and FB for social.)

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#35

Post by CountSessine »

tejohnso wrote: post #7

Yet 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.

The economy as measured by GDP and unemployment was doing really well up until 2020 and Covid. And stock prices represent the present value of future earnings - if you believe that we'll see a reversion to the mean after Covid (and we will), why would you expect SPX to tank?

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#36

Post by throwaway5752 »

tw04 wrote: post #10
scohesc wrote: post #3

Man, 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 se…

Bezos literally got his phone hacked by foreign intelligence services for being supportive of the party that wants to fix this situation. He's benefiting because Amazon is well run and well positioned for this. He couldn't control how the response was managed and he doesn't control tax policy. Do a better job of blaming the people who are actually at fault, or you are abetting them.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#37

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

clav3 wrote: post #14
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #5

This 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 wor…

I think you mean "century" (10years) not "decade" (100years)

You've got the meanings backwards. Decade is ten years and century is a hundred years.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#38

Post by Armisael16 »

ravedave5 wrote: post #27
fabianhjr wrote: post #15

It is grimmer to look at the labour participation rate: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... If anything between outsourcing and automation employment isn't coming back. (And the employment that does come back will be at sub-minimum wage 12-hour days precarized "gigs" or 3 "half-time" jobs)

Really strange they don't have an age upper limit, a bunch of that decline is likely baby boomers leaving the workforce.

You’re probably looking for one of the unemployment rates. It’s quite useful to know what fraction of the population is working, even if there are perfectly good reasons for some to not be working.

Retirees still eat and someone has to grow the food.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#39

Post by cft »

scohesc wrote: post #3

Man, 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…

We are jumping into fascism 2.0:

- Suppression of ability to speak freely

- One party system

- The executive organizations of the party agenda are the largest monopolies (instead of Krupp and Messerschmitt we have Google and Amazon for now).

I know I will get a lot of downvotes, but i hope it helps at least a couple of people here to know they aren't alone in thinking this now.

Re: U.S. jobless numbers surge as worsening Covid-19 pandemic hurts businesses

#40

Post by Theodores »

The media will bring inevitable tales of woe. Yet other businesses have been booming. I know there is no furlough in the US but think of those in this pandemic who are healthier, better rested and fitter than they have ever been. Every disaster also comes with opportunity.

In e-commerce life is good even if retail is a disaster. Who is hiring and doing well out of this?

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