Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

sloanreview.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 322 posts

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#311

Post by CydeWeys »

perl4ever wrote: post #301
CydeWeys wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"How many people die in any given place is now directly a result of the containment measures put into place there" Without supporting an alternative theory, this sounds doubtful to me. Do you think, for instance, that the difference between West Virginia and New York is a result of the superior containment measures in the former? WV has a lower death rate so far than even South Korea.

It's way too early to be making these comparisons. Wait until the pandemic is over and then we can analyze the death rates. Otherwise you're just talking about where it spread first, which is not the same as how well each place managed the totality of it.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#312

Post by BubRoss »

Jommi wrote: post #303
BubRoss wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To who and at what interest rate?

You can Google this stuff man. It's quite complicated.

The point is that interest rate matters. Anything below what you can get from low risk investments is essentially free money.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#313

Post by rojondo »

bwb wrote: post #16
frockington1 wrote: post #2

The articles states as fact there will be negative impacts on long term consumer sentiment and spending without really providing any evidence. Most Americans are about to receive a $1200 check and unemployment benefits that pay more than their job did for the next 6 months. I don't think consumer spending is going anywhere soon.

Just a note, unemployment isn't working, that $600 bucks hasn't been reported received by anyone because they are not sure how to deploy it. I am sure it will come, but it might not be for another 3 to 4 weeks. Which if you have bills and rent you might be in big trouble. Does anyone have reports of anyone getting it? None of my friends who were laid off are getting it yet and the states they talked to say they are w…

I have received it, New York.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#314

Post by lend000 »

sails wrote: post #310
lend000 wrote: post #235

If you're in the fortunate position to have some capital during this crisis, this is an ideal time to start a soft-tech or low cost R&D intensive startup that can be seeded remotely. Competition will be largely wiped out relative to supply of dollars and plenty of market share will be there for the taking when the world opens back up for business. I imagine there will be a disproportionate number of big winners that…

> to start a soft-tech or low cost R&D intensive startup that can be seeded remotely Can you unpack what you mean by that? I get the general gist of investing in the future, but think those are some interesting thoughts to explore.

I basically mean a tech product MVP that can be built from your garage (or a few remote garages) in a few months without a huge amount of capital.

So I'm not talking about hard-tech startups where social distancing and less investment capital will be affecting you, too (like automobiles or nuclear reactors), although if you are well positioned to build something in the crisis, then why not? But specifically, this is a tremendous opportunity for new software startups or hardware startups that can be built from off the shelf components.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#315

Post by PKop »

snovv_crash wrote: post #240
PKop wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>don't realize how much $6T is This would be more relevant is we tallied how much actual credit "money" is getting into the hands of average people. Divide 6 trillion per every person and if that was the extent of the calculation and legislation, we'd be better off. But it's not, the same financial beneficiaries in good times are the ones getting the bailout money in bad times. >being injected into the economy Except…

Of course, if it was actually distributed to people who needed it to spend, it would cause massive inflation. This way most of the money never gets spent, and demand never goes up. Not that it's a good thing, just saying.

The current problem, right now, is massive deflation. And the fixed costs such as rent, debt, mortgages, utilities that need to be paid while many incomes go to 0.

The need is to get people and businesses over the hump, survive this crisis and get to the other side of it in tact.

Now we can can legislate half-measures like rent and mortgage "moratoriums" and such, but that is gumming up the entire financial flow. Much easier to subsidize these payments and let the money flow than adjudicate millions of little friction points, and have tenants and landlords battling each other through no fault of their own, creating bad credit records for missed payments etc. Unemployment benefits can help but even this solution is slow and messy.

A big problem in this whole situation, though, is bailout money is getting handed out. Just not in a uniform manner. And check out who gets "bailouts" and who gets small checks or "loans" (as if more debt is anything but trouble right now). The discrepancy between how different factions are helped, given the huge overall stimulus quantities, is a problem.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#316

Post by joncrane »

numakerg wrote: post #214
joncrane wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tempted to think of crises like these to be the economic equivalent of a forest fire. It makes way for new vegetation to grow and is part of the normal cycle of many forests.

I disagree. It's more of a drought where the smaller trees with low reserves die out, and in the recovery the large trees grow even larger and take up the remaining canopy space. The economic consequences of the pandemic will make things fundamentally worse for the average person. The wealthiest entities will accumulate even more wealth, because they have the resources to survive, to petition the government for assis…

In many forest fires, the underbrush burns but the canopy remains intact.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#317

Post by perl4ever »

bigfudge wrote: post #305
david_w wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We didn’t need different CCP numbers to have taken more effective action in the UK, we just needed to listen to public health experts rather than statistical epidemiologists and motivated thinkers in government. Germany, Austria, S Korea are all just as, if not more, connected to China than the UK and Spain but are faring much better because they have competent govt, distributed and robustly funded public health syst…

I think people may be rushing to judgment, as a snapshot in time right now may not tell you where things will end up in each country.

I was looking at a chart of the trajectory of the epidemic in different countries, and it was interesting because there were at least three qualitatively different types of curves.

South Korea and China are notable for nearly completely flattening out after a certain point. The former might tend to undermine conspiracy theories about China, I don't know. On the other hand, why have no other countries had the same experience? Could it be the response, or characteristics of data gathering and reporting?

Japan and Singapore have risen much more slowly than the US and hard-hit European countries, but do not seem to be flattening which is surprising and seems ominous.

The western countries that have a lot of cases seem to have a characteristic sort of gradual curve, that rose faster early on, gradually is leveling out, but not completely (yet). The US looks similar to the others, except it is larger and continuing to suggest a higher peak.

I am wondering if Japan, and maybe the US states that are not initially seeing a lot of cases, will end up being a second wave after things seem to be under control in a lot of places.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#318

Post by wffurr »

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…

I don't think it's as contradictory as you think. The "we" includes people who think that everything can be back to "normal" by summer.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#319

Post by alistairSH »

adamsea wrote: post #208
vkou wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To respond to your argument - it may not matter that the others exist, but allegations that the books have been cooked are unfounded. The books are there, plain as day, and there are no shenanigans with them.

There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Presenting merely data or information is insufficient. The responsibility is to present useful, contextualized information to the public - knowledge.

Which is why there are 6 variations of “unemployment”. BLS publishes them regularly and has definitions available. Ignore 5 of the 6 at your own peril - they’re all there for the public to consume as they see fit.

Re: A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal

#320

Post by alistairSH »

harimau777 wrote: post #189
alistairSH wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was done through cooking the unemployment books ... That's patently false. BLS reports 6 different "unemployment rates" (1). The media has historically reported U-3. You can argue that U-6 is more meaningful in light of recent economic trends. But, no books have been cooked. 1 - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

For sake of argument: If U-3 is the one that everyone pays attention to does it really matter that much if the others exist?

Yes. U-3 is a useful generalization. But, it’s possible it’s usefulness has waned, as it fails to count two subsets of working-age population that have grown in recent decades - those that are unable to find work and leave the workforce completely and those that are underemployed. U-6 includes these two groups.

But, if U-6 was the commonly reported figure, we’d get cries of cooked books from some other groups, because why should we count people who have given up on working, or why should we care if somebody is underemployed (they have a job and should be happy).

In the age of fake news and too much information it’s a no win.

Post reply on HN