There are a whole lot of people who wouuld disagree with bars being non-essential.
51, it is kind of like when they put in the rail line and forced so many businesses to go out of business due to lack of access. I just wonder who bought up all of those.
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The response in the US has largely put the financial markets ahead of everything else. This is why there is the constant denial of the problem…financial markets are psychological. Even the stimulus was a short term solution designed the placate the financial markets.
Now that the markets have stabilized the push for stimulus from both Dems and repubs has quieted. But the minute the crash comes, they will pass something very quickly
And yes the decision to allow certain big businesses to stay open is also financially motivated.
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Anyone saying but Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and grocery stores are still open so everyone should be is missing so much.
First, no one deemed those activities “safe” as many like to say to make their point. They were deemed essential for everyday life. You can easily argue that some of what those stores sell isn’t essential but it’s really hard to separate all of that out in big box retailers.
Also, just because someone goes to one place and doesn’t get sick doesn’t mean we should start engaging in other risky behaviors. If every house is on fire, I wouldn’t keep running into other houses unnecessarily just because I didn’t get burned up in the others that I had to go into.
I don’t say any of that to say there aren’t some winners and losers here. I’m just saying this stuff is complicated and working through it is ugly. Unless you think we should shut everything down or let everything go back to normal just to promote fairness.
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I agree, but you do realize that so much depends on the markets. Everyone’s 401K, all company retirement pensions, for those that still have it, almost all IRA’s, teacher’s retirement system, and I could go on. The market is not just symbolic, it’s very essential.
I am retired and my IRA is dependent on the markets. Fortunately, I have Fisher handling my investments or I would be broke by now. Since I have never liked financial stuff, and am completely clueless on how to invest, I let the experts do it and just leave it to them to keep me going. They have been doing an outstanding joob.
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The financial markets are cyclical. It was due for correction long before COVID. Efforts to artificially prop up the financial markets when the underlying economy is not healthy is what creates bubbles.
With regards to retirement accounts…people who manage accounts be them personal 401ks or large funds should understand the cyclicality of the markets and adjust their exposure to stock prices based on what their investment horizon.
With regards to pensions…these are mostly funded by fixed investments. The reason pensions are at risk is actually because we’ve held interest rates near zero for close to a decade to prop up the financial markets. Most of these older pensions assumed fixed interest rates higher than 5% were the norm, so now they are underwater.
Married couple I’m good friends with own a bar. They both got Covid despite being very careful both at work and elsewhere as they had a big stake in keeping themselves and customers safe. Both are recovering, but a couple scares thrown in. Some businesses are just inherently risky during the pandemic.
If we have a season at all, dimes to donuts it is truncated after too many positive tests, either us or opponents or both.
My wife is a retired teacher who subs in HISD elementary.
We discussed going back. She isn’t.
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I agree with you except that pandemics have been with humans throughout history. So that is perhaps the forgotten part of “ life is not fair”. Point taken that this is not the typical thing; but I guess 1918 pandemic is most recent comparative event.There are no scare tactics; just the facts that some either cant or refuse to acknowledge. The time honored remedy has been shutdowns, closures, and self imposed quarantine for self survival. In our interconnected hyper socialized society this is hard for some to accept and adapt. Few folks can provide for their basic needs today. The state has to intervene because we have collectively become to
stupid to take proper actions.
The State didn’t stop anything. The twenty somethings are going to socialize regardless of whether you have a bar open or not. Then they are going to show up at a family function and guess what, it has spread. We just forced a lot businesses to close for no practical reason.
But good news there is capital being raised to buy the bar assets at 10 cents on the dollar and the bars will reopen with new owners. It is just state sponsored wealth distribution, nothing more. Unfortunately it isn’t being distributed evenly or fairly it is getting more and more concentrated.
Yes, there are savy people out there who
know when to invest and when to cash out. Whether
it’s flooded homes, depressed real estate values, crashing stock market, pandemic, war, drought, or whatever. I just find the idea that this is some conspiracy theory by the elites to redistribute wealth a bit far fetched.
I agree with your assessment that wealth distribution
is probably as skewed as it has ever been in maybe
the history of civilization. Billionaires and potentially
trillionaires ( Bezos, Musk, ? ) is just incredible.
But I’m not advocating against people getting filthy rich from their wits.
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It is not a conspiracy theory, it is just the outcome of stupid government decisions.
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Okay, thanks for that clarification. But we disagree
on the “stupid policy” claim. Many ways government
could intervene to stop foreclosures and provide funding to those that need it to ride out this pandemic. Open to hearing proposals , but you
cannot take your eye off of nature. You have to
make pandemic management job one.
Yes Amazon is coming out nicely from this.
The funny thing is that on a margin basis, their retail business is not where Amazon makes most of it’s money…it’s in AWS.
Retail is barely profitable or for them, and yet they are destroying all these retailers that live and die by the storefront experience. Many will not survive COVID, but Amazon’s retail business stands to benefit greatly from this
The only way you could make it fair is if the government stepped in and picked up the fixed expenses (rent, debt service, insurance) during the shutdown. So the business can reopen without any hanging past due obligations.
The PPP was somewhat like that but the loan amounts were based solely on historical payroll and it was meant to to keep people employed. Which is nice but doesn’t take into consideration Other obligations. Yes 40% of PPP could be used for those obligations, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
What those 20 something year olds and people in general need is leadership and consistent messaging. But we have people in high places basically telling the public the virus does not exist so of course very many will continue to act irresponsibly.
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My son is in the same boat at Ridge Point High. He is ready to get back to his building too but at the same time cares about the health of all involved.
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Didn’t realize AWS was the cash cow for Amazon
and retail was barely profitable. My ex-company went with both Azure and AWS to hedge bets and
negotiation tactics.
Exactly. Extend PPP but make it more selective. Then extend unemployment enrichments. This will eliminate the pressure to operate businesses in the midst of surge. Shut down until the virus is managed. Then open at a larger scale when you are more on the clear.
This is what other countries did and it worked.