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I think rather than strong what we’d expect is resilient. It’s why people are joking about businesses eating less avocado toast. The advice given to a lot of pe

I think rather than strong what we’d expect is resilient. It’s why people are joking about businesses eating less avocado toast. The advice given to a lot of people in financial hardship is often well meaning but unhelpful. Why didn’t you have three months cost of living saved? Why do you buy frivolous things? Etc. then when it’s business expected to take a few months off suddenly these ideals are no longer important. Why do profitable companies have no ‘rainy day fund’? How is an economy ‘strong’ if it is not resilient to disruption? What we’re learning globally to a greater or lesser extent is that our economies are not resilient. That capitalism of various kinds has failed us. And that when it comes down to it we need one another to give a shit about each other.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
On the contrary, we're learning that our economies are incredibly resilient. Nobody's concerned that we'll stop being able to deliver food, water, toilet paper, Netflix - the businesses which provide those basic necessities (and imagine telling someone even 30 years ago that on-demand home video is a basic necessity!) are almost entirely unaffected. This is a success story of capitalism by any reasonable metric - I would not have predicted that Amazon could keep making deliveries and Costco could continually restock their shelves in the middle of a global pandemic. Unfortunately, even the best economic system can't disguise the fact that fewer people working means fewer products and services are available.
- int_19h 7y ago
  You should probably wait for another couple of months before declaring it a "success story". The lockdown has barely begun, and we haven't even see the first large wave of people fresh out of jobs getting their major bills in the mail.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  There’s a big ‘yet’ there. Also that things didn’t immediately collapse isn’t the economy showing resilience. It cannot be a binary thing like that. We’re seeing the first waves of mass unemployment, of enormous businesses like Boeing collapsing, of small businesses being grossly unprepared for any kind of disruption and of individuals likewise being ill prepared. The economy we leave this emergency with will be a shadow of the one we went in with. A gross structural failure. There are going to be trillions of dollars spent attempting to bail out the economies of the world.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

On the contrary, we're learning that our economies are incredibly resilient. Nobody's concerned that we'll stop being able to deliver food, water, toilet paper, Netflix - the businesses which provide those basic necessities (and imagine telling someone even 30 years ago that on-demand home video is a basic necessity!) are almost entirely unaffected. This is a success story of capitalism by any reasonable metric - I would not have predicted that Amazon could keep making deliveries and Costco could continually restock their shelves in the middle of a global pandemic. Unfortunately, even the best economic system can't disguise the fact that fewer people working means fewer products and services are available.

int_19h 7y ago
You should probably wait for another couple of months before declaring it a "success story". The lockdown has barely begun, and we haven't even see the first large wave of people fresh out of jobs getting their major bills in the mail.
meheleventyone 7y ago
There’s a big ‘yet’ there. Also that things didn’t immediately collapse isn’t the economy showing resilience. It cannot be a binary thing like that. We’re seeing the first waves of mass unemployment, of enormous businesses like Boeing collapsing, of small businesses being grossly unprepared for any kind of disruption and of individuals likewise being ill prepared. The economy we leave this emergency with will be a shadow of the one we went in with. A gross structural failure. There are going to be trillions of dollars spent attempting to bail out the economies of the world.