9 ms·

Jobless claims, total unemployment level worse than expected

77 points by Reedx 6y ago

chrisco255 6y ago
The shut downs were a drastic overcorrection. I'll say it until I'm blue in the face. In retrospect, we will look at it as a dire mistake that triggered a great depression-like event.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Shutdowns worked elsewhere. What doesn't work is half a shutdown.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Proper countries put a testing-and-quarantine regime in place and have paid sick leave. Not the US, unfortunately. What is shaping up to be an absolute catastrophe is the Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the country. Would you consider talking to a contact tracer after you've been to a protest against the police? People will justifiably think it's one of those test-your-meth stunts that sheriffs at times pull. Well, now there's the blowback.
    - gizmo686 6y ago
      Even if you are willing to talk to a contact tracer, what good will it do? The vast majority of a protester's contacts would be from the protest. Under the best of circumstances, that is a black hole for contact tracing.
      - jedieaston 6y ago
        Not with the Apple/Google solution, because the phones in the crowd should be able to exchange keys with each other. But it hasn't been deployed yet.
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        Imagine someone was at a BLM demonstration, possibly did some light rioting (spraypainting, flyposting, damage to vehicles), and the following morning wakes up with respiratory symptoms and tests positive for coronaplague. Now the contact tracer calls. Anyone would think this is a sheriff's ruse, trying to find out what his circle of friends is.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Yeah, police really should have chosen a better time to murder someone on film and then have authorities ignore it for days. Protesters should go home to avoid spreading disease. They can resume protesting the next time an officer kills someone for the crime of having the wrong skin color. It will surely happen again soon.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  In the absence of mandatory shutdowns, the general retail, hospitality, etc. sectors would have still seen collapses of at least 50% or more. Maybe it wouldn't have been quite so bad as the 80% that actually happened, but that kind of crash would absolutely wipe out the industry without government support.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  The epidemiological curve in my state was exponential until roughly a week after the shutdown. If it had continued, then a couple weeks later we would have had more new cases per day than there are hospital beds in the state. What would you have proposed instead to keep our hospitals from completely filling like they did in Italy?
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I would point to other states that never shut down, like Wyoming and South Dakota, and states with light shut downs, like TX or FL (which did far better than NY or NJ). They all followed the same curve. An enormous amount of the case load was from infected nursing homes. Meanwhile, what was the goal of shutting down beaches and parks? Just to spread misery and give people nowhere to go? To deprive people of essential vitamin D and exercise? Madness, all of it.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      We shut down beaches and parks because we didn't know at the time the pattern of spreading. We had theories but we didn't have solid emperical evidence yet about how covid spread. Also the difference between light and hard shutdowns isn't as much as you'd think. Especially when most people's behavior changes despite whether there is a lockdown or not.
    - xphilter 6y ago
      “I’ll point to states not representative of other stares in density at all.”
      - rayiner 6y ago
        Texas or Florida are representative of the density of the US. If the mass shut downs had been limited to NY and NJ, without the media working everyone into a frenzy about beach goers in Florida, people in those other states wouldn’t be so upset. We’re not a single country. We’re 50 different states with vastly different requirements. NYC and NJ did need the extreme shut downs. In fact, they should have shut down earlier and harder. South Dakota, Texas, etc., did not. Many sparse states like Oregon overreacted and shut down more than they needed to. Of course, nobody can predict these things. Mistakes happen. What drives me nuts is that the same media that flipped out because not all states were taking the drastic measures that were needed in NYC is going to peddle a narrative about what happened that totally glosses over the lesson that those states didn’t really need to take such drastic measures.
- moksly 6y ago
  We shut down fairly hard and fairly early in Denmark. Our neighbour Sweden didn’t shut down at all. Their economy suffered roughly the same as ours, but the number of deaths per 100,000 population is 43.9 and ours is 10. We’re pretty much reopening everything that isn’t big concentrated gatherings or night-clubs. Even things like Zoos are opening. Our border to Germany and Norway is also semi-open now, but remains closed toward Sweden for obvious reasons.
  - madspindel 6y ago
    We did shut down in Sweden. It's a myth that needs to be debunked. I (and many others) have been working from home for several months now. All events (like sports, cinemas) have been postponed or canceled. Most people in larger cities are ordering groceries and stuffs online. Sweden is a very digital, even cashless society. Sure, it's open in some ways but many stores are shutting down because everything have went digital.
    - BlackNitrogen 6y ago
      The net effect was that the death rate was vastly higher in Sweden than their northern Scandinavian neighbors. Over 4000 deaths more based on population size. Not having more aggressive stay at home policies doomed thousands more people to die than were likely if you had followed policies of your neighbors. Sweden has now joined the ranks of the worst performing countries in Europe based on death rate. The UK, France, Spain, and Sweden. Here's the opportunity Sweden missed: The disease had an early outbreak in those other countries, it was already raging before the countries shutdown (Spain and Italy were overwhelmed). But as we saw in Finland, Norway etc, if it wasn't raging, by shutting down you could tremendously reduce the infections. I know Sweden tried to protect elderly in sr citizen homes as we call them in the US, but you failed. People could still go out to bars and restaurants, your economy was somewhat more functional that other countries, at the cost of currently 3-4k extra deaths. It's a terrible situation, but in my opinion the wrong one.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Thank you for this. We’re the shutdowns and working from home government mandated, or due to people just doing it?
- vmchale 6y ago
  no
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Great depression was bad. 10 world wars 2 of u.s. deaths, also bad. I think the lesson we'll learn is we should have locked down earlier, harder, and longer so we can start a full recovery faster. Even though bars and restaurants are open, myself and every person I know is acting as if a lockdown is still in place. ( I know there are some people who are but there are lots of people who aren't)
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    There will be no fast recovery, period. We have deprived businesses of oxygen for 3 months. Cash flow is the life blood of businesses. We've sucked all the cash flow out of the worldwide economy. The bankruptcies will start rolling in and we will lose at least a decade of economic growth just to recover to where we were. 40+ million unemployed in the U.S. Near record levels. WWII caused 50+ million deaths. Are we on that track now? Hard to say. But I certainly fear worldwide economic instability more than I do Covid-19. My reading of history is that those events cause far more death and destruction than viruses. We know by now that Covid isn't the plague.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      What level of disability or death would make you change your mind? 100k deaths seems a lot to me and how far through is the US now?
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        40% of those were nursing home deaths: https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/covid-19-deaths-nursing-homes-by-state/ https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/covid-19-deaths-nursing-homes... Median age of Covid deaths? 75-84 years. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-... This is on par with median age of death in the U.S. on any given year. You cannot crush the future of your country to extend the life of the elderly by no statistically significant amount. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. For 20-55 year olds, the core of the economy, this virus is not very deadly at all. This age group is far more likely to die from many other causes. I would say, fix the nursing home problem. Ask the elderly to wear masks or shelter in place and to beef up on vitamin intake and anything else that would help their immune system. Then, I would let the youth and young and middle aged adults continue life as normal, develop herd immunity, and therefore prevent a widespread infection next winter.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  I wonder what kind of an event losing 2-5% of the population to a pandemic would trigger.
  - aianus 6y ago
    US lost 1% of its population to Spanish flu which was shortly followed by the roaring twenties.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- matchbok 6y ago
  Horribly incorrect. Please get the facts. I expect better from HN.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Please supply some facts, then. I expect better from you.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  What was wrong about the shut downs is the arbitrary nature of them and inconsistent application from state to state. The same is occurring again with the lessening of restrictions. We saw attempts by some governors and mayors to play political games with the shut downs by favoring certain business types over others when both had similar staffing concerns all to score points with one group or another and little to no concern with public health. We even had one governor ship sick people to elderly care homes! A lot of this can be laid at the feet of the CDC, which Trump not withstanding and I really question his affect over the CDC, which fumbled the whole event and still does not manage it well. However people need to realize, outside of war, the Federal Government of the US in not up to the task. They have fumbled natural distastes with the most recent famous one being Katrina but even subsequent disasters did not show much improvement. To that end, what Congress should have been doing instead of trying to craft stimulus programs to benefit political buddies is run the CDC and FEMA through the ringer and start the process of building a coordinated process to follow for the duration of COVID19 as well as future issues. Instead they are all playing up for the November elections
- orwin 6y ago
  What will triggers the great depression is the huge decline in consummation. It will be a month since the end of the lockdown here and my expense have been cut in more than half. I'm not the only one. I've repaired my bike and did not buy a new one for summer as intended, friends of mine did delay their new car (they don't need it as much now). working from home made people less afraid to cook for themselves and thus they are spending a lot less. Restaurants opened this week and my sister told me it was so calm she was able to study during the service, and nobody said anything. If anything i spent 6 time more during the first month of the lockdown than the first month after the lift (500 vs 3K, not counting rent). I still have planned expenses but for my vacations, after fixing my wing, i will kitesurf around where i live and camp rather than go to the mediteranean. I assume most people like me will do the same. This comportment, if widespread, will cause a great depression-like event. Still won't change.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    > huge decline in consummation If anything I think the lockdowns increased consummation.
    - xyzwave 6y ago
      I’d have to concur. consummation - (1) The action of making a marriage or relationship complete by having sexual intercourse. (2) The point at which something is complete or finalized.
Avicebron 6y ago
And the stocks continue to rise, I wonder how far this dead cat can bounce
- ericb 6y ago
  I'm assuming this news means a 20% gain is incoming. A zombie apocalypse would cause it to triple, because "just think of all that quantitative easing!"
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Probably until the bankruptcies start rolling in.
  - kurthr 6y ago
    And the second rising wave of infections this autumn cause an effective shut down (due to fear if not government action)...
  - griffinkelly 6y ago
    I second this. I think once this starts happening en masse, we'll see a correction in the markets. I dont think we're too far off: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/867856602/millions-of-americans-skipping-payments-as-tidal-wave-of-defaults-and-evictions- https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/867856602/millions-of-america...
- ravenstine 6y ago
  It's interesting because I'd expect a certain number of people to be cashing in their 401ks and IRAs, which surely would have _some_ effect on the stock market, but it seems that as well as the recent political situation have had zero effect.
  - TAForObvReasons 6y ago
    The fed's actions of the last few months have taken much of the risk out of the stock market. There's little perceived downside.
jl2718 6y ago
> called back to work slowly What % would you guess are ever going to be ‘called back’?
selimthegrim 6y ago
I thought they were expecting 8m (nonfarm payroll) job losses and saw 2.something in May instead. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-may-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-may-202...
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Interesting note that during WW2 people expected another great depression, so policy makers coordinated (GI bill, etc.) and we actually had an economic boom. We now understand much better how to tweak a country’s economy. Some key points for the next recovery phase: -Give tax incentives for automated robotic farming, our food supply should not be dependent on poor migrants, we need to transition to pesticide/herbicide free produce that can ramp up supply on demand. Workforce will be highly skilled as well. -Make massive investments into local micro-grid community solar. This will make us more robust to cyber attacks and black outs and provide lots of jobs. Solar is now the cheapest power generation method. -Ditto on batteries. Make 10 more gigafactories, invest in Lithium extraction from the ocean and recycling infrastructure. etc.
- petermcneeley 6y ago
  I enjoy how you suggest that there might be an social/employment problem but then you proceed to suggest things that will actually eliminate employment.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Resource extraction is extremely productive these days. What required thousands of laborers a century ago can now be done with mere dozens of laborers. Replacing coal/LNG with solar and batteries would be a net job creator (and, in the case of solar, distribute the jobs more evenly across the country). Robotic farming is an interesting case. First, successful robotic farming for labor-intensive crops would be a huge deal. Think John Deere v2. Tons of great paying jobs. Try telling Moline, IL that tractors kill jobs. Second, most of the jobs offset by a successful product in this space are migrant jobs; farm workers enter the US for the growing season and then go back to (usually) Mexico once the growing season ends. Without those jobs, the migrant farm workers simply wouldn't migrate into the US. So, you'd eliminate jobs globally, and Mexico in particular would suffer, but the overall employment effect would probably shake out net positive in the USA (because most of the displaced laborers aren't permanent residents). Also, not automating work for the sake of keeping people busy seems... immoral.
mpalczewski 6y ago
Here's the official chart for continuing claims that the article references. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA The default chart does a good job of showing how severe this is. Have to zoom in to the one year chart to get context around this week's rise.
ericmcer 6y ago
The 8 weeks from when the first PPP loans started going out is about to elapse. Weird they don’t mention that at all.

77 points by Reedx 6y ago

The shut downs were a drastic overcorrection. I'll say it until I'm blue in the face. In retrospect, we will look at it as a dire mistake that triggered a great depression-like event.

pjc50 6y ago
Shutdowns worked elsewhere. What doesn't work is half a shutdown.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Proper countries put a testing-and-quarantine regime in place and have paid sick leave. Not the US, unfortunately. What is shaping up to be an absolute catastrophe is the Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the country. Would you consider talking to a contact tracer after you've been to a protest against the police? People will justifiably think it's one of those test-your-meth stunts that sheriffs at times pull. Well, now there's the blowback.
  - gizmo686 6y ago
    Even if you are willing to talk to a contact tracer, what good will it do? The vast majority of a protester's contacts would be from the protest. Under the best of circumstances, that is a black hole for contact tracing.
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      Not with the Apple/Google solution, because the phones in the crowd should be able to exchange keys with each other. But it hasn't been deployed yet.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      Imagine someone was at a BLM demonstration, possibly did some light rioting (spraypainting, flyposting, damage to vehicles), and the following morning wakes up with respiratory symptoms and tests positive for coronaplague. Now the contact tracer calls. Anyone would think this is a sheriff's ruse, trying to find out what his circle of friends is.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Yeah, police really should have chosen a better time to murder someone on film and then have authorities ignore it for days. Protesters should go home to avoid spreading disease. They can resume protesting the next time an officer kills someone for the crime of having the wrong skin color. It will surely happen again soon.
jcranmer 6y ago
In the absence of mandatory shutdowns, the general retail, hospitality, etc. sectors would have still seen collapses of at least 50% or more. Maybe it wouldn't have been quite so bad as the 80% that actually happened, but that kind of crash would absolutely wipe out the industry without government support.
jschwartzi 6y ago
The epidemiological curve in my state was exponential until roughly a week after the shutdown. If it had continued, then a couple weeks later we would have had more new cases per day than there are hospital beds in the state. What would you have proposed instead to keep our hospitals from completely filling like they did in Italy?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I would point to other states that never shut down, like Wyoming and South Dakota, and states with light shut downs, like TX or FL (which did far better than NY or NJ). They all followed the same curve. An enormous amount of the case load was from infected nursing homes. Meanwhile, what was the goal of shutting down beaches and parks? Just to spread misery and give people nowhere to go? To deprive people of essential vitamin D and exercise? Madness, all of it.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    We shut down beaches and parks because we didn't know at the time the pattern of spreading. We had theories but we didn't have solid emperical evidence yet about how covid spread. Also the difference between light and hard shutdowns isn't as much as you'd think. Especially when most people's behavior changes despite whether there is a lockdown or not.
  - xphilter 6y ago
    “I’ll point to states not representative of other stares in density at all.”
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Texas or Florida are representative of the density of the US. If the mass shut downs had been limited to NY and NJ, without the media working everyone into a frenzy about beach goers in Florida, people in those other states wouldn’t be so upset. We’re not a single country. We’re 50 different states with vastly different requirements. NYC and NJ did need the extreme shut downs. In fact, they should have shut down earlier and harder. South Dakota, Texas, etc., did not. Many sparse states like Oregon overreacted and shut down more than they needed to. Of course, nobody can predict these things. Mistakes happen. What drives me nuts is that the same media that flipped out because not all states were taking the drastic measures that were needed in NYC is going to peddle a narrative about what happened that totally glosses over the lesson that those states didn’t really need to take such drastic measures.
moksly 6y ago
We shut down fairly hard and fairly early in Denmark. Our neighbour Sweden didn’t shut down at all. Their economy suffered roughly the same as ours, but the number of deaths per 100,000 population is 43.9 and ours is 10. We’re pretty much reopening everything that isn’t big concentrated gatherings or night-clubs. Even things like Zoos are opening. Our border to Germany and Norway is also semi-open now, but remains closed toward Sweden for obvious reasons.
- madspindel 6y ago
  We did shut down in Sweden. It's a myth that needs to be debunked. I (and many others) have been working from home for several months now. All events (like sports, cinemas) have been postponed or canceled. Most people in larger cities are ordering groceries and stuffs online. Sweden is a very digital, even cashless society. Sure, it's open in some ways but many stores are shutting down because everything have went digital.
  - BlackNitrogen 6y ago
    The net effect was that the death rate was vastly higher in Sweden than their northern Scandinavian neighbors. Over 4000 deaths more based on population size. Not having more aggressive stay at home policies doomed thousands more people to die than were likely if you had followed policies of your neighbors. Sweden has now joined the ranks of the worst performing countries in Europe based on death rate. The UK, France, Spain, and Sweden. Here's the opportunity Sweden missed: The disease had an early outbreak in those other countries, it was already raging before the countries shutdown (Spain and Italy were overwhelmed). But as we saw in Finland, Norway etc, if it wasn't raging, by shutting down you could tremendously reduce the infections. I know Sweden tried to protect elderly in sr citizen homes as we call them in the US, but you failed. People could still go out to bars and restaurants, your economy was somewhat more functional that other countries, at the cost of currently 3-4k extra deaths. It's a terrible situation, but in my opinion the wrong one.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Thank you for this. We’re the shutdowns and working from home government mandated, or due to people just doing it?
vmchale 6y ago
no
JamesBarney 6y ago
Great depression was bad. 10 world wars 2 of u.s. deaths, also bad. I think the lesson we'll learn is we should have locked down earlier, harder, and longer so we can start a full recovery faster. Even though bars and restaurants are open, myself and every person I know is acting as if a lockdown is still in place. ( I know there are some people who are but there are lots of people who aren't)
- chrisco255 6y ago
  There will be no fast recovery, period. We have deprived businesses of oxygen for 3 months. Cash flow is the life blood of businesses. We've sucked all the cash flow out of the worldwide economy. The bankruptcies will start rolling in and we will lose at least a decade of economic growth just to recover to where we were. 40+ million unemployed in the U.S. Near record levels. WWII caused 50+ million deaths. Are we on that track now? Hard to say. But I certainly fear worldwide economic instability more than I do Covid-19. My reading of history is that those events cause far more death and destruction than viruses. We know by now that Covid isn't the plague.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    What level of disability or death would make you change your mind? 100k deaths seems a lot to me and how far through is the US now?
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      40% of those were nursing home deaths: https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/covid-19-deaths-nursing-homes-by-state/ https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/covid-19-deaths-nursing-homes... Median age of Covid deaths? 75-84 years. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-... This is on par with median age of death in the U.S. on any given year. You cannot crush the future of your country to extend the life of the elderly by no statistically significant amount. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. For 20-55 year olds, the core of the economy, this virus is not very deadly at all. This age group is far more likely to die from many other causes. I would say, fix the nursing home problem. Ask the elderly to wear masks or shelter in place and to beef up on vitamin intake and anything else that would help their immune system. Then, I would let the youth and young and middle aged adults continue life as normal, develop herd immunity, and therefore prevent a widespread infection next winter.
AlexandrB 6y ago
I wonder what kind of an event losing 2-5% of the population to a pandemic would trigger.
- aianus 6y ago
  US lost 1% of its population to Spanish flu which was shortly followed by the roaring twenties.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
matchbok 6y ago
Horribly incorrect. Please get the facts. I expect better from HN.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Please supply some facts, then. I expect better from you.
Shivetya 6y ago
What was wrong about the shut downs is the arbitrary nature of them and inconsistent application from state to state. The same is occurring again with the lessening of restrictions. We saw attempts by some governors and mayors to play political games with the shut downs by favoring certain business types over others when both had similar staffing concerns all to score points with one group or another and little to no concern with public health. We even had one governor ship sick people to elderly care homes! A lot of this can be laid at the feet of the CDC, which Trump not withstanding and I really question his affect over the CDC, which fumbled the whole event and still does not manage it well. However people need to realize, outside of war, the Federal Government of the US in not up to the task. They have fumbled natural distastes with the most recent famous one being Katrina but even subsequent disasters did not show much improvement. To that end, what Congress should have been doing instead of trying to craft stimulus programs to benefit political buddies is run the CDC and FEMA through the ringer and start the process of building a coordinated process to follow for the duration of COVID19 as well as future issues. Instead they are all playing up for the November elections
orwin 6y ago
What will triggers the great depression is the huge decline in consummation. It will be a month since the end of the lockdown here and my expense have been cut in more than half. I'm not the only one. I've repaired my bike and did not buy a new one for summer as intended, friends of mine did delay their new car (they don't need it as much now). working from home made people less afraid to cook for themselves and thus they are spending a lot less. Restaurants opened this week and my sister told me it was so calm she was able to study during the service, and nobody said anything. If anything i spent 6 time more during the first month of the lockdown than the first month after the lift (500 vs 3K, not counting rent). I still have planned expenses but for my vacations, after fixing my wing, i will kitesurf around where i live and camp rather than go to the mediteranean. I assume most people like me will do the same. This comportment, if widespread, will cause a great depression-like event. Still won't change.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  > huge decline in consummation If anything I think the lockdowns increased consummation.
  - xyzwave 6y ago
    I’d have to concur. consummation - (1) The action of making a marriage or relationship complete by having sexual intercourse. (2) The point at which something is complete or finalized.

Avicebron 6y ago

And the stocks continue to rise, I wonder how far this dead cat can bounce

ericb 6y ago
I'm assuming this news means a 20% gain is incoming. A zombie apocalypse would cause it to triple, because "just think of all that quantitative easing!"
chrisco255 6y ago
Probably until the bankruptcies start rolling in.
- kurthr 6y ago
  And the second rising wave of infections this autumn cause an effective shut down (due to fear if not government action)...
- griffinkelly 6y ago
  I second this. I think once this starts happening en masse, we'll see a correction in the markets. I dont think we're too far off: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/867856602/millions-of-americans-skipping-payments-as-tidal-wave-of-defaults-and-evictions- https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/867856602/millions-of-america...
ravenstine 6y ago
It's interesting because I'd expect a certain number of people to be cashing in their 401ks and IRAs, which surely would have _some_ effect on the stock market, but it seems that as well as the recent political situation have had zero effect.
- TAForObvReasons 6y ago
  The fed's actions of the last few months have taken much of the risk out of the stock market. There's little perceived downside.

jl2718 6y ago

> called back to work slowly What % would you guess are ever going to be ‘called back’?

selimthegrim 6y ago

I thought they were expecting 8m (nonfarm payroll) job losses and saw 2.something in May instead. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-may-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-may-202...

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Interesting note that during WW2 people expected another great depression, so policy makers coordinated (GI bill, etc.) and we actually had an economic boom. We now understand much better how to tweak a country’s economy. Some key points for the next recovery phase: -Give tax incentives for automated robotic farming, our food supply should not be dependent on poor migrants, we need to transition to pesticide/herbicide free produce that can ramp up supply on demand. Workforce will be highly skilled as well. -Make massive investments into local micro-grid community solar. This will make us more robust to cyber attacks and black outs and provide lots of jobs. Solar is now the cheapest power generation method. -Ditto on batteries. Make 10 more gigafactories, invest in Lithium extraction from the ocean and recycling infrastructure. etc.

petermcneeley 6y ago
I enjoy how you suggest that there might be an social/employment problem but then you proceed to suggest things that will actually eliminate employment.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Resource extraction is extremely productive these days. What required thousands of laborers a century ago can now be done with mere dozens of laborers. Replacing coal/LNG with solar and batteries would be a net job creator (and, in the case of solar, distribute the jobs more evenly across the country). Robotic farming is an interesting case. First, successful robotic farming for labor-intensive crops would be a huge deal. Think John Deere v2. Tons of great paying jobs. Try telling Moline, IL that tractors kill jobs. Second, most of the jobs offset by a successful product in this space are migrant jobs; farm workers enter the US for the growing season and then go back to (usually) Mexico once the growing season ends. Without those jobs, the migrant farm workers simply wouldn't migrate into the US. So, you'd eliminate jobs globally, and Mexico in particular would suffer, but the overall employment effect would probably shake out net positive in the USA (because most of the displaced laborers aren't permanent residents). Also, not automating work for the sake of keeping people busy seems... immoral.

mpalczewski 6y ago

Here's the official chart for continuing claims that the article references. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA The default chart does a good job of showing how severe this is. Have to zoom in to the one year chart to get context around this week's rise.

ericmcer 6y ago

The 8 weeks from when the first PPP loans started going out is about to elapse. Weird they don’t mention that at all.