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Or just help those 40 people with federal funds, which is what every other rich country did, and _which worked_? The problem isn't the lockdown (the US didn't
by bildung 6y ago
Or just help those 40 people with federal funds, which is what every other rich country did, and _which worked_?
The problem isn't the lockdown (the US didn't even have a proper lockdown, compared to European countries), the problem is lack of federal help to compensate the losses.
The US GDP shrinkage in Q2 2020 was three times larger than that of e.g. Germany and France, despite these countries having harder lockdowns. Now those countries are mostly done with Covid, while the US still has over 1000 deaths a day _plus_ the economical costs of Covid.
- makomk 6y agoThe US GDP shrinkage in Q2 2020 was smaller than Germany, France and even the average of the entire Eurozone. You've been caught out by the fact that the widely-quoted US quarterly figure is annualized by multiplying the actual change in GDP during that quarter by four, whereas the figures for European countries are how much GDP actually shrunk by in that quarter. (Some widely-trusted organisations which should know better even quoted both figures side-by-side in the same article with no warning explaining they weren't comparable. I'm looking at you, BBC.) If they were actually comparable rather than the US having less of a decrease in GDP, the US figure would be four times the European one rather than three due to that annualization.
- bildung 6y agoI stand corrected, annualized the quarterly shrinkage of US and Germany are about the same. This sadly doesn't change the main point, though: Most of the hardships of employees and small businesses are specific results of the lack of proper relief in the US, without the US economy having gained an advantage out of this.