3 ms·
Yes there was a brief TP shortage. I think the bigger takeaway was that a large portion of the workforce just stopped and there wasn’t a material reduction in t
by JackFr 5y ago
Yes there was a brief TP shortage. I think the bigger takeaway was that a large portion of the workforce just stopped and there wasn’t a material reduction in the standard of living.
I’ve come to believe fraction of of the workforce could keep the economy going at current levels and much employment is only marginally productive and exists only to distribute the wealth of society.
- msandford 5y agoThat's a sort of tempting thought and it's mostly right IMO. My suspicion is that it doesn't take that many people to keep the factories running but it does take a lot of people to make new factories and improve efficiency at existing ones. And modern society is so predicated on growth that you literally need these efficiency improvers or the wheels fall off. On any give day or week or perhaps even year they don't matter. But over a decade they probably do.
- heavyset_go 5y agoThere wasn't just a TP shortage, there was a sudden shortage in prescription medications as supply chains were interrupted. The FDA had a list of medications that were impacted and were in short supply, and many of them were on the WHO list of essential medicines.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoThat tracks with my gut feeling: many jobs (possibly a majority, but I’m not confident that it’s that many) exist as a fig leaf for the government to say “see, these people aren’t on the dole. Look how close we are to full employment.”