11 ms·

Millions are missing from the workforce due to Covid-19

79 points by alwillis 4y ago

nostromo 4y ago
The Federal Reserve is very adept at blaming all of its problems on everything other than the Federal Reserve.
- beebmam 4y ago
  Are you suggesting that people are missing in the workforce in the US because of the federal reserve's policies, and if so, by what mechanism do you believe this is happening?
  - nostromo 4y ago
    Primarily by reducing lower working class wages via inflation. It is now more expensive for a number of people to work than it is to not work, which often requires childcare, transportation, and food near the job. The housing bubble also pushed these people further away from job centers. Both are a direct result of the federal reserve with a lot of help from congress.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      The federal reserve has a blunt instrument, the target benchmark rate, to control aggregate demand. Raising the rate destroys demand. Why is raising the target rate good? Destroying demand slows inflation. It also deflates asset bubbles (real estate, equities, etc). Does it negatively impact employment? Typically, it increases unemployment, but perhaps not in our current circumstances due to labor supply shortages [1] [2]. The Fed has engineered a soft landing and some moderate wage gains have occurred over the last 1-2 years. It’s up to workers to organize if they want to accelerate wage increases and lock them in. Fiscal policy is the domain of Congress, and at this time (most unfortunately), they aren’t willing to do anything to improve Labor’s situation. I do want to touch on why the Fed took extraordinary measures during the pandemic (both with lowering the benchmark rate and with acting as a backstop of last resort wrt buying large swaths of bonds) [3]. With enormous uncertainty at the time (will there be a vaccine? When if at all?), there was a risk of total economic collapse and loss of collective faith. Lowering the benchmark rate was like a pilot light ready to relight the economy once lockdowns were lifted, and them buying bonds ensured liquidity (preventing a collapse in bond values, as well as the mortgage backed securities market freezing up). There is strong evidence that remote work allowances during the pandemic contributed to driving up home prices [4], but zero interest rate policy didn’t help frothy real estate prices either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34554546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34554546 [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap... [3] https://archive.is/2020.03.24-154938/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/business/economy/coronavirus-fed-bond-buying.html https://archive.is/2020.03.24-154938/https://www.nytimes.com... [4] https://archive.is/2M8lC https://archive.is/2M8lC
      - uoaei 4y ago
        When you're holding a ~~hammer~~ central bank, everything looks like ~~a nail~~ interest rate adjustments.
      - latency-guy2 4y ago
        The Fed is strictly against labor, even by their own statements as well as Powell's own words numerous times. Their plan is to depress wages [1] and remove power from labor component of the economy. If any indication is correct, then the most recent tech layoffs are a compliance move to the fed's goals (^a). It's not a willing situation out of lack of care, when the will is strictly antagonistic. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/powell-treads-tricky-path-in-saying-wages-are-rising-too-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/powell-tr... ^a, I'm willing to forgive some tech companies because it was a deliberate twist of the arm by raising rates.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        The Fed might believe they are adversarial against labor (I’m aware of Yellen’s and Powell’s labor comments during their tenures as Fed chairs), but they have an uphill battle against structural demographics and an inverse population pyramid. Tech layoffs are Capital dictating to management to improve profits. If you don’t like it, unionize (dead serious). To not do so means continued powerlessness and to be at the whims of billionaire fund managers whining about their fund performance. Even with the total tech layoffs this year and last (~250k per layoffs.fyi), that’s one month of US added payrolls. I understand they’re not equivalent roles and pay, but I suggest taking it into consideration as a macro sign. It’s not 2001 or 2008.
        latency-guy2 4y ago
        The US does not have a true inverse population pyramid, it is only true for the next few years, maximum 10 years. The Fed is fully aware of this, pushing off too much capital to the generation with the least amount of labor is terrible idea for their goals. The US is also fully positioned to mitigate the effects of the thinning labor market to a place where we are minimally impacted by depressed growth by way of immigration, strategic investments in silicon, semiconductors, the complete demographic collapse of China that is currently underway, and numerous other items including a strengthened relationship with the EU. The US, and further the Fed have little to worry about by way of demographics. Tech layoffs consist of more than 'Capital', significantly more. 'Capital' is not reacting out of pure hatred for labor either, they are reacting to a specific phenomena, which is the Fed swiftly raising rates.
    - milkshakes 4y ago
      The government has tools to target inflation without reducing lower working class wages. Unfortunately, they lie in the domain of fiscal policy, not monetary policy, which only really has a hammer.
    - refurb 4y ago
      You're saying because wages don't keep up with inflation people just decide not to work at all? What do they do for money?
      - astrange 4y ago
        Lower-wage workers' wages have increased over inflation and in fact are the only wages that have done so. It's an unchanging fact of the internet that people show up complaining about inflation/the Fed/not being on the gold standard and are always cranks. Strangely, this is still true even when there is inflation.
      - tolciho 4y ago
        Do, said the fish, what do they do for want of water? Coast, contribute to excess deaths, live in a basement, take odd jobs that are more or less on the books, panhandle, join a monestary...
        refurb 4y ago
        What does "coast" mean? Or "living in a basement"? Those don't get your money you need to live.
    - mildchalupa 4y ago
      So it's interesting. The stated goal of the fed is to keep inflation and unemployment low. As of recently one of the reasons for the inflation is supply chain disruptions stemming from the shutdown of China. Over the last 13 years the fed has played a much greater role in the market by purchasing securities and setting the discount rate near to zero. The goal being to soften the blow of the housing collapse and to help being the economy back up. What I find interesting about the low interest rate is that low cost lending changes what types of projects are economically viable. If you look at the formula for NPV the discount rate is within the denominator. What this is saying in other terms is that a projects value is manipulated by the discount rate. On the whole low yield capitally intensive projects are possible to take on during a time of low lending costs. Sure the math makes sense here but what does this mean in aggregate. Does it make sense that the value a project supplies to humanity is dependent on the interest rate? No it really does not, it's not required for it to be proportional whatsoever. Capital is just a standardized term for motivation. All that money can buy is someone else's time or effort at the end of the day. What the NPV formula is truly giving us is a ratio of how much human effort will be required and how much output you are likely to get from such efforts. One of our issues both nationally and globally is that our interest rate is too low, (and we have no way to fairly correct for this). Higher cost of lending prunes projects that are low yield. This prunes projects that are not a large benefit to society. The fed has a hard time moving back to this because of the extreme difficulty everyone would face. Let's say they raise the rates to 18% suddenly homes value must drop to reflect the people's ability to pay the new mortgage rates. Best case this would dramatically reduce worker mobility. Worst case you wipe out the largest asset most might have. I do believe the fed is used as a tool is used to keep people working. If you track the cost of staples such as a loaf of bread or milk vs the hours required to earn such things on minimum wage you will find that it's all about the same over time. Logically this makes no sense whatsoever. Does this mean that we have gotten no better at producing these commodities over the last 100 years?
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        If supply chain disruption caused inflation, we'd see deflation when the disruption ends. The same for other alleged causes of inflation the government puts out. The explanation that stands up, however, is the government printing and spending excessive amounts money, backed only by the promise to print even more.
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      >Primarily by reducing lower working class wages via inflation There's no indication that this is a real thing given that leisure, hospitality, transport and warehouse workers have seen the strongest wage growths in decades, the first two groups outpacing inflation and seeing real wage gains. In fact fairly large wage increases in the service economy are one of the biggest contributors to inflation (wage-push inflation) and the basis for these rapid pay rises is the constantly tight labor market, hence the title of the thread.
  - salawat 4y ago
    I mean... Look at the layoffs going on right now. It's not like it's hard; and mind, I think it's a good thing interest rates are going up, bringing a return to sanity to the economic landscape, but the Federal Reserve by it's own admission wanted to increase unemployment. They succeeded. Now they're screeching because people are dropping out of the rat race/clearly orchestrated insane financial environnent because it is straight up clear to anyone with more than a handful of neurons to rub together that things have been completely unsustainable for a while? Color me surprised. /s
Animats 4y ago
If a million people die, that's "acceptable losses". But if GDP starts to decline, now that gets attention. It's beginning to look like having COVID-19 ages people faster than usual.[1] Hard to tell yet; that's the sort of study that takes years to gather data. More studies are turning up long-term damage. Here's one for COVID in kids.[2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29801-8 [2] https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10619/presentation/67797 https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10619/presentation/67...
- bamboozled 4y ago
  It's beginning to look like having COVID-19 ages people faster than usual.[1] It’s a huge claim.
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    I feel like I lost a decade of my lifespan because of Long Covid. I got it right at the start, March, 2020 an otherwise mild case. Then I noticed the fatigue, and exhaustion on what should have been effortless things. Almost 3 years later, Even just speaking to someone for more than a few minutes gets me winded. I saw a new doctor today, and he gives me hope that I might get my life back. I used to work on my feet 8 hours/day making gears, and gear like objects.
    - garganzol 4y ago
      This may indicate an onset of a postcovid syndrome. At the beginning, it is primarily characterized by a chronic fatigue and loosing the ability to work the full shift. Take a look [1]. [1] https://www.hormonesmatter.com/recovering-from-post-covid-mitochondrial-dysfunction/ https://www.hormonesmatter.com/recovering-from-post-covid-mi...
      - ldldlsosj 4y ago
        [flagged]
    - 4y ago
walterbell 4y ago
https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go > In a November 30, 2022, speech on “Inflation and the Labor Market,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell blamed most of the 3.5 million estimated shortfall in the U.S. labor force on premature retirements. He also blamed a large portion – between 280,000 and 680,000 – on “long Covid.” In a footnote, however, Powell acknowledged a far more somber factor: an estimated 400,000 unexpected deaths among working age people. ... In 2020, the vulnerable died of Covid at unusually high rates. In 2021 and 2022, Covid continued its assault, but the young, middle-aged, and healthy also died in aberrantly high numbers of something else.
- anovikov 4y ago
  But really, it's easy to see that vast majority of reduction is in 55-65 years old range. These are people who retired in 2020 and 2021 because on one hand, it was scary to keep working in Covid environment, and on the other, spectacular stock market performance through that point let them retire a lot earlier than they planned.
- stdclass 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - mildchalupa 4y ago
    The total net mortality rate during the peak of COVID were no worse than going back to a day in the the late 90's or early 00's.
- culopatin 4y ago
  110k died of fentanyl OD, that’s already a good chunk of people dying unrelated to COVID. Also I still wonder what makes a COVID count. If you were almost dead and COVID is what pushed you over, did you really die of COVID or anything would’ve done it? Do they count that as “was terminal before COVID”? My grandpa got pneumonia in the ICU and died because of it, but I wouldn’t say he got pneumonia and died, there is a reason why he was in the ICU.
cdf 4y ago
I cant remember if it was Thiel or Andreessen, but it was postulated that the consequence of "Software eating the world" is the unemployment it will create will keep interest rates low... until the pandemic had other ideas. Is it reasonable to expect software to resume eating the world or will the population decline from low birth rates to pick up where the pandemic left off and we are in a permanent tight employment market... for blue collar jobs anyway, while "AI eats the white collar jobs"?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Nothing spurs innovation like necessity. We didn't actually need to automate jobs before. It might've been cost effective, but it was easy and risk-free to hire from an adequate pool. Now we need automation because there aren't enough workers. So we'll probably get more automation until the pool is balanced. See how much more automated things are in places without immigration and super low birth rates (Japan, South Korea).
  - ehnto 4y ago
    > See how much more automated things are in places without immigration and super low birth rates (Japan, South Korea). I am not sure that Japan actually follows that trend. It's a big and complex country but in my experience there were more workers on jobs that in my western country would be just one guy, or no one at all, perhaps just a sign. Japan has fairly low wages but good social services, public infrastructure, and affordable daily life so I suspect that the line to cross into "poverty" is actually quite a bit lower in Japan. Perhaps that allows the math to make sense since a company can afford to hire more people, and those people can still afford to make ends meet. Happy to be corrected, my knowledge of Japanese economics is pretty shallow.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > keep interest rates low... until the pandemic had other ideas the pandemic did not drive interest rates up. Flooding the economy with money ignited inflation, and higher interest rates are necessary to tamp down a recession.
woodpanel 4y ago
Just for the record: Eric Feigl-Ding, the author of this substack, was/is one of the most shriekiest COVID-dramatizers, globally. I’ve never googled his name before writing this and the first Google suggestion is „Eric Feigl Ding fear mongerer“
- graeme 4y ago
  People like to accuse him of it. His earliest and wildest claim was that SARS-Cov-2 was widely transmissible and risked becoming a global pandemic if swift action wasn’t taken This was in January 2020. Fortunately, top commentators leapt into action, determined his calculation of the R0 may have had some technical issues and in any event he didn’t have specific expertise in the area The matter resolved, we waited till March 2020
  - ldldlsosj 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - skrause 4y ago
    Even a broken clock is right twice a day. When you fearmonger just about anything some predictions might be somewhat correct, most aren't. Eric Feigl-Ding also claimed that monkeypox could be airborne [1] and would be the next big pandemic [2]. Both turned out not to be true. [1] https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1528804498084446210 https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1528804498084446210 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox-pandemic-who-emergency-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox...
    - Izkata 4y ago
      > Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'm sure most people here know variations of the phrase "economists predicted 11 of the last 2 recessions", it's talked about often enough. What they may not be aware of is the same is true of pandemics. Offhand I'm aware of 5 predicted in the past 15 years or so, 2 of which happened.
  - 4y ago
fithisux 4y ago
Our money-worshipping overlords have found at last a solution to their unemployment and pension problems. Jab-Kudos!!!
dustedcodes 4y ago
I know many people who never returned to work. None of them had anything to do with (Long-)Covid. In fact I have not met a single person yet that actually has "Long Covid", despite it being portrayed as this huge issue that we have to (apparently) deal with. The people who I know left work and never returned are not rich by any means. They simply discovered more joyful things to do than their underpaid shitty jobs beforehand. Some have become full time carers for grandchildren, parents saving more money on nursery than what the grandparent was earning in some awful under appreciated healthcare job, some have created a small lifestyle business during COVID, some have retired early. I am happy for all of them.
- DanHulton 4y ago
  The scare quotes are unnecessary and disrespectful. Just because you don't have anyone in your network who notices long-term effects of Covid, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The plural of anecdote is not data, and all that. Some counter-anecdotes: In my network, I know someone who is coming up on a year of disability due to long Covid. After their second infection, they just... never got better. Unloading a dishwasher takes too much energy. And I have a personal trainer friend who has told me that of their clients that have had Covid, nearly none of them have returned to their previous levels, even the ones who only had "mild" Covid infections. I'm very glad for your friends and acquaintances who were able to use this opportunity to pursue their dreams in some fashion, but they don't represent the totality of experience here, just because you haven't noticed any examples to the contrary.
  - dustedcodes 4y ago
    I put "Long Covid" into quotes in my second sentence because this word is being used in many ways incorrectly as it has a very fluid/blurred meaning for many people. The people who suffer from post viral syndrome often use the correct term as they would have had that diagnosis. I don't think its disrespectful to be honest about the wide stretch of how the term "Long Covid" is being used/misused. I do acknowledge that some people suffer from post viral syndrome.
  - kerpotgh 4y ago
s9w 4y ago
[dead]
ldldlsosj 4y ago
[flagged]
jinpa_zangpo 4y ago
Social security disabilty claims have decreased since 2020, contradicting the claim that Covid, Long Covid, or the vaccine are leaving large numbers of people too disabled to work. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/dibStat.html https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/dibStat.html
- hezralig 4y ago
  I have been working with a friend who is recently disabled and apparently, it is substantially more difficult to apply for Social Security Disability. From personal experience, getting through to the SSA to have questions regarding the process answered or outstanding issues resolved has been quite the burden. There has also been a reduction in staffing of these offices. https://abc7news.com/social-security-disability-insurance-government-benefits-pandemic-office/10354615/ https://abc7news.com/social-security-disability-insurance-go...
- alwillis 4y ago
  It’s pretty well understood that social security disability claims are almost always initially rejected; most people have to apply multiple times. Also Long Covid wasn’t an officially recognized cause for someone becoming disabled until sometime in 2022.
lamontcg 4y ago
> My deep worry is that this long-term impact of #COVID on debilitating the workforce will continue to hit us year after year, as COVID and other infections (via COVID’s immunocompromised) slams ashore every winter. Fairly unlikely. Susceptibility to long COVID probably does come down to genetics, HLA subtype and/or some kind of OAS effect maybe due to prior infections. The people who have already encountered the virus and their immune system has formed a robust and successful response to the virus are likely to fight it off again fine the next time they're exposed (barring a change in their immune status due to chemotherapy or immunoscenescence or whatever, but that is a risk that those people run with influenza and other respiratory viruses as well). We're not going to see an additional 1% of the population suffering new onset long COVID year after year.

79 points by alwillis 4y ago

nostromo 4y ago

The Federal Reserve is very adept at blaming all of its problems on everything other than the Federal Reserve.

beebmam 4y ago
Are you suggesting that people are missing in the workforce in the US because of the federal reserve's policies, and if so, by what mechanism do you believe this is happening?
- nostromo 4y ago
  Primarily by reducing lower working class wages via inflation. It is now more expensive for a number of people to work than it is to not work, which often requires childcare, transportation, and food near the job. The housing bubble also pushed these people further away from job centers. Both are a direct result of the federal reserve with a lot of help from congress.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    The federal reserve has a blunt instrument, the target benchmark rate, to control aggregate demand. Raising the rate destroys demand. Why is raising the target rate good? Destroying demand slows inflation. It also deflates asset bubbles (real estate, equities, etc). Does it negatively impact employment? Typically, it increases unemployment, but perhaps not in our current circumstances due to labor supply shortages [1] [2]. The Fed has engineered a soft landing and some moderate wage gains have occurred over the last 1-2 years. It’s up to workers to organize if they want to accelerate wage increases and lock them in. Fiscal policy is the domain of Congress, and at this time (most unfortunately), they aren’t willing to do anything to improve Labor’s situation. I do want to touch on why the Fed took extraordinary measures during the pandemic (both with lowering the benchmark rate and with acting as a backstop of last resort wrt buying large swaths of bonds) [3]. With enormous uncertainty at the time (will there be a vaccine? When if at all?), there was a risk of total economic collapse and loss of collective faith. Lowering the benchmark rate was like a pilot light ready to relight the economy once lockdowns were lifted, and them buying bonds ensured liquidity (preventing a collapse in bond values, as well as the mortgage backed securities market freezing up). There is strong evidence that remote work allowances during the pandemic contributed to driving up home prices [4], but zero interest rate policy didn’t help frothy real estate prices either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34554546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34554546 [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap... [3] https://archive.is/2020.03.24-154938/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/business/economy/coronavirus-fed-bond-buying.html https://archive.is/2020.03.24-154938/https://www.nytimes.com... [4] https://archive.is/2M8lC https://archive.is/2M8lC
    - uoaei 4y ago
      When you're holding a ~~hammer~~ central bank, everything looks like ~~a nail~~ interest rate adjustments.
    - latency-guy2 4y ago
      The Fed is strictly against labor, even by their own statements as well as Powell's own words numerous times. Their plan is to depress wages [1] and remove power from labor component of the economy. If any indication is correct, then the most recent tech layoffs are a compliance move to the fed's goals (^a). It's not a willing situation out of lack of care, when the will is strictly antagonistic. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/powell-treads-tricky-path-in-saying-wages-are-rising-too-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/powell-tr... ^a, I'm willing to forgive some tech companies because it was a deliberate twist of the arm by raising rates.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        The Fed might believe they are adversarial against labor (I’m aware of Yellen’s and Powell’s labor comments during their tenures as Fed chairs), but they have an uphill battle against structural demographics and an inverse population pyramid. Tech layoffs are Capital dictating to management to improve profits. If you don’t like it, unionize (dead serious). To not do so means continued powerlessness and to be at the whims of billionaire fund managers whining about their fund performance. Even with the total tech layoffs this year and last (~250k per layoffs.fyi), that’s one month of US added payrolls. I understand they’re not equivalent roles and pay, but I suggest taking it into consideration as a macro sign. It’s not 2001 or 2008.
        latency-guy2 4y ago
        The US does not have a true inverse population pyramid, it is only true for the next few years, maximum 10 years. The Fed is fully aware of this, pushing off too much capital to the generation with the least amount of labor is terrible idea for their goals. The US is also fully positioned to mitigate the effects of the thinning labor market to a place where we are minimally impacted by depressed growth by way of immigration, strategic investments in silicon, semiconductors, the complete demographic collapse of China that is currently underway, and numerous other items including a strengthened relationship with the EU. The US, and further the Fed have little to worry about by way of demographics. Tech layoffs consist of more than 'Capital', significantly more. 'Capital' is not reacting out of pure hatred for labor either, they are reacting to a specific phenomena, which is the Fed swiftly raising rates.
  - milkshakes 4y ago
    The government has tools to target inflation without reducing lower working class wages. Unfortunately, they lie in the domain of fiscal policy, not monetary policy, which only really has a hammer.
  - refurb 4y ago
    You're saying because wages don't keep up with inflation people just decide not to work at all? What do they do for money?
    - astrange 4y ago
      Lower-wage workers' wages have increased over inflation and in fact are the only wages that have done so. It's an unchanging fact of the internet that people show up complaining about inflation/the Fed/not being on the gold standard and are always cranks. Strangely, this is still true even when there is inflation.
    - tolciho 4y ago
      Do, said the fish, what do they do for want of water? Coast, contribute to excess deaths, live in a basement, take odd jobs that are more or less on the books, panhandle, join a monestary...
      - refurb 4y ago
        What does "coast" mean? Or "living in a basement"? Those don't get your money you need to live.
  - mildchalupa 4y ago
    So it's interesting. The stated goal of the fed is to keep inflation and unemployment low. As of recently one of the reasons for the inflation is supply chain disruptions stemming from the shutdown of China. Over the last 13 years the fed has played a much greater role in the market by purchasing securities and setting the discount rate near to zero. The goal being to soften the blow of the housing collapse and to help being the economy back up. What I find interesting about the low interest rate is that low cost lending changes what types of projects are economically viable. If you look at the formula for NPV the discount rate is within the denominator. What this is saying in other terms is that a projects value is manipulated by the discount rate. On the whole low yield capitally intensive projects are possible to take on during a time of low lending costs. Sure the math makes sense here but what does this mean in aggregate. Does it make sense that the value a project supplies to humanity is dependent on the interest rate? No it really does not, it's not required for it to be proportional whatsoever. Capital is just a standardized term for motivation. All that money can buy is someone else's time or effort at the end of the day. What the NPV formula is truly giving us is a ratio of how much human effort will be required and how much output you are likely to get from such efforts. One of our issues both nationally and globally is that our interest rate is too low, (and we have no way to fairly correct for this). Higher cost of lending prunes projects that are low yield. This prunes projects that are not a large benefit to society. The fed has a hard time moving back to this because of the extreme difficulty everyone would face. Let's say they raise the rates to 18% suddenly homes value must drop to reflect the people's ability to pay the new mortgage rates. Best case this would dramatically reduce worker mobility. Worst case you wipe out the largest asset most might have. I do believe the fed is used as a tool is used to keep people working. If you track the cost of staples such as a loaf of bread or milk vs the hours required to earn such things on minimum wage you will find that it's all about the same over time. Logically this makes no sense whatsoever. Does this mean that we have gotten no better at producing these commodities over the last 100 years?
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      If supply chain disruption caused inflation, we'd see deflation when the disruption ends. The same for other alleged causes of inflation the government puts out. The explanation that stands up, however, is the government printing and spending excessive amounts money, backed only by the promise to print even more.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >Primarily by reducing lower working class wages via inflation There's no indication that this is a real thing given that leisure, hospitality, transport and warehouse workers have seen the strongest wage growths in decades, the first two groups outpacing inflation and seeing real wage gains. In fact fairly large wage increases in the service economy are one of the biggest contributors to inflation (wage-push inflation) and the basis for these rapid pay rises is the constantly tight labor market, hence the title of the thread.
- salawat 4y ago
  I mean... Look at the layoffs going on right now. It's not like it's hard; and mind, I think it's a good thing interest rates are going up, bringing a return to sanity to the economic landscape, but the Federal Reserve by it's own admission wanted to increase unemployment. They succeeded. Now they're screeching because people are dropping out of the rat race/clearly orchestrated insane financial environnent because it is straight up clear to anyone with more than a handful of neurons to rub together that things have been completely unsustainable for a while? Color me surprised. /s

Animats 4y ago

If a million people die, that's "acceptable losses". But if GDP starts to decline, now that gets attention. It's beginning to look like having COVID-19 ages people faster than usual.[1] Hard to tell yet; that's the sort of study that takes years to gather data. More studies are turning up long-term damage. Here's one for COVID in kids.[2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29801-8 [2] https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10619/presentation/67797 https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10619/presentation/67...

bamboozled 4y ago
It's beginning to look like having COVID-19 ages people faster than usual.[1] It’s a huge claim.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  I feel like I lost a decade of my lifespan because of Long Covid. I got it right at the start, March, 2020 an otherwise mild case. Then I noticed the fatigue, and exhaustion on what should have been effortless things. Almost 3 years later, Even just speaking to someone for more than a few minutes gets me winded. I saw a new doctor today, and he gives me hope that I might get my life back. I used to work on my feet 8 hours/day making gears, and gear like objects.
  - garganzol 4y ago
    This may indicate an onset of a postcovid syndrome. At the beginning, it is primarily characterized by a chronic fatigue and loosing the ability to work the full shift. Take a look [1]. [1] https://www.hormonesmatter.com/recovering-from-post-covid-mitochondrial-dysfunction/ https://www.hormonesmatter.com/recovering-from-post-covid-mi...
    - ldldlsosj 4y ago
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  - 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago

https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go > In a November 30, 2022, speech on “Inflation and the Labor Market,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell blamed most of the 3.5 million estimated shortfall in the U.S. labor force on premature retirements. He also blamed a large portion – between 280,000 and 680,000 – on “long Covid.” In a footnote, however, Powell acknowledged a far more somber factor: an estimated 400,000 unexpected deaths among working age people. ... In 2020, the vulnerable died of Covid at unusually high rates. In 2021 and 2022, Covid continued its assault, but the young, middle-aged, and healthy also died in aberrantly high numbers of something else.

anovikov 4y ago
But really, it's easy to see that vast majority of reduction is in 55-65 years old range. These are people who retired in 2020 and 2021 because on one hand, it was scary to keep working in Covid environment, and on the other, spectacular stock market performance through that point let them retire a lot earlier than they planned.
stdclass 4y ago
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- mildchalupa 4y ago
  The total net mortality rate during the peak of COVID were no worse than going back to a day in the the late 90's or early 00's.
culopatin 4y ago
110k died of fentanyl OD, that’s already a good chunk of people dying unrelated to COVID. Also I still wonder what makes a COVID count. If you were almost dead and COVID is what pushed you over, did you really die of COVID or anything would’ve done it? Do they count that as “was terminal before COVID”? My grandpa got pneumonia in the ICU and died because of it, but I wouldn’t say he got pneumonia and died, there is a reason why he was in the ICU.

cdf 4y ago

I cant remember if it was Thiel or Andreessen, but it was postulated that the consequence of "Software eating the world" is the unemployment it will create will keep interest rates low... until the pandemic had other ideas. Is it reasonable to expect software to resume eating the world or will the population decline from low birth rates to pick up where the pandemic left off and we are in a permanent tight employment market... for blue collar jobs anyway, while "AI eats the white collar jobs"?

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Nothing spurs innovation like necessity. We didn't actually need to automate jobs before. It might've been cost effective, but it was easy and risk-free to hire from an adequate pool. Now we need automation because there aren't enough workers. So we'll probably get more automation until the pool is balanced. See how much more automated things are in places without immigration and super low birth rates (Japan, South Korea).
- ehnto 4y ago
  > See how much more automated things are in places without immigration and super low birth rates (Japan, South Korea). I am not sure that Japan actually follows that trend. It's a big and complex country but in my experience there were more workers on jobs that in my western country would be just one guy, or no one at all, perhaps just a sign. Japan has fairly low wages but good social services, public infrastructure, and affordable daily life so I suspect that the line to cross into "poverty" is actually quite a bit lower in Japan. Perhaps that allows the math to make sense since a company can afford to hire more people, and those people can still afford to make ends meet. Happy to be corrected, my knowledge of Japanese economics is pretty shallow.
fsckboy 4y ago
> keep interest rates low... until the pandemic had other ideas the pandemic did not drive interest rates up. Flooding the economy with money ignited inflation, and higher interest rates are necessary to tamp down a recession.

woodpanel 4y ago

Just for the record: Eric Feigl-Ding, the author of this substack, was/is one of the most shriekiest COVID-dramatizers, globally. I’ve never googled his name before writing this and the first Google suggestion is „Eric Feigl Ding fear mongerer“

graeme 4y ago
People like to accuse him of it. His earliest and wildest claim was that SARS-Cov-2 was widely transmissible and risked becoming a global pandemic if swift action wasn’t taken This was in January 2020. Fortunately, top commentators leapt into action, determined his calculation of the R0 may have had some technical issues and in any event he didn’t have specific expertise in the area The matter resolved, we waited till March 2020
- ldldlsosj 4y ago
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- skrause 4y ago
  Even a broken clock is right twice a day. When you fearmonger just about anything some predictions might be somewhat correct, most aren't. Eric Feigl-Ding also claimed that monkeypox could be airborne [1] and would be the next big pandemic [2]. Both turned out not to be true. [1] https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1528804498084446210 https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1528804498084446210 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox-pandemic-who-emergency-covid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox...
  - Izkata 4y ago
    > Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'm sure most people here know variations of the phrase "economists predicted 11 of the last 2 recessions", it's talked about often enough. What they may not be aware of is the same is true of pandemics. Offhand I'm aware of 5 predicted in the past 15 years or so, 2 of which happened.
- 4y ago

fithisux 4y ago

Our money-worshipping overlords have found at last a solution to their unemployment and pension problems. Jab-Kudos!!!

dustedcodes 4y ago

I know many people who never returned to work. None of them had anything to do with (Long-)Covid. In fact I have not met a single person yet that actually has "Long Covid", despite it being portrayed as this huge issue that we have to (apparently) deal with. The people who I know left work and never returned are not rich by any means. They simply discovered more joyful things to do than their underpaid shitty jobs beforehand. Some have become full time carers for grandchildren, parents saving more money on nursery than what the grandparent was earning in some awful under appreciated healthcare job, some have created a small lifestyle business during COVID, some have retired early. I am happy for all of them.

DanHulton 4y ago
The scare quotes are unnecessary and disrespectful. Just because you don't have anyone in your network who notices long-term effects of Covid, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The plural of anecdote is not data, and all that. Some counter-anecdotes: In my network, I know someone who is coming up on a year of disability due to long Covid. After their second infection, they just... never got better. Unloading a dishwasher takes too much energy. And I have a personal trainer friend who has told me that of their clients that have had Covid, nearly none of them have returned to their previous levels, even the ones who only had "mild" Covid infections. I'm very glad for your friends and acquaintances who were able to use this opportunity to pursue their dreams in some fashion, but they don't represent the totality of experience here, just because you haven't noticed any examples to the contrary.
- dustedcodes 4y ago
  I put "Long Covid" into quotes in my second sentence because this word is being used in many ways incorrectly as it has a very fluid/blurred meaning for many people. The people who suffer from post viral syndrome often use the correct term as they would have had that diagnosis. I don't think its disrespectful to be honest about the wide stretch of how the term "Long Covid" is being used/misused. I do acknowledge that some people suffer from post viral syndrome.
- kerpotgh 4y ago

s9w 4y ago

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ldldlsosj 4y ago

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jinpa_zangpo 4y ago

Social security disabilty claims have decreased since 2020, contradicting the claim that Covid, Long Covid, or the vaccine are leaving large numbers of people too disabled to work. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/dibStat.html https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/dibStat.html

hezralig 4y ago
I have been working with a friend who is recently disabled and apparently, it is substantially more difficult to apply for Social Security Disability. From personal experience, getting through to the SSA to have questions regarding the process answered or outstanding issues resolved has been quite the burden. There has also been a reduction in staffing of these offices. https://abc7news.com/social-security-disability-insurance-government-benefits-pandemic-office/10354615/ https://abc7news.com/social-security-disability-insurance-go...
alwillis 4y ago
It’s pretty well understood that social security disability claims are almost always initially rejected; most people have to apply multiple times. Also Long Covid wasn’t an officially recognized cause for someone becoming disabled until sometime in 2022.

lamontcg 4y ago

> My deep worry is that this long-term impact of #COVID on debilitating the workforce will continue to hit us year after year, as COVID and other infections (via COVID’s immunocompromised) slams ashore every winter. Fairly unlikely. Susceptibility to long COVID probably does come down to genetics, HLA subtype and/or some kind of OAS effect maybe due to prior infections. The people who have already encountered the virus and their immune system has formed a robust and successful response to the virus are likely to fight it off again fine the next time they're exposed (barring a change in their immune status due to chemotherapy or immunoscenescence or whatever, but that is a risk that those people run with influenza and other respiratory viruses as well). We're not going to see an additional 1% of the population suffering new onset long COVID year after year.