[stupac2]

Third, as a society, we have to adopt more risk than we have since the pandemic began.  It feels to me that we have gone overboard in avoiding risk, a natural reaction for a society that tends to focus on the self versus the greater good.  I genuinely don't say that as a slam, just recognizing reality, that powerful people in this society make the laws and the rules and the great unwashed have to abide by them.  That means, the Elites make rules that ensure their existence, not necessarily the existence of the common man.  So I'd like a little more concern for the common man, and that means businesses open earlier, so people can feed their families and pay their rent.  One of the unfortunate results of the pandemic is that companies need to conserve cash, and have stopped paying vendors, or are paying very slowly.  If you get a chance, take a look at "velocity" in economic terms, which is essentially the rate at which cash moves through the economy.  It's actually been dropping since 1995 as a long term trend, but I would very much like to see the weekly velocity statistics for 2020.  I could only find 2019 velocity stats.  My suspicion is that velocity has dropped significantly.

I was thinking more along the lines of government response, but these are interesting as well, I think this one in particular. My experience has been that the checks come in basically as late as possible, and big guys try to do as much as they can to take advantage of that (one customer of our tried to get us onto net 90 terms, lol).

In general I actually think our society is far too blase about risk. I've seen a lot of people compare covid deaths to car crash deaths, but I've long thought that car crash deaths are insanely high. We accept the risk because it's small for each for us, but also because when we're driving we feel "in control" so we don't care so much. It's why people are so much more likely to be afraid of flying than driving, despite driving being far more dangerous. I think a similar thing is at work with covid, it's new and scary, so everyone's afraid (in this case I think the fear is legitimate, but my guess is that if this were the 3rd outbreak in our lifetimes we'd care less). But in general I wish we'd spend more time thinking about low-hanging fruit of mortality and how to affect it, like curbing air pollution, car accidents, suicides, etc.

But that's a bit of an aside. I think the quote portion above strikes at the heart of the matter, which is that individuals are scared and there's not a lot you can do about that. Saying "let people go back to work" sounds good, but in some sense it's actually coercive if re-opening takes away UI benefits (I hadn't thought much about that, but this interview talks about it). Making low-income people choose between their safety and their finances is morally questionable, and re-opening early could do that depending on how the laws are phrased. Plus if 80% of your customer base isn't interested in buying your wares (which is likely true of a host of businesses that rely on in-person sales, if survey data is to be trusted) it doesn't matter if you can open, you're still screwed.

That's why I tend to think reopening is a sideshow, we'd be better off just following the advice of the epidemiologists, but also do some crazy stimulus that makes what we've done so far look timid. It doesn't seem like this is forthcoming, which is depressing, because I think that leaves us with a menu composed mostly of various flavors of shit sandwiches.

[stupac2]

Third, as a society, we have to adopt more risk than we have since the pandemic began.  It feels to me that we have gone overboard in avoiding risk, a natural reaction for a society that tends to focus on the self versus the greater good.  I genuinely don't say that as a slam, just recognizing reality, that powerful people in this society make the laws and the rules and the great unwashed have to abide by them.  That means, the Elites make rules that ensure their existence, not necessarily the existence of the common man.  So I'd like a little more concern for the common man, and that means businesses open earlier, so people can feed their families and pay their rent.  One of the unfortunate results of the pandemic is that companies need to conserve cash, and have stopped paying vendors, or are paying very slowly.  If you get a chance, take a look at "velocity" in economic terms, which is essentially the rate at which cash moves through the economy.  It's actually been dropping since 1995 as a long term trend, but I would very much like to see the weekly velocity statistics for 2020.  I could only find 2019 velocity stats.  My suspicion is that velocity has dropped significantly.

I was thinking more along the lines of government response, but these are interesting as well, I think this one in particular. My experience has been that the checks come in basically as late as possible, and big guys try to do as much as they can to take advantage of that (one customer of our tried to get us onto net 90 terms, lol).

In general I actually think our society is far too blase about risk. I've seen a lot of people compare covid deaths to car crash deaths, but I've long thought that car crash deaths are insanely high. We accept the risk because it's small for each for us, but also because when we're driving we feel "in control" so we don't care so much. It's why people are so much more likely to be afraid of flying than driving, despite driving being far more dangerous. I think a similar thing is at work with covid, it's new and scary, so everyone's afraid (in this case I think the fear is legitimate, but my guess is that if this were the 3rd outbreak in our lifetimes we'd care less). But in general I wish we'd spend more time thinking about low-hanging fruit of mortality and how to affect it, like curbing air pollution, car accidents, suicides, etc.

But that's a bit of an aside. I think the quote portion above strikes at the heart of the matter, which is that individuals are scared and there's not a lot you can do about that. Saying "let people go back to work" sounds good, but in some sense it's actually coercive if re-opening takes away UI benefits (I hadn't thought much about that, but this interview talks about it). Making low-income people choose between their safety and their finances is morally questionable, and re-opening early could do that depending on how the laws are phrased. Plus if 80% of your customer base isn't interested in buying your wares (which is likely true of a host of businesses that rely on in-person sales, if survey data is to be trusted) it doesn't matter if you can open, you're still screwed.

That's why I tend to think reopening is a sideshow, we'd be better off just following the advice of the epidemiologists, but also do some crazy stimulus that makes what we've done so far look timid. It doesn't seem like this is forthcoming, which is depressing, because I think that leaves us with a menu composed mostly of various flavors of shit sandwiches.