I wonder how much irreparable damage the lockdowns did to the economy as we knew it before the pandemic.
The more subjective aspects of the economy are hard to map - are people motivated enough to work? Do they feel invested enough in the future to work? Have they been burnt out by the yoyo cycle of work/lockdowns? Was their industry severely damaged and they pivoted to other careers?
Like there’s a massive pilot shortage. I have friends who are pilots. They were already planning on retiring by 40 (pilots get paid very handsomely here) and starting a business. They just shifted their plans forward by 5 years instead of sitting at home and doing nothing. That’s two skilled captains the airlines will have to find replacements for.
I really don’t think anyone really sat down and thought through these issues when the lockdowns were announced. You can’t expect people to go from 100 to 0 and back to 100 over two years. People are not resources that can be put to use or discarded whenever you want.
"I really don’t think anyone really sat down and thought through these issues when the lockdowns were announced."
People clearly thought very hard about this. Different parts of the world came to different conclusions about it. Nobody thought that the lockdowns wouldn't cause immense amounts of economical and societal damage.
The calculation was whether they would have a worse impact than letting huge numbers of people die. And huge numbers of people died anyway!
I'd like to learn more about the economic impact of over a million deaths (in the USA). I would expect that to affect communities and industries in very complicated ways as well.
Most of those deaths probably had a positive or null effect, since they primarily occurred in the 65+ demographic.
edit: It is interesting to contemplate the possibility that the death of so many seniors exacerbated the inflation problem. That's a lot of assets that were previously tied up in retirement accounts and real estate that suddenly flowed into the hands of middle aged people.
Seems callous and erroneous. Also ignoring increased morbidity and strain on the healthcare system. Plus that would have the opposite effect on inflation
65+ and often at the lower end of economic scale (at least in the USA). I can't imagine that much flowed. E.g., housing prices would have feel as supply outpaced demand.
For the non 65+ that died, that's a negative for the economy. Loss of productive years, etc.
There are also follow on effects. My Inlaws passed away over the last three years. It has been a huge time sink and blow to productivity this whole time.
Long Covid among the survivors is the big unknown to productivity
Additionally, if we had people sit down and think about the situation, we would have protected and isolated the elderly instead of the insipid and endless all or nothing crusade we were handed instead.
Current CDC estimate has 220k deaths among working age people (under 65). Maybe you’re not meaning to minimize that impact, but that’s sort of how your comment reads
I'm sure a good chunk of the same people who were "irreparably damaged by COVID" would have been irreparably damaged by diseases such as lyme, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc. in another universe.
What's Your point? You are suggesting that this people would find another disease to get out of job market? If so that is some high level dystopian stuff you believe.
>I wonder how much irreparable damage the lockdowns did to the economy as we knew it before the pandemic.
You can also look at it the other way round:
The lockdown forced companies to establish home office, something that was overdue for up to 20 years.
This can enhance the economy much more in the long run than it harmed during the last two years. Maybe the productivity gains are big enough that they outweigh the amount of artificially generated money. Then there shouldn't be much of an inflation.
I was very productive over 2 years working from home. I actually managed to complete a few home construction projects while answering a few slack questions from my phone once in awhile.
Well the other quiet part that executives don't say out loud often is that if the job can be done from home, then it can be done from Mexico, India, or Eastern Europe as well which is where that job is now. To be fair, that was happening before even the pandemic, and I was mentally half checked out too. Now I work in healthcare which has a bit more of a US centric moat to it.
>Well the other quiet part that executives don't say out loud often is that if the job can be done from home, then it can be done from Mexico, India, or Eastern Europe as well which is where that job is now.
Or heading to. Yea, I largely agree. But I fired two people during pandemic from not-exactly-wfh, so I’m perhaps a little biased.
One thing I learned is that many jobs that are considered essential are also considered dead-end. I assume that's pretty demotivating for anyone doing such a job.
The thing that I learned was that “essential” really meant “an acceptable loss of life so long as the profits keep flowing to the upper management class”.
This isn’t just demotivating, its dehumanizing, and it’s the reason so many people I work with now won’t lift a finger to help stop the collapse of society. Just the opposite in fact: many people seem to be looking for a match to start the fire.
> and it’s the reason so many people I work with now won’t lift a finger to help stop the collapse of society
I'm sorry but what exactly do these people do that this is a power they have?
The "collapse of society" so frequently seems to be "small business owners need to actually give their staff enough hours and stop treating them valid targets for abuse".
Is this a bad thing to though? The pilots are doing what they eventually wanted to do. Hopefully they are happier.
As for the shortage in general: economies have to adapt. Maybe that means more robotic flown aircraft. Or train travel increases. Or people stay at home and do more virtual visits.
When you said “0 to 100 back to 0” I think that applies more to existing business models rather than how workers perceive / enjoy / want to their jobs.
> Name a government or public sector institution that lost power during covid.
I honestly think: "Nearly all of them."
We've seen some significant exercise of power, but the underlying legitimacy that gives rise to power is severely eroded. So I am not at all sure that the various institutions have come out of this ahead.
Only in their unification against Russia have I seen an increase in organizational capacity.
> Like there’s a massive pilot shortage. I have friends who are pilots. They were already planning on retiring by 40 (pilots get paid very handsomely here) and starting a business. They just shifted their plans forward by 5 years instead of sitting at home and doing nothing. That’s two skilled captains the airlines will have to find replacements for.
> I really don’t think anyone really sat down and thought through these issues when the lockdowns were announced. You can’t expect people to go from 100 to 0 and back to 100 over two years. People are not resources that can be put to use or discarded whenever you want.
Didnt the paycheck protection program work towards this? We made a system to avoid unemployment strife and later inefficiency of rehiring everyone once it was over, by funding payrolls.
> I wonder how much irreparable damage the lockdowns did to the economy as we knew it before the pandemic.
Reasonable enough to wonder, but not without the corollary question: how much damage would have been to the economy without lockdowns? Yes, there were no doubt many side effects of the lockdowns that were not anticipated. But we lost at least 1M people in the USA (significantly more if you use excess death data). Lockdowns may have prevented that from being anywhere from 2-5 times higher. If we had lost 3M people, we get close to 1% of the total population of the USA, and the impact of that on the economy seems potentially enormous.
Probably biggest change between this recession and all the others is the people's willingness to work in an office. This is all orthogonal to the massive $24T budget deficit, not sure what impact that growing deficit will have, but it's been pretty large for decades now anyway.
US is mainly a services driven economy, which means people can work from anywhere. Offices and adjacent sectors will suffer irreparable damage, but the gain in productivity in other sectors will more than compensate for it. I think we will come out with a stronger and more efficient economy after this recession.
I wonder how much irreparable damage the central banks have done by "printing" unprecedented amounts of money. And that is what makes this "cycle" unique (i.e., is comparing it to the 80s accurate). Is it realistic to expect the economy to "catch up" given the excessive amounts of money supply that's been pumped into it?
Is there actually a major pilot shortage? Can I not book a flight and get anywhere in the continental US and be there in 24 hours from now? I suppose I'm asking, in what ways is the shortage presenting in a way practically visible to the consumer?
Yes, they did sit down and think that through. That's their job. This is not the first epidemic. Public health departments, unlike people on the Internet, actually study the topic.
You might consider sitting down and thinking about who is making these decisions and what their backgrounds are before you pronounce that they didn't take something into account. On what basis are you making that accusation? Do you have any idea what other things went into that decision?
Perhaps they made the wrong choice. But they weren't guessing. And I don't have a lot of respect for your guess about it if you don't even know that much.
When scientists in the U.K. started talking about herd immunity - the only way out of a pandemic - people went nuts and they quickly had to stop using the term and start reassuring more than informing.
Average pandemic is about four years, not much has changed. They just had to keep people going at the time.
Except they accidentally did a real-world experiment and we discovered that people needed to be consoled and not confronted too suddenly with the inevitable
The more subjective aspects of the economy are hard to map - are people motivated enough to work? Do they feel invested enough in the future to work? Have they been burnt out by the yoyo cycle of work/lockdowns? Was their industry severely damaged and they pivoted to other careers?
Like there’s a massive pilot shortage. I have friends who are pilots. They were already planning on retiring by 40 (pilots get paid very handsomely here) and starting a business. They just shifted their plans forward by 5 years instead of sitting at home and doing nothing. That’s two skilled captains the airlines will have to find replacements for.
I really don’t think anyone really sat down and thought through these issues when the lockdowns were announced. You can’t expect people to go from 100 to 0 and back to 100 over two years. People are not resources that can be put to use or discarded whenever you want.