| It is an unmitigated disaster. Prior to the lockdowns, there were ~120 million people in the workforce. One-third has been knocked out, so the current workforce is 80 million, thus 50% of the current workforce has applied for unemployment. The last week's numbers indicate that just over 2% of the workforce was lost, which is the lowest percentage yet, but only a little lower than the previous week's. It is only so many more weeks we have left to have a percentage that can leave the workforce. There have never been millions of people losing their jobs in a week, now it is every week. There are regular stories about restaurants opening, but when I read them I can see clearly the restaurants are unlikely to be able to survive profitably under the new rules. I'm not sure what the rules look like for other employers. Are manufacturers going to be required to retool their entire production line to meet these requirements? This is more likely to lead the manufacturer to at least temporarily shut down, if not permanently. How are apparel stores supposed to make money? And wedding gown makers? Is no one to try on clothes before purchase any more? These businesses will likely remain closed until the full ramifications of the new legislation are made clear. I'm sure there are many examples of these things everywhere, so likely what will happen is businesses will just open and ignore the rules, and with such rampant rule-breaking either entire city staff are converted to rule enforcement, or the rules are selectively enforced (e.g., cronies shut down competitors), though even that won't work out because employees will sue employers out of business. Employees let-go due to lockdowns are making some nice free money, and incentivizing them to go back to work before their free money dries up is incredibly difficult. It's not a clear equation, but the employee is looking at incremental earnings, meaning that going to work for 40 hours may not be worth an extra $150 in take home, so either the employer has to offer more or wait until someone comes in to work. There is also the still undiscussed issue of the rolling regional lockdowns that Fauci and others described earlier in all of this. I suspect most people, including business owners, did not catch these stories and it seems like they've been a bit memory-holed, but if they do enact such policies, then I suspect there will be a domino effect where other businesses choose to close before they are further in arrears. There are also secondary effects coming in the form of incredible government budget deficits. The likely policy response will be more debt and increased taxes, but this typically makes business growth more sluggish. |
I have spent the last few minutes searching for some kind of government response to this and all I can find is basically along the lines of "lift lockdown, reopen and things will go back to how they were, these numbers are just temporary".
Is this really the official government position on the matter? Seems they are saying re-open with a few new measures in place to encourage distancing and it will all be fine??
That really does not make much sense to me.