[jryhjythtr]

The two will be forever conflated (and there's an excellent argument that Putin made his move on new territory while the rest of the world had weakened itself with years of self-imposed Covid restrictions). However, literally shutting down globe-sized sectors of the economy for months or years at a time, with no notice, to me is obviously the biggest cause of what we see now (and what is to come).

Exactly how does the war in Ukraine economically affect, for example, the US?

[Nimitz14]

Gas prices. I'm perplexed that you somehow missed the connection.

[jryhjythtr]

How did the US screw up being the world's biggest producer of natural gas, and being energy independent?

[Nimitz14]

Gas as in fuel. Are you being deliberately dense?

Anyways you're changing the topic now. Glad I could help you understand how the ukraine war affected the US economy. Good day.

[jryhjythtr]

>Are you being deliberately dense?

No, I'm not from the US, so the colloquial usage of "gas" as "fuel for cars" slipped my mind.

The US is also a net exporter of crude oil, so all I've said so far still applies.

How has the Ukraine war affected gasoline prices? Are you just talking about the state you live in, or US-wide?

[acdha]

> the rest of the world had weakened itself with years of self-imposed Covid restrictions

This is a pretty bold political statement: it’s saying that people weren’t worried about getting sick and that the millions of people who died, had long-term illness, or were caring for their relatives weren’t contributing to the economy. Things like the business owners complaining that retail sales were down even after they got exactly what they asked for suggests that’s not the case.

> literally shutting down globe-sized sectors of the economy for months or years at a time, with no notice

Can you give details on where you believe this happened?

[jryhjythtr]

>the millions of people who died, had long-term illness, or were caring for their relatives weren’t contributing to the economy.

They were dominated (at least by the publicly-available figures here in the UK) by retired folks. No, in a purely pragmatic sense, they don't contribute much to the economy, especially as any wealth they do have gets immediately re-distributed on death anyway.

If we were talking about some terrible disease (like Smallpox, for example), where the young and old alike died in huge numbers, then the argument would be different.

>Can you give details on where you believe this happened?

Are you kidding me? Maritime shipping and aviation are two obvious examples.

[acdha]

First, while the death rates were highest among the oldest people there are still a ton of people who were not close to death anyway. It’s also not true that losing older people is necessarily neutral - economies do better when money circulates, not when it’s tied up in a lump sum going into someone’s retirement account.

Note also that I mentioned people who were impacted but not killed. Again, there are millions of people in prime economic years who became substantially less productive - and someone in their 20s or 30s might be missing key career steps which will lock in much of that permanently. Similarly, there are millions of people who stopped working or started working less to care for the previous groups. All of those have a significant economic impact.

Finally, maritime shipping wasn’t shut down, certainly not for “years”. It was significantly disrupted by the disease but that wasn’t a policy choice.

Air travel (notably not cargo) was restricted for months, not years at the global scale, but it also bounced back quickly thanks to heavy government support in most countries. I don’t think it would be enough to explain the economy on its own as a lot of business went virtual and people found domestic outlets for the money they’d have spent on international travel.

Finally, I’m not saying that there was absolutely no impact from policy but rather that some people have had a tendency to blame policy more than the actual disease, or ignore the benefits from those choices. We saw this a lot with groups like restaurant owners where lifting safety measures didn’t improve business as much as they’d hoped because many of their customers didn’t want to engage in high-risk activities, or especially when their outspoken political positions drove people to competitors. In many ways this is natural: people want to believe things could have been better by choice because then they can imagine it being better if they were in charge.

[DanBC]

> They were dominated (at least by the publicly-available figures here in the UK) by retired folks.

You're saying here that most of the people who died were old, which is true. But you're also saying that this means that not many young people died from covid, which is untrue. It's untrue because a small proportion of a very large number is still a lot of people. Covid killed very many economically active people.

[umanwizard]

> Maritime shipping and aviation are two obvious examples.

Also, most forms of non-screen entertainment (bars, restaurants, sports, theaters, etc.)

[throwaway2037]

Cruise ships as well.

[galangalalgol]

The US has given over $8B in aid. Also natural gas prices are going to hurt this winter. Gasoline prices hurt this summer, both directly and in transport costs.

[jryhjythtr]

>The US has given over $8B in aid

That's throwaway change, compared to the amount spent on Covid.

>Also natural gas prices are going to hurt this winter.

The US is the world's biggest producer of natural gas, at least while fracking is still largely permitted.

[throwaway2037]

I was surprised when I read this part: <<The US is the world's biggest producer of natural gas>>

Then, I checked Google. Yep, you are right: https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/

In my mind, I was mixed up with world's largest exporters. Last I knew, it was a race between Qatar and Australia. But wrong again! It is Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...

[nradov]

Only a fraction of that $8B in aid was direct cash payments to Ukraine. Much of it went to US defense contractors and was recycled into the domestic economy. Higher fossil fuel prices hurt US consumers, but most of that value is flowing to US energy companies and ultimately to US investors. The vast majority of fossil fuels burned here are also extracted and refined here; we only import a little.

[bombcar]

$8 billion comes out to $25 per person in the US. It’s nothing compared to anything.

Heck, it’s only four powerballs from last weekend.

[varjag]

The US have been spending $20B¹ per year on air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan.

¹2011 figure

[ksala_]

Completely unrelated to the thread, but I had to google this. This seems to be the source https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-...

Reading the notes at the bottom, it seems like the number might be somewhat realistic, but should really be called the cost of shipping fuel and securing it to Afghanistan, some of which was probably used for aircon.

[varjag]

My point is $8B in 2022 money for defeating Russia in field is deal of the century.

[ksala_]

Yes, I agree, I don't think that $8B is a lot of money for the US, especially in the military context. I was just surprised at the number and shared some back story.

[nibbleshifter]

Bargain basement prices!

[benjaminwootton]

Agreed. It was blatantly obvious that the cure was worse than the disease, and that at best the restrictions could just kick the can down the road a while. It was also covered up by printing cash at enormous scale.

Now when the economy starts bleeding, supply chains struggle and inflation moons, people try and pin it on Putin and deny they ever supported it.

It’s cognitive dissonance at best? incredible dishonesty at worst.

[22SAS]

They should blame Xi. All these economic decisions wouldn't have happened had there been no COVID. The Chinese government deliberately released this lab-made bioweapon/virus, to see how it would negatively impact most of the world. From economies struggling, to people getting polarized and more divided, and supply chains getting affected, their move has been a massive intelligence success for them.

If anything, the western world needs to take a lot of strict action against the Chinese and also the tons of CCP sympathizers in their countries.

[jryhjythtr]

About the only upside is that China seems to have taken a big dose of their own poison.

[jryhjythtr]

It'll be like the wars in Iraq and Libya. Vitally important at the time, but you can't find anyone now who will say they supported them.

Then again, how can you blame people? Most people do what they are told, and the person who glared at you last year for breaking some Covid rule or the other could equally likely have a conversation with you today about some horrible outcome they've had thanks to Covid restrictions, and never link the two.

[okaram]

It wasn't blatantly obvious that the cure was worse than the disease, especially because it wasn't.

There is room to disagree on how much and for how long we should have distanced, and which government interventions were more useful, but I (and most people?) think doing nothing would have been much worse.

[implements]

> It was blatantly obvious that the cure was worse than the disease,

That's not how I remember it - governments locked down to prevent health systems collapse while a vaccine was created, tested and scaled for mass production. After successful vaccine deployment restrictions were lifted.

[jryhjythtr]

Three huge assumptions here -

"health system collapse" was the inevitable outcome of any other approach to dealing with Covid.

"health system collapse" is worse than all of the other present and future side-effects, including the effects of denying healthcare to huge numbers of people over the past 2.5 years.

"health system collapse" didn't happen anyway. At least where I am (UK), it's increasingly clear that our response to Covid has blown open all of the existing cracks, and it's hard to say that we "saved" the NHS.

[benjaminwootton]

3 weeks for me to get a remote GP appointment right now. This will be killing more people than Covid ever did, so we are in the red before we even get onto anything else.