Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

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There is a bigger picture here: there is undeniably a crisis but it's an external factor as far as the economy is concerned. Fact of the matter is, plenty of big businesses are doing better than ever: everything online is exploding, online shopping, payments, entertainments, online education as well as delivery services.

And a more specific example(for the sake of illustration), so are many grocery stores: I have 3 small grocery shops around me in a quiet and residential area and they can take a breath. Even after the toilet paper crisis ended, every time I look out the window I see at least 5 vans unloading. And we are talking really tiny shops: the combined are of all 3 combined would probably not cover an area of 100 square meters. With that you have large production lines, warehouses, transportation companies and logistics fully operational and have probably reached their maximum capacity.

While tourism, air travel, restaurants(those that don't deliver food) and pubs, public events, concerts, all all of those will suffer for years to come, others will flourish.

And with all that, I'd argue that a lot of new markets will appear.

I'm well aware it's too soon to tell for certain but that's what seems very plausible to me.

While I agree with some of your points re: online companies doing well, I don't see how you can take anecdata about local grocery stores and extrapolate it to the rest of the economy. Also, don't forget that 16 million (that's 5%!) Americans are unemployed right now. Can you imagine the damage that's going to do to businesses across the country?

If that isn't a sign that a recession is coming, I don't know what is.

The US is a very different beast altogether. I'm a bit far away from there but as a spectator, I'd say the US had the absolutely __WORST__ reaction to this situation. Given that about 40 to 45% of all confirmed covid19 cases are in the US suggests that to put it mildly. As a matter of fact, most of the world's reaction was nothing short of appalling. But there are exceptions to the rule: as an eastern European myself, most of the countries in Europe, east of Germany have managed to contain the situation really well. It might have something to do with considerable experiences with crisis(of different nature in all 1 billion instances over the past 100 years), but let's hope that's been to our benefit for once. Again - only time will tell

I never said average Joe won't be affected by this. What I am saying is that the big players will still be big once this is over but there will be new players as well. Also China will likely lose ground in the global production lines, and companies will likely look at alternatives, even if they have to make a compromise with scale and price. Investors like safe bets and what the current situation has taught is is that China isn't a safe option. We knew that already but the nets around the foxconn factories are a bit... Out of sight, out of mind.

16 million is a horrific number and I sincerely hope they pull through without paying a heavy price. But put your mind in a different mindset - 16 million is an incredible amount of manpower. For the 16 million - that's a tragedy but for the people with deep pockets - that's a once in a lifetime opportunity if they play their cards well. And I'm more than certain that many out there will.

Best I can tell, the stock market is trying to look mid-term and investors are assuming (read speculating) that his whole thing will blow over and life will resume its normal cadence.

Obviously this isn't reality but if you have enough money to be considered an "investor", the 16 million unemployed aren't the people in the forefront of your mind. They're also probably watching the covid task force briefings while wearing the same rose colored glasses that our mango unchained has.

> Also, don't forget that 16 million(!!) Americans are unemployed right now.

It's actually worse than that. The 16.8 million figure is for new jobless claims over the last three weeks [1]. There's additional people who were already unemployed before this, and there may be even more who've lost their jobs but haven't been able to successfully file a unemployment claim yet (due to the systems being overwhelmed).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/economy/unemploy...

I honestly doubt this, the virus triggered some events that will ripple through the economy and companies with WFH tools like Zoom and Slack won't be able to make up for the losses. There's plenty of big companies I know that need to cut costs, spend less on ads (which is bad for Google & Facebook), lay off people who then won't be able to consume as much and this will get worse in the coming months

> Even after the toilet paper crisis ended

It's not exactly over yet, it's just gotten less reported on - my local Jewel still has none on the shelf, and Amazon is out of brand-names (only sketchy sellers still have product).

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