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Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

It's still early to talk about recovery while the pandemic is ongoing. And even if the virus were extinguished tomorrow, much of the initial damage from the pandemic's first surge is still working its way through the economy (e.g., foreclosures). The upper classes cannot defy economic gravity indefinitely---ultimately, we really are all in this together.

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>The upper classes cannot defy economic gravity indefinitely

I used to think so too, but I'm not so sure anymore. Modern tech companies can operate with very few employees, and by relying on income streams like ads and selling personal information, they don't even rely directly on consumers. So with that in mind, I can now imagine a cloud city of the 1% floating above the exploited masses.

It's probably not so cut and dried. Those with their own island fortresses can certainly ride out almost anything. But 'upper classes' is more often thought of as the top 10%, and I think a lot of them are quite vulnerable to a sudden change in the economy.

They may not rely directly on consumers, but they almost certainly rely indirectly on consumers. People are very bad about reasoning about feedback loops, especially so when there are delays in the loop.

Except that there is a big difference: If a rich person loses his job and 50% of his savings, he will still go on to be rich and well off for probably indefinitely as long as the stock market works. They will also have an easy time finding a new job. If a poor person loses his job, that's now a homeless person. And the chances of getting a job after that are slim.

Bottom line: Yeah we are totally all in it together, except that for people who are well off, COVID is nothing but a minor bump on the road to early retirement, while for poor people its a life disrupting, potentially fatal calamity.

"...as long as the stock market works." If the stock market truly works, it will reflect the underlying economy and its prospects. Right now, it is being propped up by the Fed (and other actors, like SoftBank), and does not reflect the underlying economy or its future prospects (at least as projected by most economists). That cannot be sustained indefinitely.

But your general point is probably correct, based on the experience of the Great Recession. This study concluded that while all households lost about the same percentage of wealth, the wealthier households recovered more quickly: https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2015/The-Rich-Got-Richer.pdf. The Economic Policy Institute concluded similarly that the bottom 80% was hit harder than the top 20% (https://www.epi.org/press/news_from_epi_th_great_recession_e...).

As long as the stock market works, the pricing represents long term growth rather than short term setbacks.

It represents projected long term growth. My point was that the long term employment outlook seems pretty bleak (e.g., https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56442#:~:text=CBO%20projects..., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-employment/u-...). So it's hard to see where the market is getting its long-term optimism. One possible answer is that it isn't long-term optimism at all, but a short-term expectation of continued government intervention prior to the November election.

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