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> We all assumed that governments could/would do a lot more to help.

They did. The US gave out trillions in aid, more than any other country except Japan (by GDP). If you were unemployed this was at least $2400/month and more if you had children - the end result is that poverty and child hunger went down in 2020 and 2021, not up like you seem to think, and everyone went shopping so hard while they were home it brought inflation back.

The reason people don't seem to know this is that journalists weren't unemployed and so have spent the last year tweeting "the government only gave us $1400 because they want us to die".

It's the strangest disconnect right now between the actual health of the average person's bank account, and the sentiment that everything is terrible.

Like GP is talking about insurmountable debt, but the stats show people actually paid down debt/saved money during the pandemic.

I can't disagree that doomsday journalism has a played a role here.

If the USA is anything like Canada, and I don't know if it is, then there there was a "missing middle" in terms of pandemic support.

Here in Canada, if you qualified for CERB, or had social spending (or other luxury spending) cut back, then you're among those who were likely to have saved more or paid down existing debt. For those who did not qualify for CERB, and did not have much pre-existing social/luxury spending, then the pandemic likely hurt them financially. And now with inflation...

Like most safety net items, there is a missing middle that makes too much to qualify for support but needs that support to make ends meet. I was close for most of the pandemic as the household earned just enough to miss most basic support options beyond the food bank but not enough to do more than subsist, which is incredibly depressing. Then all costs are going up so a steeper hill to climb this year barring a raise or new job. My work has great benefits/etc, and before the reorg more opportunity, so it's hard to jump.

Okay now compare the average person's bank account with the average rise in cost of housing.

Cost of housing numbers includes imputed rent, which is money you pay to yourself, and so makes you richer. (if you're a homeowner)

IIRC a lot of new people became homeowners in 2020 or relocated somewhere cheaper, which is a positive sign. If rent is going up, that should be fixed by building more housing, which the admin is working on.

It's a positive sign for whom? The economy? Or those struggling to purchase those homes in the first place?

> The reason people don't seem to know this is that journalists weren't unemployed and so have spent the last year tweeting "the government only gave us $1400 because they want us to die".

This drove me crazy when I saw folks I know on social media expressing the same sentiment. People that I know for a fact did not lose their jobs, actually drove and ate out less (saving thousands)…or some griping and complaining that they did not qualify for the payout due to their income.

Unemployment benefits ended long ago, but working people have continued to suffer. People who were forced to quarantine and miss work due to government mandates don't get unemployment. Unemployment is no replacement for the millions of people who saw their children's schools shuttered for a year (or two!!) and were forced to quit their jobs and stay home to take care of their children. Food, energy, rent, health insurance - all the things people need to survive - are up massively year over year, far higher than the meager wage increases seen by some workers.

The government gave out trillions. Trillions that ended up in the pockets of the country's wealthiest people, who saw their net wealth double or triple during the pandemic and corporate profits soar while working people fell further under water. Its absolutely astounding how out of touch people who look at macro numbers supplied by the FED and the White House and think that everything is swell. Everything isn't swell. There's a reason that 72% of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction. American household debt is at an all time high. Millions of Americans face imminent homelessness as eviction moratoriums are lifted. Its incredibly tone deaf to sing the praises of the economy when its as bad or worse than its been for many or most working people in the country in a century.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/17/world-10-ri...

https://www.ibtimes.com/american-household-debt-rises-all-ti...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/downhill-div...

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/deluge-of-eviction-cases-...

> People who were forced to quarantine and miss work due to government mandates don't get unemployment.

Yes they did. PUA made them qualify too. Or if they didn't lose their job, there was PPP and child tax credits.

> Trillions that ended up in the pockets of the country's wealthiest people, who saw their net wealth double or triple during the pandemic and corporate profits soar while working people fell further under water.

No, this didn't actually happen. It looks like their wealth went up if you measure starting from March 2020 when there was a stock market collapse, sure, but poor people's wealth went up and their income has gone up significantly with pay raises since.

>It looks like their wealth went up if you measure starting from March 2020 when there was a stock market collapse, sure, but poor people's wealth went up and their income has gone up significantly with pay raises since.

Poor people don't have "wealth". Most lived paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic hit and they lost their jobs and were forced to stay home and take care of their children. The ones lucky enough to keep their jobs didn't have their salaries increase nearly as much as inflation, which massively eroded their ability to afford even food and other basic necessities. As cited above, the world's richest people doubled and tripled their net worth during this period. Millions of working people face eviction and homelessness, today, after the recent expiration of eviction moratoriums. Its simply a willful denial of reality to reject these easily checked facts.

> Most lived paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic hit and they lost their jobs and were forced to stay home and take care of their children.

Where they got more than $2400/mo in stimulus, and CTC continued until this year. It's certainly bad that expired, but there's time to renew it.

> The ones lucky enough to keep their jobs didn't have their salaries increase nearly as much as inflation, which massively eroded their ability to afford even food and other basic necessities.

No they didn't, poor people's pay raises were better than inflation. It's the middle class who are down - but that number is largely because consumption shifted from services to goods (since people stopped being able to travel/don't want to go to restaurants). If you decompose it, it still looks like the largest increases are transitory.

> Millions of working people face eviction and homelessness, today, after the recent expiration of eviction moratoriums.

They expired three times in the last 3 years. Each time there were news articles saying it would be a huge problem, and each time it wasn't (thankfully). That's because we managed it quietly at smaller scales.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-18/u-s-evict...

https://www.penncapital-star.com/commentary/that-tidal-wave-...

Current numbers are up a bit, but not explosively so: https://evictionlab.org/eviction-tracking/

Don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The large number of people retiring.

Childcare. I know many families where the lower earning parent has quit their job to parent full time because of how outrageously expensive daycare is.

Long COVID. Many people aren’t capable of the work they did before they got COVID and may not ever be capable again.

I could go on posting factors to consider but these four should never be omitted when discussing the “labor shortage”.

Yes. In most discussions I see about the resignation people on both sides seem to forget that those numbers of infections or deaths were actual people who had jobs but now can't work. And many of these were essential workers who made very little.

There has been a massive psychological shift too. Everyone suddenly realized life is short and you need to take action before it is too late. Starting a business has risk and there is fear associated. All that goes out the window when you realize you have nothing to lose.

Realising you have nothing to lose is liberating & a strong motivator to discover and spend time on the things that matter in your life. Between taxes, healthcare and inflation there’s nothing left at the end of the ride anyway. So why would you conform to the norms? Why play the game? Especially when it’s becoming abundantly clear that our society won’t be able to tackle the much larger problems looming ahead when we can’t even handle a minor inconvenience like a pandemic. So yeah, sure, I don’t blame anyone for “checking out” of the rat race.

What nobody is addressing is that it got a lot more expensive to live. People are trying to keep up with inflation.

Because everyone was given free money which they spent on things, driving prices up.

Is increased buying power the actual cause of inflation? Or is it disruption in China? Or is it executives choosing to take profits because they can (for some particular reason)?

What evidence could be used to distinguish between the various possibilities? I don't actually know, and I'm curious.

One such metric would be Chinese export volumes, in ships and containers. Apparently container ports are clogged in USA.

Im sure its a multitude of factors but it is definitely the increase spending due to government intervention. Aggregate demand is several years above trend.

Money supply has not been shown to increase inflation in recent decades. Supply chain issues have.

Would love to read more about this because my understanding is that the increase in M2 money supply is a big part of the current inflation (very simplified - it's way more complex when looking at money velocity and supply chains in general).

Exactly. It's obvious how printing money out of thin air induces inflation.

Current inflation is mostly supply-side driven. Having said that, M2's biggest jump in its history was in early 2020 (see https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL). Its slope before and after is more or less the same. However, I don't think inflation will lag it by more than a year.

My rent went up $300 a month...is that supply-side driven?

The last year proves this wrong.

Also a huge third thing:

* Large portions of the middle class and professional class got temporary, permanent, or indefinite semi-permanent Work From Home privileges, leading lots of people who'd been renting small apartments in the cities to buzz off for a larger house out in the burbs. This leads to a lot of consumption of household goods.

Here in the UK at least, those middle and professional classes also saved lots of money due to reduced expenses -- no holidays, no socialising, no commuting etc.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/bank-overground/2020/how-has...

I'm sure many high-earners finally got the "FU money" savings required to risk resigning without having new job lined up.

Close to a million people have died in the US. That is a pretty important point in the labour market, quite aside from the brutal human cost.

The people demanding "let 'er rip" got what they wanted - mass death to avoid personal inconvenience - and it turns out that they're getting an economic cost anyway.

75% of those deaths were over the age of 65, past retirement age. So we're talking -250k from a working pool of 150m (-0.17%). It seems to me that the pandemic impact on the other 99.83% of the workforce is what's probably moving the needle on any recent employment trends.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

> Close to a million people have died in the US. That is a pretty important point in the labour market

This doesn't make sense given the average age of people who died from Covid is well over working age.

Per https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliejason/2021/11/14/still-wor... there are ~10 million people working in the US that are over 65.

Also long covid which can render people unable to work or issues like taking care of people who are sick or immunocompromised people who used to work outside but can't now.