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lumost

There are many troubling things happening at the moment. From a US centric point of view.

- Inflation is at it's highest since the 1970s in the US

- There is a large military conflict in Europe.

- There are shortages of chips, energy, and food on the horizon.

- Unprofitable growth stocks have valuations as high as 100:1 on revenue.

- There is increasing militarized tension on many portions of the global supply chain (Russia:EU, China:US, China:Taiwan).

- Housing has appreciated by up to 40% YoY in major US cities.

- A global pandemic has introduced lockdowns, and potentially permanently changed people's relationship with work. While killing a million people.

- The US legislative branch is utterly paralyzed.

- The US business cycle hasn't seen a recession since ~2010.

I'm sure I missed a few, but the fact that a recession hasn't happened should be more surprising than a recession happening.

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There is also financialization that has been going for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

Finance industry share going up vs. Real economy output, which could be cause or the consequence of high valuations.

Could also be an artifact of a global economy based around the dollar.

Quoting Asimov's description of Trantor in Foundation.

> This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves to be few for the complications of the task.

I'm sure many of us saw the GDP numbers this morning and thought - finally some data that makes sense!

All of these look like they were caused by politicians making bad choices

Let's not forget COVID is not done yet. We've had two years of restrictions and now it seems like folks are behaving as if it's over. Mutations are propagating and yet most people are out and about without masks and the dialog around vaccines has all but dried up.

The ongoing confusion about what this disease's risk factor is worrisome. First I think people have much more distrust in science and government. There is still a deep divide amongst the population and I am concerned about how we will handle another wave of restrictions whilst the economy buckles and a global war is on the horizon.

COVID is endemic, which is functionally equivalent to 'over'. Just as there are bad flu seasons, there will likely be bad COVID seasons, but overall Africa has blessed the whole world with a relatively benign and incredibly infectious variant that keeps immune systems attuned without crashing. We have overwhelming returned to normal behavior around illness, which preferentially propagates mild pathogens by only stranding really sick people at home (where they don't spread things), while the rest of us go around unknowingly sharing our mildly inconvenient Omicron and omicron++ with one another.

I'm out and about without wearing a mask because the numbers of deaths per day due to covid in my state has dropped down to single digit numbers and the number of current cases is currently 1/30 of where it was at it's peak. Should those numbers start going back up, I'll start taking more precautions. We have to start living life again where we are able to or a series of economic woes will become the new normal instead of a single correction due to the pandemic.

In my neck of the woods, there would need to be a serious new threat to motivate people back into school closings and lockdowns. Heck, we're still below 60% fully vaccinated and only 30% have received any boosters. My states's population is done with COVID, even if COVID isn't done with us.

That said, SARS-CoV-2 is endemic now, with known animal reservoirs. We're not going to stop it with NPIs anymore.

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