No one had a normal economic life for several years. It’s a miracle that these levers have been adjusted to the point that everyone is like “well no one going to work for three years had no impact! What over-reactionaries!”
Nobody has a magic crystal ball for what's next.
Where did this happen?
This is one of many of my associates in the service industry that had substantial employment challenges.
If you had regular job, you were eligible for unemployment there was also PUP enabled due to pandemic, so if you were self employed you could request unemployment under that. In addition there were also short periods of time where you could get extra $600/week (as it is impossible to survive for long on the usual unemployment amount)
They tend to work as contractors on a limited term contract and international maritime labor laws are unlikely to require it. Note also the country of registry for the ships may have more lax labor laws too.
(edit)
The only instance of unemployment being mentioned in international maritime labor laws I've found is https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:91:0::NO::...
> Regulation 2.6 – Seafarer compensation for the ship’s loss or foundering
> Purpose: To ensure that seafarers are compensated when a ship is lost or has foundered
> 1. Seafarers are entitled to adequate compensation in the case of injury, loss or unemployment arising from the ship’s loss or foundering.
This very specifically deals with ships sinking. Not "ok, no work everyone off."
A delicate balance: The seafarers’ employment agreement, the system of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 and the role of flag States - https://hal.science/hal-01470314/document also touches on unemployment (there's a single mention of it).
We were all subject to one master. But under a different punishment.
This may have been your experience but it was nowhere near mine. I think talking about “tech” as a whole is generalizing too broadly.
People will be in between any of the above situation simultaneously, but between having to get fired and seeing costs go up a little at a time, I imagine most people will defer the gut punch and take the erosion of spending power.
Inflation shrinks the present value of that debt, without requiring the government to cut spending to pay it down, which would have serious economic consequences (see: austerity).
holding cash is paying something for the first time in more than a decade
I personally have a hard time going out to a restaurant and getting a 2 person meal for less than say 30-40$. Car market is absolutely through the roof. Housing market, although cooling slightly, is still through the roof. Our base rent went up 15% last year. Gas is now double in my area.
Park your cash in a 5% instrument for a year and you can still afford 3-4% less stuff than you could at the beginning of the year.
That's fine for me with a mortgage, but less retirement headroom for many older people.
Their ability to fight inflation is tied up in market participants believing they will do what it takes to do so even in the face of harsh costs. If that reputation comes into doubt, we could end up with the worst of both worlds.
As to the soft landing scenario, sure, it might happen but based on what followed past inflation, it seems unlikely (if I'm not mistaken soft landing was only achieved once in the mid 90's and with a much lower inflation than we see now.
Rising prices are supply not meeting demand. It feels like improving productivity would be an equally powerful tool with less human cost. Granted that is a harder thing to control quarter over quarter.
Consider this analysis that intetest rates may in some cases raise prices. https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/02/04/do-high-inter...
And more links along that line from the pluralistic blog. https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/04/if-i-was-a-horse/#friedma...
Does anybody else hear talk of productivity in talk of inflation?
The mainstream economists are wringing their hands over full employment and rising wages, the first time in decades that we might see the middle class grow, because production isn't sufficiently meeting demand.
We should be producing more stuff - especially housing - instead of trying to keep people from earning more.
Housing costs thus increase to suck all income.
It’s a great way to return to feudalism.
If you have a bankrupt government that can't afford interest payments, then raising interest rates will just lead to borrowing more money to pay the interest in a vicious cycle until hyperinflation sets in.
If you can limit borrowing and speed up payback of debts through any means other than raising interest rates you achieve the same effect much sooner.
So if you have 6% inflation, and the return on e.g. the 1 year t bill is 4.75%, you have -1.25% "real" interest rates, because your money at the end of your year of investment will be worth ~1.23% less than it was at the beginning of the year.
I'm not sure I completely agree that the result is actually as bad as that, since stuffing your money in the mattress would put you -5.5% in the hole by comparison, but still.
this is just about making a prediction of the future.
if you believe that inflation will decrease then your guaranteed rate of return from interest rates is great.
if you believe that inflation will increase or stay the same, then yes we have "negative interest rates"
I don't think it's reasonable to call it a "real" interest rate, because I can't buy T bills against it and it has no guarantees