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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

I assure you that healthcare, education, and sanitation do much better in a crisis than durable goods. Nobody is going to stop their college education because the rest of the economy collapses (they might even be persuaded to go to grad school), but people put off buying new cars, new computers, or anything else where their current item can last a bit longer.

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These 3 are fundamental needs (so exceptional services - more like utilities).

But even here, unless life threatening situations, people will postpone action. (eg. drugs instead of surgery, disinfectant, ...)

With education I beg to differ: although it may look like a safe heaven, pursuing education for the sole purpose of temporary financial stability is probably not that smart. Reasons:

     - practical experience is more valuable and if not truly committed to the PhD, don't really see the value
     - state funding for schools & research will drop (later, true, but it will).
     - if everybody (or the majority) will go to school, who's going to do the work to come out of the crises.

Yes, those services are fundamental needs. There are lots of services that are fundamental needs, and lots of goods that aren't. In fact, a greater percentage of services are fundamental than goods, because your contention that " services are the first to go down" is exactly the opposite of what we observe in practice.

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