Is COVID-19 really to blame for the upcoming recession?

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Still said:

Where the fuck did I say I had a "proposal"? I was just pointing the fault in your initial argument.

My statement was meant to be partial to mostly comedy. The one you're replying as well. I'm not arguing anything. I just find it funny that really no matter where you look, there's not a system that's really much better than the rest. I just consider capitalism the semi-better one because of it's success compared to others but hey I'm probably just under the influence of the spooky propaganda lol.

[Ms. Carolynne]

I would say it's a little bit of both, I think not being prepared for such a situation is really what's screwing us over.

 

@Gloomy @andreas1033 Depends how you define capitalism, I guess.

 

I wouldn't consider us half socialist or whatever. Socialism is the publicly owned means of production (oftentimes that means state owned, but there are other models such as social anarchy), we don't really have that. Capitalism is privately owned means of production, we have that but with government involvement. Most of the world is a social democracy, that means we have a regulated capitalist system with social programs.

 

What we don't have is laissez-faire capitalism, which I think is what you mean.

[Acing It]

11 hours ago, Howard said:

Assuming that people are rational (which they seldom are)

And this bit means the rest of what you say is never going to happen. Judging from what happened last weekend in the UK, people will just not care and look after themselves if they do. Refusing to work would be the opposite of what would happen for a lot of people as they would be paid a pittance under a 100% capitalist system without any protection and would have to go to work to survive. A minority would have the money not to have to. Business would trump public health every time even if there's no logic to it. It would be the law of the strongest not just for businesses but for individuals as well.

 

10 hours ago, Gloomy said:

People would choose for themselves how to protect themselves instead of relying on governments which have already killed, tortured, and imprisoned countless other people to force people to do so using the threat of violence.

I'm not even going to honour that with a meaningful answer. I'm sorry.

 

3 hours ago, Skycaptain said:

the idea behind lockdown is to get the virus to burn out. The hope is that people are contagious for a limited period of time, and by preventing interpersonal contact for that period, plus a bit extra to err on the side of caution, there will be no more people with the virus to pass it on to others 

Which requires central decision making for once. If you see this as an emergency situation then you need to agree on how to tackle it rather than everyone doing what they want. To give you an example, there were countries in Europe where the neigbouring country wasn't under measures and everyone when their to do their leisure shopping have fun and socialise, only thinking about their own fun and not the public good, which eventually comes back to them. It's shortsighted selfish thinking, just like capitalism is (but on a slightly longer timescale).

 

As for the OPs original question, I think it's contributing but there probably will be underlying reasons why a finiancial crisis may be happening. Having said that, no economy can survive a prolonged shut down without intervention. This may sound awful for a lot of other reasons, but I'm glad the pandemic is global so every country has to respond and no country can necessarily get the economic overhand causing a massive economic and political imbalance with all the dangers that brings with it.

[Gloomy]

3 hours ago, Acing It said:

I'm not even going to honour that with a meaningful answer. I'm sorry.

Then why did you bother quoting me? o.O

 

For those who don't believe me about the government, here are just a few examples:

 

 

[Guest]

Greedy corporations have been putting all of their egg foo young into a single poorly-manufactured basket for decades and now the bottom is finally starting to fall out of it.

[Zagadka]

American manufacturing has been in a severe decline for decades as our money is shipped overseas to fund China's new middle class. The distribution of wealth has been inbalanced for years.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, theV0ID said:

This is why watching what is happening in China is really interesting, as they are in the process or easing lockdown. As far as I'm aware their new cases are people coming into the country now, but I'm (pessimistically) guessing that they'll have a second wave of transmission within the country soon. The rest of the world can learn from what happens there at least.

I don't really trust the information coming out of China given what happened during the initial outbreak. They tried to suppress information about what was happening and actively silenced doctors who were speaking out. It wasn't until the rest of the world started calling them out that they admitted what happened and by then it was waaaaay too late to stop the global spread. I also heard leaked audio the other day where a woman working in a Wuhan funeral home was reporting Covid-deaths MUCH HIGHER than any stat China has ever publicly released. So yeah regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, I don't trust info coming out of China. 😕

[Howard]

The funeral urns sales do not match with the government's death figures.

https://time.com/5811222/wuhan-coronavirus-death-toll/

[Guest]

 

Here's the phone call from the funeral home (with voices distorted to protect identities). This was from a month ago. The worker says they had like 120 bodies that day, but only 9 actual reported Covid deaths (something like that anyway if the translation is accurate of course), and that's only one funeral home.

 

[timewarp]

Yes.

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

That is like hitting a tree with your truck and saying "Yeah but I did forget to change my oil last month like I should have, so really is the tree to blame for totalling my truck?"

 

Covid-19 is going to wreck the economy.

 

I, too, am tired of this capitalist system, let's go back to fedualism. Peasants really need to be back working from sun up to sun down and only resting on the Lords day.

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

I, too, am tired of this capitalist system, let's go back to fedualism. Peasants really need to be back working from sun up to sun down and only resting on the Lords day.

 

Yes!!! That sounds perfect. So long as I'm a Lord. I would be a Lord right? I couldn't be a peasant... oh shit I would be a peasant wouldn't I, damn... Communism then, that's the way to go. So long as I'm not one of the people starving...

[Howard]

3 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

That is like hitting a tree with your truck and saying "Yeah but I did forget to change my oil last month like I should have, so really is the tree to blame for totalling my truck?"

 

Covid-19 is going to wreck the economy.

 

I, too, am tired of this capitalist system, let's go back to fedualism. Peasants really need to be back working from sun up to sun down and only resting on the Lords day.

I would personally more akin the situation to driving drunk and hitting a tree. I see Covid-19 as the drop that spilled the glass.

 

I'm sorry to let you down, but I think there are plenty that can be improved without resorting to feudalism. Regulations on all types of loans just like on mortgages and more financial accountability towards governement and businesses just to mention a couple of improvements.

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

1 hour ago, theV0ID said:

Yes!!! That sounds perfect. So long as I'm a Lord. I would be a Lord right? I couldn't be a peasant... oh shit I would be a peasant wouldn't I, damn... Communism then, that's the way to go. So long as I'm not one of the people starving...

We could do communism, where we all starve together, or we could do Feudalism where you at least know you get Sunday off. 😉

 

1 hour ago, Howard said:

I would personally more akin the situation to driving drunk and hitting a tree. I see Covid-19 as the drop that spilled the glass.

 

There is so much wrong with this statement. Covid -19 being a "drop that spilled the glass" It isn't a drop is effecting people in nearly every country. It is putting entire economies on hold and putting millions out of a job over night. Covid-19 would, destroy any economy whether it has high regulations or not. The reason most leaders are scrabbling is because even scientist much about the virus. They haven't had much of any time to study it. We don't know the death rate, if it is airborne, or even if it will go away in the summer like the flu. Scientist are guessing these things.  You are trying to assign blame to something that wasn't preventable.  My analogy was to the fact you're ignoring the glaring issue of this virus on the economy (that being the tree) and focusing on a much smaller issue in comparison (the oil not being changed in awhile), yes the economy might have gone into a recession down the line. I personally believe it could have, but that has nothing to do with what is occurring with the economy now. 

 

1 hour ago, Howard said:

I'm sorry to let you down, but I think there are plenty that can be improved without resorting to feudalism.

[Howard]

If preventing the vicious cycle that I mentionned before just an opinion, how do you explain that regalutions had counter-inflationnary effects on the housing market?

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4060386-u-s-real-estate-market-trends-characteristics-and-outlook

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

5 minutes ago, Howard said:

If preventing the vicious cycle that I mentionned before just an opinion, how do you explain that regalutions had counter-inflationnary effects on the housing market?

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4060386-u-s-real-estate-market-trends-characteristics-and-outlook

That opinion is to the comment on not needing Feudalism. I think you need to re-read what I wrote.

[Howard]

9 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

There is so much wrong with this statement. Covid -19 being a "drop that spilled the glass" It isn't a drop is effecting people in nearly every country. It is putting entire economies on hold and putting millions out of a job over night.

It didn't need to be that way. Look at the South Korean model. The information I got was in French and will not post it on this thread.

11 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

Covid-19 would, destroy any economy whether it has high regulations or not. The reason most leaders are scrabbling is because even scientist much about the virus. They haven't had much of any time to study it. We don't know the death rate, if it is airborne, or even if it will go away in the summer like the flu. Scientist are guessing these things. 

More innovation in health about what we know about pandemics in general would have helped. Again, refer to the South Korean model.

12 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

You are trying to assign blame to something that wasn't preventable.  My analogy was to the fact you're ignoring the glaring issue of this virus on the economy (that being the tree) and focusing on a much smaller issue in comparison (the oil not being changed in awhile), yes the economy might have gone into a recession down the line. I personally believe it could have, but that has nothing to do with what is occurring with the economy now. 

I rebuked you analogy of the oil change and yet you act like I agreed with it. Where wasn't I clear?

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

16 minutes ago, Howard said:

30 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

 

It didn't need to be that way. Look at the South Korean model. The information I got was in French and will not post it on this thread.

I would look more into what they did in South Korea, Some of the strict things they did with there people would not work in Canada or America. Once they identified someone was infected they would trace where that person has been through cellphone tracking and credit cards and alert more people. This would not fly in America, and I pretty sure with Canada.

 

16 minutes ago, Howard said:

30 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

 

More innovation in health about what we know about pandemics in general would have helped. Again, refer to the South Korean model.

Hindsight is 20/20, again most countries didn't know what we were dealing a few months back. Some predictions had this as mild as the flu or lower.

 

16 minutes ago, Howard said:

I rebuked you analogy of the oil change and yet you act like I agreed with it. Where wasn't I clear?

I never acted like you agreed. You made absolutely no sense  with the drunk driving part, that's what I'm pointing out. It really doesn't compare and it is trying to assign blame when many things went wrong and people didn't know what we were dealing with.

[Howard]

7 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

I would look more into what they did in South Korea, Some of the strict things they did with there people would not work in Canada or America. Once they identified someone was infected they would trace where that person has been through cellphone tracking and credit cards and alert more people. This would not fly in America, and I pretty sure with Canada.

I somewhat agree. What keeps me from fulling agreeing is how HIV/AIDS was treated in North America, making it illegal to intentionaly spread the virus. It may not be the best example because, needing to have blood to blood or sexual relations to spread. Still, there are things the Korean did that did not require such invasion of private life, like systematicaly sterilising public transprt, build smaller testing cubicles easier to sterilise and the industrialisation of testing procedures.

13 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

Hindsight is 20/20, again most countries didn't know what we were dealing a few months back. Some predictions had this as mild as the flu or lower.

Still, South Korea was hit before North America and through international cooperation, we could have learnt from the Koreans.

Also, though the percentage of deaths is lower than the flu, it is more contagious. It is more the contagion than the death toll that is worrysome.

14 minutes ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

I never acted like you agreed. You made absolutely no sense  with the drunk driving part, that's what I'm pointing out. It really doesn't compare and it is trying to assign blame when many things went wrong and people didn't know what we were dealing with.

You seem to contradict yourself here. At one point, you seem to the underlying issues are as little as forgetting an oil change while later in the same paragraph acknoledging that many things went wrong. Please elaborate.

[Still]

8 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

I, too, am tired of this capitalist system, let's go back to fedualism. Peasants really need to be back working from sun up to sun down and only resting on the Lords day.

 

The end goal of neoliberalism has already been neofeudalism for about the last forty years.

 

Also, you just described the life of an Amazon warehouse worker.

[Yatogami]

Covid-19 is absolutely to blame. It closed almost all the stores. Without that, money cannot be made by anyone. Even in a socialist country, it would shut down everything. So yes, it is to blame. Unless you want to do what China does, and weld people into their houses, and kill all their pets in the town square. On top of killing anyone that dissents. No matter what system is in place, the one with more freedoms and less authoritarianism will have the most deaths. 

[Howard]

54 minutes ago, Yatogami said:

Covid-19 is absolutely to blame. It closed almost all the stores. Without that, money cannot be made by anyone. Even in a socialist country, it would shut down everything. So yes, it is to blame. Unless you want to do what China does, and weld people into their houses, and kill all their pets in the town square. On top of killing anyone that dissents. No matter what system is in place, the one with more freedoms and less authoritarianism will have the most deaths. 

If businesses were in the habit of keeping a prudent reserve, they would at least be able to cover their fixed costs while they are closed. Not only do businesses not keep a prudent reserve, they go into debts, which translates into more bills to pay making it even more likely to have to declare bankruptcy. It is sad that otherwise successful people need hand outs from the government to stay in business when something ''unpredictable'' happens every ten years. Some people get home by driving drunk; others hit a tree.

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

11 hours ago, Howard said:

I somewhat agree. What keeps me from fulling agreeing is how HIV/AIDS was treated in North America, making it illegal to intentionaly spread the virus. It may not be the best example because, needing to have blood to blood or sexual relations to spread. Still, there are things the Korean did that did not require such invasion of private life, like systematicaly sterilising public transprt, build smaller testing cubicles easier to sterilise and the industrialisation of testing procedures.

Again you argue with hindsight on an issue no one knew what the right call was at the time. In the US when our President shut down he was criticized on that move. Every day people are changing what the best course of action is, or was  because we didn't know any of this information at the time. Also in the US people are being arrested for trying to purposely infect people with Covid-19. 

https://www.wxyz.com/news/coronavirus/michigan-man-charged-after-claiming-to-have-covid-19-then-touching-multiple-shopping-carts-at-kroger

https://www.insider.com/man-arrested-for-covid-19-hoax-in-north-carolina-walmart-2020-3

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2020/03/22/louisville-man-ordered-quarantinedlouisville-man-ordered-quarantined/2895866001/

 

11 hours ago, Howard said:

Still, South Korea was hit before North America and through international cooperation, we could have learnt from the Koreans.

Also, though the percentage of deaths is lower than the flu, it is more contagious. It is more the contagion than the death toll that is worrysome.

For starters US and South Korea had first cases the same day, Jan 20 . Right now every country is trying their own systems to find best results, some of the Korean systems are being adopted. You again bring up new data but data is constantly changing a week ago they thought the death rate was higher now some scientist think more people are infected and not showing systems so it is below the flu rate. These are theories that are changing daily because they haven't gone through the scientific method with this virus because they haven't had enough time to study the virus yet.

11 hours ago, Howard said:

You seem to contradict yourself here. At one point, you seem to the underlying issues are as little as forgetting an oil change while later in the same paragraph acknoledging that many things went wrong. Please elaborate.

I actually didn't contradict myself. The point is, even if business had reserves of cash for 3 months or 6 months it would likely have turned into the same issue. You really think people will go to restaurants a month after they reopen or flying will be the same? No this virus is going to change so much and we haven't faced anything like it in our lifetime. Heck this might even completely change trade regulations with china. As for things that could have helped out the rest of the world, China could have reported it to the World health organization instead of hiding the issue for 1-2 months and then downplaying it.

 

1 hour ago, Howard said:

If businesses were in the habit of keeping a prudent reserve, they would at least be able to cover their fixed costs while they are closed. Not only do businesses not keep a prudent reserve, they go into debts, which translates into more bills to pay making it even more likely to have to declare bankruptcy. It is sad that otherwise successful people need hand outs from the government to stay in business when something ''unpredictable'' happens every ten years. Some people get home by driving drunk; others hit a tree.

So your answer would be for companies to just keep all their money in a bank somewhere instead of reinvesting it in the company and getting more people jobs? That would leave billions of dollars just sitting there. This solution doesn't make sense in the real world. Nothing like this has happened in 10 years or 50 years. This is shutting down economies and putting millions people out of jobs. Those people can't pay bills, which snowballs into a depression. Having extra funds in a business for a few months won't necessarily save them over a few years of a depression. Your analogy on the drunk driving is terrible. It is not relevant to what is going on at all. I agree with you that we were heading to a recession soon. I even pulled my retirement out of the stock market thinking that would happen, which actually saved me from losing half of it. But honestly no one saw Covid coming and it would have wrecked businesses that even kept reserves.

[Zagadka]

My current fear is that we went through with the economic shutdown, but we'll pull back at the last moment and re-open everything like Trump wants, ensuring that the disease spreads while still doing the economic damage. We're already in this. China lowered their numbers by completely shutting down at great cost.

[Mostly Peaceful Ryan]

10 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

 China lowered their numbers by completely shutting down at great cost.

You believe China? I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

[nutterwithasolderingiron]

yes and no. i think it's more something that's going to bring a lot of problems into focus. sadly if the 2008 recession taught us anything, it's that investment bankers can find a way to keep making money, even if it tanks the economy and hurts more people than it helps. 

[Howard]

6 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

Again you argue with hindsight on an issue no one knew what the right call was at the time. In the US when our President shut down he was criticized on that move. Every day people are changing what the best course of action is, or was  because we didn't know any of this information at the time. Also in the US people are being arrested for trying to purposely infect people with Covid-19. 

Hindsight perhaps, but in regards to another health crisis from which we can learn lessons from. I was unaware that US laws came into effect much quicker than in Canada. Thank you for the information.

 

6 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

For starters US and South Korea had first cases the same day, Jan 20 . Right now every country is trying their own systems to find best results, some of the Korean systems are being adopted. You again bring up new data but data is constantly changing a week ago they thought the death rate was higher now some scientist think more people are infected and not showing systems so it is below the flu rate. These are theories that are changing daily because they haven't gone through the scientific method with this virus because they haven't had enough time to study the virus yet.

Your statement prompted to double check and your sources are correct. Nonetheless, by March 13, South Korea had more recoveries than new cases by March 13.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea/south-korea-reports-more-recoveries-than-coronavirus-cases-for-the-first-time-idUSKBN210051

In contrast, the USA still hasn't reached its peak and will only do so in a few weeks.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-death-peak-three-weeks-epidemiologist/index.html

Please note the article was published a few weeks after South Korea had more recoveries than new cases.

So hindsight on Korea can still benefit North America. There is still/would have had time for North America to adjust but, at least in Quebec, the government is reticent to do things like calling in the military to implement, not control, sterilisation measures and production of basic medical equipment supplies. Another thing that could be implemented are better spaces to carry out testing.

6 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

I actually didn't contradict myself. The point is, even if business had reserves of cash for 3 months or 6 months it would likely have turned into the same issue. You really think people will go to restaurants a month after they reopen or flying will be the same? No this virus is going to change so much and we haven't faced anything like it in our lifetime.

I don't think people will fly right away as flying is a major expense. In as far as restaurants and other goods that can be purchased localy, considering the extra money the lower and middle class will have from the governement, they will be spending their money.

 

6 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

Heck this might even completely change trade regulations with china. As for things that could have helped out the rest of the world, China could have reported it to the World health organization instead of hiding the issue for 1-2 months and then downplaying it.

That I agree with. China's lack of transparency was appaling.

6 hours ago, ♣Ryan♣ said:

So your answer would be for companies to just keep all their money in a bank somewhere instead of reinvesting it in the company and getting more people jobs? That would leave billions of dollars just sitting there. This solution doesn't make sense in the real world. Nothing like this has happened in 10 years or 50 years. This is shutting down economies and putting millions people out of jobs. Those people can't pay bills, which snowballs into a depression. Having extra funds in a business for a few months won't necessarily save them over a few years of a depression. Your analogy on the drunk driving is terrible. It is not relevant to what is going on at all. I agree with you that we were heading to a recession soon. I even pulled my retirement out of the stock market thinking that would happen, which actually saved me from losing half of it. But honestly no one saw Covid coming and it would have wrecked businesses that even kept reserves.

The concept of prudent reserves is not about keeping all the money. It's about keeping a set amount of money to cover fix costs for an amount of time determined by the board of directors. Even then, if they chose to reinvest instead of a prudent reserve, if some businesses were not reliant on debt for operations, things would be better than what they actualy are. Debts translate in more bills to pay, making a bigger snowball causing a worse recession more likely to turn into a depression.

[Artistofnoname]

Yes and No. While this is a serious issue that people are dying from the way governments and people are handling it by taking away freedom and stopping commerce is what is doing the real damage. Its like Donald Trump stated "The cure can't be worst the the disease". He is right but too many people are taking advantage of peoples fears and they're willing to give up freedom for security.

[Homer]

LOL @ this Texas Gouvernor saying "There are more important things than living."

 

Well he's free to go right ahead  

[Homer]

16 minutes ago, Arodash said:

Please tell me this is a joke XD 

He did that. On TV. Well, on Fox. Oh and he doesn't know how science works, but how surprising is that at this point.