Economic implications of a SARS/Coronavirus outbreak

[over9k]

Not following you there frog, how does moving to a cheaper area give you a pay cut?

 

[qldfrog]

Not following you there frog, how does moving to a cheaper area give you a pay cut?

Facebook has just announced it will review the physical location of his wfh employees and adjust..reduce their salary based on this:
Many bay area employees paid big bucks quickly moved to remote rural area where their million dollar slum in SF or silicon valley bought them 5xmansions in kansas or seaside NC.
I try to find the link

 

[qldfrog]

https://fortune.com/2020/05/21/facebook-permanent-work-from-home-salaries/amp/
This was in may, i heard about it last week in french news as it was implemented

 

[over9k]

If my employer tried that I'd tell them to do one and go & work for someone else.

 

[qldfrog]

If my employer tried that I'd tell them to do one and go & work for someone else.

But you are now in middle Kansas, or Wyoming and competing with Bangalore....
All that a deja vu for me as i come from the IT industry and ended up having to : get my own company and specialise in mining to ensure a nice market.i pity the lawyers, mid management etc basically the 60% if not more of white collar jobs who will have to compete with Philippines Vietnam you name it while still paying their council rates and NDIS tax load

 

[over9k]

Eh kind of. Remote work like that already existed and I can assure you, it's cheap for a reason.

I get your point, but we're not all going to be working for peanuts next week.

 

[qldfrog]

But you are now in middle Kansas, or Wyoming and competing with Bangalore....
All that a deja vu for me as i come from the IT industry and ended up having to : get my own company and specialise in mining to ensure a nice market.i pity the lawyers, mid management etc basically the 60% if not more of white collar jobs who will have to compete with Philippines Vietnam you name it while still paying their council rates and NDIS tax load

I meant niche market, not nice market..was both..

 

[qldfrog]

Eh kind of. Remote work like that already existed and I can assure you, it's cheap for a reason.

I get your point, but we're not all going to be working for peanuts next week.

Just take time and inflation of peanuts?

 

[over9k]

Microsoft to let employees work from home permanently: report

Software giant Microsoft will let employees work from home permanently if they choose to, US media reported on Friday, becoming the latest employer to expand work-from-home provisions prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

au.finance.yahoo.com

 

[over9k]

Stimulus offers from the white house now also up to 1.8 trillion - democrats last came down to 2.4 so looks like it might finally pass soon.

 

[over9k]

And finally, some actual data:

 

[over9k]

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Facebook has just announced it will review the physical location of his wfh employees and adjust..reduce their salary based on this:
Many bay area employees paid big bucks quickly moved to remote rural area where their million dollar slum in SF or silicon valley bought them 5xmansions in kansas or seaside NC.
I try to find the link

If I were Zuckerberg I'd be using this as a carrot to get everyone to work from home. Differential wages would then disappear after 12 months due to market forces as you outlined @qldfrog . Then real estate values would reset. So as crazy as it sounds there is method in his strategy.

gg

 

[basilio]

BBC has a good overview of the ongoing effect of COVID 19. The upsurge in new cases in Europe and the explosion in India, South America and resurgence in US is undermining economic activity at a staggering rate.

Excellent graphical analysis in the story.

Governments across the world have been forced to limit public movement and close businesses and venues in a bid to slow the spread of the virus. This has had a devastating impact on the global economy.

Damage to the world's major economies is four times worse than the 2009 global financial crisis, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that up to 265 million people could face starvation by the end of the year because of the impact of Covid-19.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105

 

[basilio]

G20 GDP Growth - Second quarter of 2020, OECD

​

Unprecedented falls in GDP in most G20 economies in second quarter of 2020

Download the entire news release (PDF 120KB)

14 Sept. 2020 - COVID-19 containment measures weighed heavily on economic activity in the second quarter of 2020, with unprecedented falls in real gross domestic product (GDP) in most G20 countries. For the G20 area as a whole, GDP dropped by a record (minus) 6.9%, significantly larger than the (minus) 1.6% recorded in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the financial crisis.
China was the only G20 country recording growth (11.5%) in the second quarter of 2020, reflecting the earlier onset of the pandemic in this country and subsequent recovery. GDP contracted by an average of (minus) 11.8% in all other G20 economies in the second quarter of 2020, when the effects of the pandemic began to be more widely felt.

GDP fell most dramatically, by (minus) 25.2%, in India, followed by the United Kingdom (minus 20.4%). GDP also dropped sharply in Mexico (minus 17.1%), South Africa (minus 16.4%), France (minus 13.8%), Italy (minus 12.8%), Canada (minus 11.5%), Turkey (minus 11.0%), Brazil and Germany (minus 9.7% in both countries), the United States (minus 9.1%), Japan (minus 7.9%), Australia (minus 7.0%) and Indonesia (minus 6.9%). The contraction was less pronounced in Korea and Russia (minus 3.2% in both countries).
Year-on-year GDP in the G20 area fell by (minus) 9.1% in the second quarter of 2020, following a contraction of (minus) 1.7% in the previous quarter. Among G20 economies, China recorded the highest annual growth (3.2%), while India recorded the largest annual fall (minus 23.5%).

G20 GDP Growth - Second quarter of 2020, OECD

Data and research on GDP including real GDP growth, Annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP), National Accounts at a Glance., Unprecedented falls in GDP in most G20 economies in second quarter of 2020

www.oecd.org

 

[Sdajii]

Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that up to 265 million people could face starvation by the end of the year because of the impact of Covid-19.

It's comical that most people still believe the narrative that the economic disaster is being caused by the virus and not the politics, and that the lockdowns are doing more good than harm.

We now have plenty of data on this virus. It's very clear that if we'd done nothing at all, things wouldn't have been all that bad, especially compared to the reality we have created. The virus itself would have caused problems far more like a single bad flu season than a situation of extreme global economic catastrophe, a mental health crisis far worse than anything in all history, 265 million people potentially facing starvation, the highest suicide rate in history, the most sudden removal of human rights ever seen on this scale, etc etc.

Elderly people and those soon to die of cancer etc are not the ones ploughing fields and putting food on the table. These economic problems are very clearly being caused by the lockdowns which are ridiculously drastic relative to the virus.

Again, we can look at Sweden, which as time goes on just shows more and more clearly that we should have just treated this like a bad flu type virus rather than act like it was some sort of massively deadly bug which was going to wipe out 5% of the population including the young and healthy. Sweden has had a negligible death toll since July, and of the few people who died during their cycle, most would have died anyway (of old age, diabetes, cancer, etc). If the world had taken a similar strategy it would no longer be a problem. It just gets more obvious by the day (it was predicable/obvious back in March) that the economy is hurting because of government policies, not the virus itself, not to mention all the other horrific issues they have caused, for very little benefit.

 

[Smurf1976]

Just one of many examples showing that the world as we knew it is not returning anytime soon:

Cruise ships dismantled for scrap metal as pandemic sinks industry

Before the pandemic, Turkey's ship-breaking yards typically handled cargo and container ships. Then the pandemic began and the world's cruise ships changed course for the site.

www.abc.net.au

They wouldn't be cutting up the ships if their owners thought this was just a blip.

 

[Sdajii]

Just one of many examples showing that the world as we knew it is not returning anytime soon:

Cruise ships dismantled for scrap metal as pandemic sinks industry

Before the pandemic, Turkey's ship-breaking yards typically handled cargo and container ships. Then the pandemic began and the world's cruise ships changed course for the site.

www.abc.net.au

They wouldn't be cutting up the ships if their owners thought this was just a blip.

It's difficult to get the full context here. There are literally hundreds of large cruise ships. Like any vehicle, they have a finite lifespan and like most vehicles they'll get turned into scrap metal at the end. I'm not sure what the life expectancy of a cruise ship is, but even if it was around 50 years (and I'm sure it's less on average) we'd have quite a few being scrapped every year. The article says five are being scrapped and they expect 3 more. That still leaves hundreds and is barely a blip on the total number.

It makes perfect sense to expect that more than usual will be scrapped this year because it's pretty likely that the cruise industry is going to be reduced significantly for a few years and especially in the next 2-3 years, but if they fully expected the cruise industry to 100% recover within 2 years from now, we'd still expect three times the normal yearly number of cruise ships to be scrapped, which I assume would be significantly more than 8.

The message of the article may well be correct, but it's a bit like going to a scrap yard, seeing 100 old cars being scrapped and saying it's evidence that the automotive industry is dying. Or showing 100 dead old people and saying humans are going extinct. Even if it is the case, that sort of thing is not evidence of it. Unless Cruise ships typically have a lifespan longer than the cruise industry has been around and usually none get scrapped, in which case I have it wrong.

 

[Value Collector]

It's difficult to get the full context here. There are literally hundreds of large cruise ships. Like any vehicle, they have a finite lifespan and like most vehicles they'll get turned into scrap metal at the end. I'm not sure what the life expectancy of a cruise ship is, but even if it was around 50 years (and I'm sure it's less on average) we'd have quite a few being scrapped every year. The article says five are being scrapped and they expect 3 more. That still leaves hundreds and is barely a blip on the total number.

It makes perfect sense to expect that more than usual will be scrapped this year because it's pretty likely that the cruise industry is going to be reduced significantly for a few years and especially in the next 2-3 years, but if they fully expected the cruise industry to 100% recover within 2 years from now, we'd still expect three times the normal yearly number of cruise ships to be scrapped, which I assume would be significantly more than 8.

The message of the article may well be correct, but it's a bit like going to a scrap yard, seeing 100 old cars being scrapped and saying it's evidence that the automotive industry is dying. Or showing 100 dead old people and saying humans are going extinct. Even if it is the case, that sort of thing is not evidence of it. Unless Cruise ships typically have a lifespan longer than the cruise industry has been around and usually none get scrapped, in which case I have it wrong.

Yep, cruise companies have to spend money everyday to keep their ships going, and at the moment they aren’t getting income.

So it’s in their interests to shrink their fleets by getting rid of their older ships that won’t be needed, and when the industry grows again buy some new ones.

when the industry is booming older ships would be kept going a bit longer, but when the boom is over the older ships get scrapped

 

[sptrawler]

The WHO has asked for a stop to lockdowns.

WHO backflips on virus stance by condemning lockdowns

The World Health Organisation has backflipped on its original COVID-19 stance after calling for world leaders to stop locking down their countries and economies.

www.news.com.au