There are already enough people unemployed just over the past week that would fill those jobs in a heartbeat...

I'm not sure it's understood yet what kind of devastation is unfolding with small businesses, which make up ~50% of the workforce.

This is going to have long term lasting effects that further suppress labor rates and further concentrate wealth/capital in the US. It's accelerating a problem we already had.

40% of the wealth in the stock market was wiped out over the last few weeks which drastically impacts the upper middle class and rich the most. Negative returns on capital do not promote wealth inequality.

Much of what was "lost" was paper profits, artificially inflated in the first place, due to extremely cheap credit and massive demand spikes due to companies buying back enormous amounts of their own stock. Limited wage growth over the past decade, and reduction of benefits helped too.

From a time horizon, US stock markets have only regressed 3 years, and both the S&P and DJIA are about double where they were 10 years ago, while NASDAQ is still higher than triple its early 2010 value. Market leaders like FB, MSFT, GOOGL, NFLX, AAPL have only fallen to levels they were at in 2019.

You simply can't just focus on the decline without taking a hard look at how markets reached those heights in the first place and evaluating whether they were sustainable. Well you can, as you did, but it would be disingenuous.

Yes. But that's simply in the short term. A good number of these people have reserves that allow them to buy back in.

In the short term, the middle to the bottom lose as well. But since they can't buy back in their piece of the pie falls into the hands of those that can. Like 2007/2008 this will ultimately result in a massive transfer from the Have-less to the Have-more.

For example, small businesses will close and Amazon will pick up that slack. Easily.

they can trade on margin. Making use of low interest rates.

So when the market recovers, which it will. They can see greater gains.

with fed interest rate at 0%. I’m sure the 0.01% can get incredibly favorable loans against their assets to double down.

"I can trade on margin" said no one with the rent / mortgage due.

That aside, you're missing the point. The public stock market best enriches those with the most reserves. Everyone else gets trickled on.

Not to mention margin calls if the stock goes down past a given price.

Any good financial manager would have went cash or established a short position. Even if you held, as long as you don't realize your losses you will be right back to pre crash levels in 2-3 years, just like in 2008 or any other recession.

The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.

> Even if you held, as long as you don't realize your losses you will be right back to pre crash levels in 2-3 years, just like in 2008 or any other recession.

Japan still hasn't recovered from the 80s. At some point the economy is going to stop growing. A lot of growth is driven by debt which needs to be repaid. A lot of growth is driven by an increasing population which will eventually plateau, and what's worse you have to support those people (healthcare, education, housing) if you don't want them to cost even more money.

At some point the economy isn't going to just keep growing. I have no idea when that will be, but the market doesn't just go up over time as if it's some law of nature.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/stock-market

Japan has recovered. The Nikkei is just a piss poor index.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp

If 50 trillion dollars are "printed", then yes, the economy will appear to be growing purely based on the prices of stocks going up. Whether that represents real growth is another matter entirely

>Any good financial manager would have went cash or established a short position.

Yeah, they did, while losing money during the crash, which is why there was a crash.

Their net worth is down if they held. The wealthy were just as unlikely to sell out before the crash as anyone else, they don’t have A magic future prediction machine.

> The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.

None of this negates the fact that the crash wiped a significant chunk of their net worth out. Either they were invested in the market (real estate, stocks, bonds, etc) and they were accumulating wealth in a Picketty fashion until they got slammed by the crash or they missed the crash because they weren’t accumulating. You can’t have it both ways.

Real people lost a lot of real money. Bear in mind most of the wealth of most well off people is held in shares. It's just not possible that all shareholders all sold before the crash. A lot of people lost a lot of money.

The problem is not so much that some rich people are now somewhat less rich. Boo hoo. Let's rephrase that another way though.

A lot of people that previously had the wealth and assets to invest in new businesses, grow existing businesses, create jobs and fund the development of new technology now don't. These are the primary ways wealth is actually used, and now there is less of it around to do those things. So a lot less of those things are going to happen now. If you either work for a company that pays you, or have customers that buy your stuff, this is a bad thing to happen. Companies will have less to pay you with, and customers will have less money to buy stuff with because the same applies to them too.

Or employee ownership is allowed to expand as a means to grow a biz. True, that won't fill all the gaps. But it's certainly an option worthy of more attention.

How does employee ownership through stock giveaways generate capital for investment?

Depends on the spin. Couldn't you argue this is exploitation of the health of desperate low-paid workers, their family and their communities?

> Couldn't you argue this is exploitation of the health of desperate low-paid workers, their family and their communities?

Giving people a raise to incentivize them to voluntarily work to supply resources people desperately need is pretty difficult to spin into exploitation. Many people are out there volunteering to do such things for free because they understand how badly it's needed. I suspect those likely to be sympathetic to that line made up their minds about such things long before this event. I do agree with you that some folks will definitely try that angle though.

I acknowledge that asking for increased wages may not pitch well. Perhaps the more effective angle is for strikers to demand all health expenses these workers incur during this time be covered.

As everyone notices their packages stop arriving, comparatively few will buy into the idea that people making $17/hr are being 'exploited', especially as many people find their own working hours being reduced or eliminated.

People making $16/hr aren't the ones living on Amazon Prime package flow.

If you've ever wondered if you're out of touch and in your own echo chamber, you definitely are.

Yes they are. A married couple each making that wage puts them right around the average household income in the US. Amazon got big by catering to the average household.

That sounds like a side effect of the gig economy, job insecurity, and a lack of safety nets, so it's all just a race to the bottom for laborers.

Yes, you could argue that; thereafter, the overwhelming majority of people indifferent to worker conditions in the gig-delivery supply chain would then notice, rather acutely, when their preparedness meter inches toward zero. If we were living in a world where they then took time to study the issue and hear your argument, we may arrive at your outcome. Since we are not, more accurately, when people and politicians fresh out of toilet paper snap assess their dilemma and are conveniently presented with a picket line to blame in the media, we arrive at the unpleasant outcome being forecast for you. (I would argue a worse one.)

Negative consequences of Internet supply chain worker organization right now are a certainty due to intense delivery demand (the IKEA cart is barely functional today), and those optics are an element of the gig/delivery economic equation which I don’t think anyone has thought about until now. That economic model promised to somewhat free the worker and, quite predictably given its proponents, instead seems to have done the opposite.

More than ever before, workers are essential to survival. Striking isn’t just the UAW setting back 2022 Fords a bit, these days. Organizational actions have very, very real potential to collapse parts of the intertwined economy under these circumstances. We will need to consider that reality on the other side of the pandemic but you do not want to so much as blow on the world economy right now. There is a mountain of latent panic waiting for the excuse you’d hand it to organize and manifest.

Important: I’m not saying it’s “right,” just illustrating political and economic realities which make selecting the next move carefully all that more crucial. The entire planet is on a razor’s edge, and if you’re keen to dismiss my position as irrational, organize an Amazon walkout.

Is Amazon only delivering basic essentials at a fixed cost? Where is this list of basic essentials that Amazon is so charitably ensuring the prompt delivery of?

These people are in an overcrowded warehouse, without proper protection, while we are self-isolating. In these trying times, I would value my health higher than that.

Happened in World War II, and that’s why health insurance in the U.S. is tied to employers.

Could you expand on this bit of history please?

The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th...