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Thread: More simple(r) living?

  1. #11
    Senior Member gimmethesimplelife's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    My expectation is that people will behave as Great Depression survivors behaved for years afterwards, if the economic impact of The Current Unpleasantness is as large as I think it will be.

    Half the businesses on my island will likely perish in the next few months.
    I took the bus up to Sprouts today to do the food shopping as SO doesn't like going up to that neighborhood. On the way up there - it's a much ritzier area than we live in, over by 16th Street and Glendale for anyone familiar with Phoenix - I was thinking just this to myself. How many of these higher end service businesses will exist several months from now?

    Where I live the hrocery stores I believe will endure, as will the aluminum can/PETE #1 plastic bottle recyclers, provided a market continues for this material. Dollar stores may be OK. But the rest, I just don't know. Rob

  2. #12
    Senior Member gimmethesimplelife's Avatar
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    Should be grocery stores above. Rob

  3. #13
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    It is very hard to be optimistic about good coming out of this, certainly not in 3 years time (I mean they may have a vaccine but any good other than curing the virus I mean). In 10 years time, oh maybe. I mean assume a Great Depression mentality, but without the post war boom (and it was a postwar boom in a much more equitable society as well). So a mentality of saving without a spare dime to save, aka just grinding poverty.

    I suspect on average people already save 10% of their income, it just never gets figured in because they don't count retirement funds as saving etc. etc..
    Trees don't grow on money

  4. #14
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    Reno has a ton of small businesses that I bet won’t survive. Even though restaurants could open Saturday very few have. Very few people downtown.

  5. #15
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore View Post
    I suspect on average people already save 10% of their income, it just never gets figured in because they don't count retirement funds as saving etc. etc..
    According to a 2018 study by Northwestern Mutual, 21% of Americans have no retirement savings and an additional 10% have less than $5,000 in savings. A third of Baby Boomers currently in, or approaching, retirement age have between nothing and $25,000 set aside.

    The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) paints an even bleaker picture. Their data from 2013 reports that "nearly half of families have no retirement account savings at all." For most age groups, the group found, "median account balances in 2013 were less than half their pre-recession peak and lower than at the start of the new millennium."

    The EPI further found these numbers even worse for millennials. Nearly six in 10 have no retirement savings whatsoever.
    (Article here)

    Add in that most Americans couldn't cover an unexpected $400 repair bill and I think at least a good portion of Americans have very little cash available in times like these. There is a difference in the availability of emergency funds and retirement funds. But I suspect most Americans are running pedal-to-the-metal, as they have for years. This is a case, though, in which median would be a much better number than average in determining true savings rates. Average includes people like Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, who severely mess up averages like these.

    Savings amounts may change post-pandemic, slowly. But I think it will take structural changes in the economy (not seeing that any time soon) and a shift away from consumer consumption as the main driver of the American economy (not seeing that any time soon either). People may salt away a few hundred bucks or so, but several months of living expenses? I don't see that happening any time before the next crisis.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  6. #16
    Yppej
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    Telecommuting is simpler and better for the environment. I think we will see more of that post- than pre-pandemic, if you are looking for silver linings.

  7. #17
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    As painful as all of this is, I remind myself that we are all witness to an exceedingly historic time. 2020 has a ways to go so who knows what else might transpire? I hope I live long enough to see how it all turns out but it will probably be years, ir ever, before things settle down. I am so glad that DD is able to be at home with her husband while her twins are little and precious. I can see how it has put their previous hectic lifestyle in perspective so lucky families like them my choose to live simpler lives. It is going to be so hard for those on the economic edge-day to day scraping by probably.

  8. #18
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Looks like folks are hunkering down and saving while they can.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/inves...ebt/index.html

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    Looks like folks are hunkering down and saving while they can.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/inves...ebt/index.html
    Haven't read the whole article, getting ready for bed, but I do wonder how much of it is fud (fear, uncertainly, doubt) about job loss, length of time quarantined, etc, and how much is due to a lack of ability to go out and "impluse spend" at open places.

  10. #20
    Yppej
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    I did read the article. Regarding the uncertainty of replacing a lost job, recruiters are contacting me, but for temporary gigs with no benefits. I wonder how much the economy would be helped if we had a single payer system, allowing people to consider jobs like these, and also allowing small employers to bring people back to work without high benefits costs. The extension of unemployment benefits to independent contractors and the self-employed in this crisis is maybe the start of a realization that all workers have value.

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