Topic: US economy suffers worst decline as GDP contracts by 32.9% in the second quarter - page 2. (Read 552 times)

Because we did it far worse than the US, Belgium, UK, Italy, Spain have a higher death rate per 1k/population than the US.
If we count based on cases, the EU is even worse
US has 4,862,513 cases with 158,968 deaths.
EU has ~3 million with 190 000 deaths.

The difference comes from the way the economy was affected during the lockdown, the US is more consumption inclined than Germany for example, and thus the effect was immediate and far more serious, for the economies than rely on exports and manufacturing the toll is yet to come in full force and a 10% GDP drop is not anything to brag about it. Italy dropped 12.4%, Germany 10.5 %and Spain 18.5%, yet both Italy and Spain were affected almost the same in terms of deaths and cases while Germany went almost unscratched but it still suffered.
And while Japan is almost a model of combating the virus they went also down by 26.3%.

We will have to wait till 2021 to see all the effects of the lockdowns.


The mining industry needs consumers to buy the products made from what you mine if the economies of the other go down there will be a slump in demand and Australia will join the fate of OPEC countries. Just because you make stuff it doesn't mean you will also be able to sell it at a profit.

You actually don't know that, caveat emptor or otherwise

There are things which you take as granted, even the very fact that you can be a buyer and considered such (more specifically, as possessing a certain set of rights), but you might not see that it is made possible because of the nanny state somewhere down the line. In other words, you only see the tip of the iceberg and arrive at an erroneous conclusion that you lose more with a nanny state than without. Without, you wouldn't even be a consumer in the first place


I just point out that meritocracy is only, well, a dream. And a dangerous dream at that, in the sense of idealistically trying to achieve it and realistically achieving probably the worst form of nepotism instead, thoroughly disguised as meritocracy (arguably the worst part of it)

not the point.

the value i lose as a consumer from nanny state regulation outweighs the value i gain from being "protected" from third party risk. i resent losing value because other people are too stupid and careless to gauge risk. caveat emptor.


if you're saying we're stuck with nepotism, fine. if you're saying that's the ideal we should strive for, i disagree.

You can't be all-around savvy. Put shortly, there is always a place for a nanny state in your heart (whether you like it or not)


It is not that meritocracy is bad. The problem with it is that you can't implement it in practice. To do that, you would need an external power (God) that would be able to judge everyone impartially and enforce its judgement upon everyone else. In other words, it is a fantasy, a figment of your ass


That's why it makes such a nice euphemism. You know, war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc

you're just advocating for a nanny state. i'm quite capable of minimizing my exposure to risky third parties and scams, thank you very much.

if you haven't figured it out by now, regulations are always crafted and enforced in a way that consolidates industry for the big players and reduces competition. as a consumer, and a savvy one at that, i surely come out the loser as a result.


what's a better alternative?


meritocracy is basically the exact opposite of nepotism.....

If you do think that whatever claims are made by Trump is really going to play out , I do think you might be horribly wrong. Unfortunately there is one thing we have to understand:

US Printed more money in a month as compared to two centuries

Plus now they are arranging for another stimulus bill. I do think this is a way to make sure people stay quiet when they see their economy declining.

GDP was supposed to decline , people don't have jobs , without jobs the whole system will shut down sooner or later BUT !

Good news is that more jobs are opening up and people are getting back on the track

But , I do think it will take a lot of time.
Then there comes the vaccination , whichever country makes the vaccination first wins the battle.

_*_

I do think right now India and UK have a tough battle going on with the vaccination thing.

I don't see US picking up anytime soon.
For the time being expect another 2 years for the economic situation to be good enough .

Italy and Spain were facing issues for quite some time. They are being kept afloat by Germany. Essentially after the departure of the United Kingdom, the EU has become a family business run by Angela Merkel. German fund inflows are keeping the other members alive. But in the long term, this is not going to be beneficial for countries such as Italy. Australia/New Zealand had a strong economy even before the pandemic. And with the mining industry in good condition, Australia has nothing to worry.

I don't think it is possible in the way you mean it

And I'm not sure either that you would be honestly happier with a genuinely free, anarchic market. Without government oversight (interference, as you call it), we would see an endless stream of scams like Mt. Gox, Cryptsy, BTC-e, to name but just a few. Put simply, it will be very far from "everyone standing on their own two feet". Rather, everyone and his little bro will be on their knees. You can't seriously hope to let the chips fall where they may. There will surely be someone who will take pains to make them fall in their favor


Meritocracy is over-hyped. You will still have to rely on the opinions of other people when gauging someone's merits. In fact, I'm not in the least surprised to see the term actively used as a handy euphemism for nepotism

It is true that the EU has recovered quite a bit since the pandemic hit the world, but their economies are in tatters in most places. Majority of the countries like Italy, Spain etc were already facing economic issues even before the pandemic struck them.

It will probably take many years for their economies to fully recover. On the other hand, countries like Australia and New Zealand are doing a spectacular job in comparison based on what I heard.

It is not going to get any better any time soon. Trump has taken all of USA hostage nowadays and he is going "either my way or highway" which is going to either result with him getting 4 more years and you will see the country get better since he will allow it, or Biden will win and he will just fix it and make things better anyway, so after the elections in either way the country will get better, long term I would pick Biden but short term I feel like next summer we are going to have 1-2 deaths max per day in all the nation no matter who wins.

Economy obviously gets a hit from this, we are talking about record breaking unemployment rates and that is why I feel like there is a situation where it requires time no matter how you fix it, and with time we are going to see economy recovering but also a lot more people in poverty as well.

The disturbing thing is, it's not just banks and mortgage servicers getting bailouts, GM and Chrysler got bailouts from the Fed too, and never even payed them back.

According to this, GM has $11,308,238,095 outstanding in bailouts, Chrysler has $1,212,849,005 outstanding. And you wonder why auto companies need government bailouts as they don't have anything to do with finance.

I don't really think we can say that Bitcoin has more to do with the "real-world" economy than fiat (USD)

Seriously, how many goods and services can you buy with it? Not many. Bitcoin is mostly locked in its speculative bubble (okay, market), and if you think there's less manipulation going on, then think again. It is small, and, consequently, there's a lot more room for abuse by powerful entities (aka whales). It can't even be a point of serious discussion as a simple look at USDX versus Bitcoin price dynamic says all there's to say

Agreed. Most of the EU nations seems to have recovered from the pandemic. For example, each of the EU countries which were hit most severely (such as the UK, France, Italy and Spain) used to witness as much as 1,000 deaths per day. Now this figure is down to single digits. That is a 99% reduction (an exception would be the UK, where the reduction is only around 90%). On the other hand, in the United States the daily death toll is still hovering around 1,000-1,500.

EU is also suffering but has completely different approach to the pandemic. EU reacted very early and US was denying that something is actually happening. Alsow, EU started recovery programme for its economy and it's trying to support its member.states ro get out of pandemic and economic crysis. And what are US government and Trump doing? I think you know the master

So, what will be year drop? 50%? How gov could allow so stupid isolation?

That news was already not a surprising one for we all know that all countries are affected by the pandemic which tracked down to have a direct effect on the economic state of the country. We must expect that because of the pandemic, even the richest and biggest countries will suffer just like US that even it have a large land mass, it do also have a big population to be supported by the government. Surely the economic declination have been a result of the couple of months lockdown which brought business establishments to close down for a while to follow the preventive measures just to somehow be able to control the inflation rate of the infected cases that the US have. As of the moment, they still remain on the top that is why it is not a surprise that their economy is suffering right now.

There is no doubt that US can do bounce back after this crisis. It is just in need for the vaccine to be discovered to end this pandemic so that people can get back to work and all businesses and economic related works will start operating to be able for the economy to recover. This might not happen this year for the vaccine is still not available because those that have recently been discovered are still under testing. With the effect of the pandemic into the citizens and the economy of US, for sure it would take time for them to be able to fully recover. But rest assured, they will bounce back from scratch.

it does, i'm sure.

i would be happier with an actual free market---free of government interference; everyone stands on their own two feet. let the chips fall where they may. i don't need the fed to pump bitcoin, either.

the selective bailouts just exasperate the economic divisions in society. by perpetually giving handouts and subsidies to corporations and people who aren't poor and refusing to ever let the markets organically crash, they are destroying all notions of upward mobility and meritocracy. at the risk of sounding like a pinko commie, this is all pretty clearly designed to entrench existing capital and property owners at the expense of everyone else.

The economic recovery of the countries that are seriously affected by this pandemic like US is still no assurance to make happen this year because currently the country is still struggling to control the cases they have which still makes them at the top most of all the countries in the world having the most number of infected cases. With that, the country will need enough time to recover even if the vaccine will soon to be available, a big country like US will need to undergo certain adjustments before they can totally bounce back from the economic crisis and declination they are currently experiencing right now.

There is no doubt that US can bounce back for we all know that US is a big and rich country, surely it will bounce back but I doubt that it can make happen this year because they are strongly affected by the pandemic so it will take maybe almost a year to fully recover which will accumulated to last up to next year. All countries are capable of bouncing back not just US. It is just that it would take time depending on the approach that the government will exert to make recovery happen. It would vary on time but surely countries will recover its economic status right after passing through this pandemic.

It is? If you add up deaths from only Spain Italy France and the UK the death figure is close. There's a lot less political noise though.

I would tend to trust more a currency that is more related to the "real-world" economy. Bitcoin going down would show that there is less manipulation and no "big players" controlling the currency rates (unlike the USD for instance).