More Ecomodders during a recession?

[Ecky]

My wife and I are in a pretty privileged position. We're young, healthy and with no dependents. We're still neck deep in student debt - we were paying it down rapidly until this started - but our mortgage only comes out to something like 15-20% of our take-home and our total expenses (sans student loan payments) are only maybe 40% of our income.

It looks like I'm going to keep my job, though I'll almost certainly have fewer hours going forward. She has been temporarily laid off but with a recall date for when the schools open again. Even if we were both on unemployment and with no other relief, we'd weather this fine and still be able to sock some away every month. Vermont in general has a shortage of young workers and neither of us should have trouble finding work to keep us afloat even through a nasty recession.

However, we do see a ton of people around us who are living paycheck to paycheck. Many don't know how to cook, have large debts (leased cars, loans, credit card debt), and are already not able to pay their rent/mortgages. I have no idea how they're going to get through the next 3 months, nevermind a rough couple of years.

[oil pan 4]

The all around strategic blunder of out sourcing everything to China for the last 25 to 30 years has finally been realized.
The economy took off when trump encouraged domestic manufacturing. Now it will be demanded that manufacturing be brought back.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The all around strategic blunder of out sourcing everything to China for the last 25 to 30 years has finally been realized.
The economy took off when trump encouraged domestic manufacturing. Now it will be demanded that manufacturing be brought back.

What am I missing? If China's economy devalues even more than ours, their products will be even cheaper after this.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Ecky

What am I missing? If China's economy devalues even more than ours, their products will be even cheaper after this.

You aren't missing anything. Nobody is going to accept higher prices to start making socks in the USA instead of Cambodia and Vietnam. (China's labor is too expensive for socks now). This also won't change the fact that the USA is currently 15% of the global economy and shrinking as other countries continue to grow and prosper.

Instead of trying to roll back time we need to figure out how to deal with life in the current global economy.

The idea the the economy suddenly took off under Trump is also completely false.

[freebeard]

This also won't change the fact that the USA is currently 15% of the global economy and shrinking as other countries continue to grow and prosper.

[citation needed]

[JSH]

Originally Posted by freebeard

[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...es_by_GDP_(PPP)

(I'm using the 2019 IMF numbers)

The USA has a GDP (PPP) of $21.4 Trillion
The World GDP is 141.8 Trillion

21.4 / 141.8 = 15%

Our economy isn't shrinking. It continues to grow year over year. However, other countries are growing faster so our percentage of the pie continues to shrink.

Of course this is completely understandable considering that the USA is only 4.25% of the global population. We are still punching WAY above our weight but demographics march on. We would have a shrinking population today without inbound immigration.

[oil pan 4]

Out sourcing every possible job isnt going to do it.

Products get cheaper, people keep getting poorer. People don't realize they're getting poorer because you can afford flat screen TVs and a new phone when they come out, until it's too late.

[serialk11r]

Oh man. There is a lot to economics, but as a finance quant and macroeconomics enthusiast, I would say the US' competitive advantage is good financial regulation and free capital flows + less regulatory burden than other developed countries. The bad part is corrupt and inefficient big government (all the adjectives here are necessary, if government is a smaller % of the economy then inefficient and corrupt are less of a problem). Directionally, I agree with conservative sentiment that regulation and welfare is a problem and needs to be trimmed back.

On the other hand, social stability is in fact affected by how bad it is for the poorest. There needs to be proper incentives for them to be productive instead of abuse the welfare system, but it's possible to give a better safety net to allow people to be entrepreneurial and productive. People are clever, if they don't have skin in the game, they're going to abuse the s*** out of anything you give them for free.

[freebeard]

JSH — Thanks. ...but the Wikipedia page shows relative magnitude, I was thinking of the delta.

But of course, historical trends have been eclipsed in the last month or two. I speculate that the USofA, Japan and Russia will be likely to bounce back. Iran and Italy no so much.

The Koreas will be interesting.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Anyone else see a silver lining in the likely future recession? Potentially more ecomodders and forum activity?

...although fuel prices have tanked...

This is all you need to know.