zlacker

>>hhs+(OP)
Glad to see this from Amazon, although I see it heading off the inevitable. Wouldn't this be the most powerful moment for employees in 'essential' services to engage in worker strikes? Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do?

With all this war rhetoric thrown around, it seems a reasonable jump to declare essential workers troops on the frontline deserving of what we give other troops (free health care, pension, heavily subsidized secondary education)

>>bdefor+T7
Striking in order to exploit a global disaster for personal gain would be a great way for organized labor to turn many people against them for a life time. It may work in the short term, but even that is debatable. Many people would gladly see the national guard break a strike if it's between them and basic essentials. Long term, the optics of that kind of move are so damning that it would likely be a net-loss.

>>seneca+Ib
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.

>>Reedx+In
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.

>>Frost1+tt
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.

>>kortil+3z
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.