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Comment by brd | Hacker News Reader

I've been talking to as many companies as I can during all of this. The surge is not evenly distributed but a lot of companies are seeing surprising upticks in online traffic and sales.

The big question though is how long will this last? I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn.

A lot of trade publications are already starting to sound the alarms on how ugly this could get. A return to 2008 era aggressive discounting is likely going to happen. Retail partners may be crippled by the quarantine. A lot of brands are going to be assailed from many directions simultaneously, it's going to hurt.

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> I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn.

My fear as well. The swiftness and ferocity of this downturn is like nothing ever, AFAIK. 22 million out of work in 4 weeks. Many are unlikely to get their jobs back. So while certain companies are seeing upticks due to logistics of the lockdown, I don't think it's safe to assume it would continue long after SIP ends.

> Many are unlikely to get their jobs back.

Their original job? Sounds plausible. Any job? Surely that would be a political choice for their respective governments? Unless there’s a reason we can’t repeat the famous infrastructure jobs programs from a century ago - I’m no economist, so I genuinely don’t know, but Hoover Dam Mark 2 sounds good to me.

> Unless there’s a reason we can’t repeat the famous infrastructure jobs programs from a century ago

That had positive effects in the USA, but in Europe the economic woes of the 1930s led to WWII.

Did anyone in Europe do a jobs program at that point? My GCSE history only covered the economic impact of forcing Germany to pay reparations for WW1, and treated The New Deal as unconnected.

GCSEs are not great.

> Unless there’s a reason we can’t repeat the famous infrastructure jobs programs from a century ago

Right now we can't for a very similar reason that we couldn't prior to 1933.

But there's an election this year, so that can change.

> Hoover Dam Mark 2 sounds good to me.

Hoover Dam actually wasn't an infrastructure jobs program to counteract the downturn, it was planned and approved before the 1929 crash and subsequent Depression.

> Hoover Dam Mark 2

Is this like the Hoover dam but with 100x longer environmental reviews and 10x more expensive due to special interest grifts that then cripple the investment before it fails 10yrs later? And the only people who made money were a bunch of private consultants hired by the government to do the reviews and executive staff the pseudo-market company behind it?

I haven't heard of a single major infrastructure project that hasn't followed that trajectory. Reading about Obama's two solar projects are a good starting point. But nothing beats Keystone XL.

It's no wonder it hasn't happened and it's not for lack of trying or tax dollars being spent. Even here in Canada it's the same story every time and we have a far more receptive political base for spending the tax money. So I'll never be convinced that's the real hurdle.

If the point is to be a jobs program, wasting money and massive overspend are a feature.

That was my point. It won’t end up in workers hands unless they actually start work on the project. Otherwise it will go to a small group of consultants, gov connected executives, and most importantly endless amounts of lawyers and activism groups.

> I think the general population has not yet appreciated the possible severity of the ensuing economic downturn.

I think the general public has not yet appreciated the current severity of the present economic downturn, much less the future possibility.

i saw a lot of brewers move to the shopify platform but the revenues are just not the same as when attached with the restaurants and taprooms. Many are expected to fail which means they will drop off shopify. I think overall, shopify will still be up since this is a wonderful acceleration of a change that was already in progress. But yes, this curve will flatten too as small retail starts failing and wallets dry up.

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