I legitimately had a cry for society in April 2020. Every bad trend in The Before Times got a ten-year boost.

- Can't afford rent? Well now neither can your friends so you all have roommates.

- Hate your job? Well now it's even worse so there's no reason to even try.

- Police sucking? Well now they've got a fascist cheering them on so they're gonna become monsters.

- Monopolistic billionaires running the economy? Well now they own most of it.

- Unequal access to healthcare? Well guess who's gonna do the dying?

Some of that isn't going to change. We're having a hell of a time hiring because jobs suck and nobody wants them. I guess mall retail is at $23/hr where I'm at. That's going to do a few things: (1) it's going to kill every store that can't profit at $23/hr wages (2) it's going to turn off every consumer that can't pay those prices (3) it's going to drive out every renter who can't afford a rate based on $23/hr mall workers.

There's an aspect of the supply/demand curve that economists never focus on: it's always about how high wages drive up the price of whatever but never about how low wages kill labor demand. No one is going to dispute that being an "essential worker" sucks balls. No one is going to dispute that people have more stuff churning behind their eyeballs, or that they take it out on perceived social inferiors (like "essential workers"). What's different this time is that we've structured an economy and a society such that the workers are saying "naah" before corporations were ready to replace them with robots.

I think we're going to see a lot more multigenerational housing, and a lot more gig work and side hustles. I think we're going to see a lot more petty entrepreneurialism. I think high gas prices are just the cherry on top- it was wild seeing the freeways in LA clear out in 2008 because it's not fucking worth driving an hour across town for $8/hr when gas is $5.

I don't see any tools our current economy can use to incentivize the workers who bore the brunt of it. We're going to have to try something else. We've got Democrats in power right now, which means the solution will be well-meaning, committee'd to death and ultimately 1/10th as effective as it could be. That will likely lead to Republicans in power whose solution will be "let them eat cake."

"Let them eat cake" is, historically speaking, poor policy.

Funny thing happened Thursday. Both Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Michael Burry of "The Big Short" fame observed that the economy has 3-6 months of excess savings left over from the pandemic and that once that's gone shit's gonna get spicy. Then Friday The Daily Shot came out with a graph breaking down excess savings by quintile that revealed everyone but the top 20% in the country is already broke - but that's okay because they're 60% of purchases so from an economics standpoint both Burry and Dimon are right!

From a sociopolitical standpoint, they're wrong. There's going to be an unwinding. I'm hopeful it won't be too terrible, but past experience has been that "terrible" is in the cards with dreary regularity.