Most recent Coronavirus projections show that 30-40M Americans may lose their jobs.<p>How can new businesses / startups provide work to or help retrain this workforce over the next 6 months?
Things are getting weird. I’m not sure how many people are even going to want to go back work at a normal job after a month or two.<p>A lot of people losing their jobs are people making less than $20/hr, and right now unemployment pays more than working. In fact, in California if you make under $25/hr your unemployment check will be bigger than your regular check. This only goes to July 31, but this sort of distortion is going to completely upend the labor market. If you made between $7.25 and $25 an hour there is little incentive for you to look for a job until July 31.
I don't know anything about economics. My thoughts keep gravitating towards the US and Canada employing people to invest in infrastructure upgrades. It's a way to address a serious concern in both countries (especially the US), put cash into the hands of citizens, thus the economy, and give a lot of people a bit of hope.<p>You wouldn't need to create tens of millions of jobs directly in infrastructure, just enough that the money would move around and make related business possible.<p>Maybe this is a really stupid idea, I don't know.
Helicopter money. The fed has fired up the money printer and will shovel cash out the door to any company that can take it and retain/hire people (though I suspect a substantial chunk of that will be raked by business owners and financial middlemen).<p>The reason that helicopter money won't lead to hyper-inflation is because the entire rest of the world is just as fucked as we are, so the dollar will remain the safest currency no matter how much the money supply is increased.
The green new deal sounds like a perfect opportunity... but unlikely in the next 6 months.<p>A UBI in the meantime would be a super cheap way to prevent a lot of issues.
There are also twists to this story. I am a retired engineer with considerable drainage and roadway experience. The infrastructure bill will increase the demand for my skills, which can be in short supply in normal times. I may have a technical duty to go back to work to assist enabling the actual construction work.
Green New Deal has a Plan. Clearly the Gov. has the spare cash. Great opportunity to get serious about Climate, which if unattended-to will make Covid look like a walk in the park. Who knows, maybe we could catch up with India in renewable energy in a year or three.
My biggest concern of the current recession is that a lot of jobs wont recover. They will be replaced with automation.<p>Companies now realise that the more services they can run autopilot the better they will weather future storms
As a former waiter turned programmer, I genuinely hope we find more ways to make more programmers, even if it is at the expense of having less waiters.<p>Life is simply better in every way.
Somewhat interesting and purely academic curiosity, but US GDP (20 trillion) split evenly among US pop (330 million) is roughly $60k/year, compared to average income at $63k/year.
The first iteration: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal</a><p>Today’s version: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal</a><p>The federal government acts as employer of last resort.
30M jobs “lost” in a forced moratorium. They will be gained back when the shenanigans passes with this flu.<p>Not like people will stop drinking, going to activities, spending money and become monks after a couple weeks.