IPFS News Link • Economy - Economics USA
The Destruction Of Demand
• https://www.zerohedge.com by Charles Hugh SmithThe first-order effect of the lockdown was demand destruction as shelter-in-place orders and business closures restricted consumers' ability to spend.
The second-order effect will be the permanent destruction of demand because people will realize they're better off reducing their consumption of high-cost, questionable-value goods and services. Let's start with the resurgence of savings, the most basic form of security you actually control and the most basic form of hedging against promises of a return to wonderfulness failing to arrive in the real world.
Comically, security you actually control, i.e. savings, are viewed by the status quo as a mortal threat to the economy: how dare you keep some of your own money rather than squander all of it! Notice how this bit of twisted CNN humor labels savings "hoarding," as if retaining a bit of your hard-earned wages is evil "hoarding" rather than prudent self-sufficiency.
New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s