The Viral Economy

[Octavious]

So to live the sweet sweet life you just have to do the following:
Have 2 people go to college + likely graduate school
Both work for decades to get up to a combined 300,000 K
Have a couple of kids
Both get fired at the same exact time
And then figure out how to live on like 20% on your income in a country that doesn't give two shits what happens to you
Be called lazy for getting fired with no cause
AMERICA FUCK YA

[LordMortis]

So this is the the source...

https://committeetounleashprosperity.co ... o-Work.pdf

I call puppies

State/District... UI and ACA Subsidy

Michigan... $50,177

It takes about five minutes of primary sourcing to find out $600x12 = $7200 in ACA plus 20 x $362 = $7240 or a total of $14,420 a year if you perfectly gamed the system in Michigan for UI and ACA.

They are trying to insinuate that you can make both make $293,000 and somehow find an ACA subsidy at 8.5% (you can't) and collect $7,240 a year in unemployment. Even then it still doesn't add up to $50,000. You need to come up with $43,000 in ACA subsidy to hit that $50,000 mark. There aren't even any ACA plans that cost $3500 a month much less ones that you could get fully subsidized.

[LawBeefaroni]

If you want to know how it's being framed, here's Fox Business:

There are numerous reasons that unemployed Americans aren't entering the workforce, including ongoing fears of COVID-19, disabilities such as "long COVID," and other care responsibilities. One factor that is contributing to the relatively low labor force participation rate is the combination of unemployment benefits and recently expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, according a new study by the nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

In 14 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies for a family of four with two people not working amounts to an annualized equivalent of $80,000 a year in wages and benefits, the study found.

They're counting ACA subsidies, using a "total benefits" model.

Also note the tone when talking about COVID.

Also note this story is downstream of a Heritage study. It's the usual bullshit they use to justify supply-side economics. It's not premised on any real foundation. This is the usual vein they tap as we enter the 40th year into an economics social experiment that's still the predominant driver of policy.

Yeah, their source is Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The paper, "Paying Americans Not To Work" is linked on the front page. Haven't read it yet but probably will next time I take a shit.

I love how "non-profit organization" is used now to try to imply lack of political bias. PACs are non-profits.

The Committee’s analysis concludes that there are five major factors needed to “unleash prosperity” and thereby, achieve “universal opulence.”

[malchior]

We just have to work through another 40 years of human misery to finally unlock that Randian utopia.

[stessier]

States with sketchy social benefits ignore the fact that the (blue) states with generous benefits also have a higher cost of living and pay higher taxes to fund those programs. $50k per year is poverty for a family in Boston, where a living wage starts at around $75k. Not even a single person can live large on $50k, although they can squeak by.

Also remember unemployment is paid by the companies who fire people, not taxes that are part of the general fund.

[Kraken]

States with sketchy social benefits ignore the fact that the (blue) states with generous benefits also have a higher cost of living and pay higher taxes to fund those programs. $50k per year is poverty for a family in Boston, where a living wage starts at around $75k. Not even a single person can live large on $50k, although they can squeak by.

Also remember unemployment is paid by the companies who fire people, not taxes that are part of the general fund.

I was speaking more generally about social programs but that's a good point. Being an employer, I pay the unemployment assessment on my own paycheck, which is of course a percentage of payroll. Our wage base is higher than average. For example, the Target store at the mall had a help-wanted sign advertising an $18.35/hr starting wage plus benefits. Minimum wage here goes to $15 next month, I think. Virtually everyone pays higher than minimum so it's kind of a technicality. Anyway, ain't nobody living high on the hog on unemployment checks.

[Daehawk]

[Smoove_B]

Going back to the real estate element of the new viral economy, enter NYC:

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged the challenge ahead in a little-noticed report unveiled on Dec. 15. Their “New” New York report concluded that “hybrid is here to stay.” It sets forth 40 proposals for a post-pandemic metropolis where hybrid and work-from-home arrangements are the norm. Their report notes, “After inching up steadily for several months, NYC office attendance has started to stabilize just shy of 50% of pre-pandemic levels.”

Other key markers it references: In November, overall subway use averaged 62% of pre-pandemic levels, and bus use averaged 64%; foot traffic in Midtown was at 77% of pre-pandemic levels in September, and 82% in Lower Manhattan. As of the fall, the vacancy rate for direct and sublet office real estate stood at nearly 22%, the highest since the mid-1970s.

"We are no longer living in the same New York as we were at the beginning of the pandemic,” Hochul said in a statement accompanying the report, “and these proposals will help to revitalize our business districts, ease New Yorkers' commutes, promote equity and tackle our 800,000-unit housing shortage.”

About that Doom Loop they're trying to stop:

An upcoming address by Columbia Business School real estate and finance professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, to be delivered before the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association in January, paints a bleak picture. His working paper for the talk was recently highlighted in an article by New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall. It warns of an “urban doom loop” spurred by the sudden, pandemic-induced shift to hybrid work and work-from-elsewhere.

The “doom” Van Nieuwerburgh describes stems from loss tax revenues and fees to local governments, declining revenues for public transportation, and losses associated with having fewer high-income people and firms in urban centers. He writes: “Tax rates and spending cuts would need to be larger still, prompting further outmigration. This urban doom loop would result in a municipal fiscal crisis. NYC experienced such a crisis in the 1970s, Detroit more recently.”

I remember talking about this in the earliest days of the pandemic when there were closures and people were staying home - all the associated businesses that were affected when corporate America flipped a switch and made working from home possible (having been previously telling everyone it was impossible):

The Hochul and Adams report tallies up some of the looming fiscal costs: “Each additional day per average week that regional commuters work from home could result in as much as a $1.6 billion reduction in annual spending on daytime items (lunch, after-work drinks, etc.), and each additional day that NYC residents work from home … could result in a $0.7 billion to $1 billion reduction in annual revenue for major transportation providers, including the MTA and car/taxi cabs, which are the lifeblood of the region’s economy.”

You can almost understand then the immense amount of pressure to "return to normal" - why the people in charge (regardless of political affiliation) are pushing for in-person everything. America runs on capitalism and when people are home, it apparently screws up our economic scaffolding.

[malchior]

You can almost understand then the immense amount of pressure to "return to normal" - why the people in charge (regardless of political affiliation) are pushing for in-person everything. America runs on capitalism and when people are home, it apparently screws up our economic scaffolding.

And that is mostly because so many of their patrons are rent seeking. They refuse to accept and innovate. It's the worst sort of capitalism.

It still makes me sad that they simply won't embrace the opportunity. NYC has a massive housing crisis. Start re-zoning commercial to residential. Give credits to companies to redevelop. Provide support to help restructure loans if need be, etc. They have a golden chance is they only could stop being so dead set on turning back the clock.

[Smoove_B]

Yes. I can only assume it's fear of change - no one wants to gamble on what might happen when we can just push to go back to 2019 when the right people were making money hand over fist.

I honestly never really thought about the financial/economic pressures that would be involved with something like a pandemic (like Nate Silver did) so it's been interesting/terrifying to watch this all unfold from that angle. Assuming we survive it (long term), I'm sure lessons will be learned. If not by us, definitely someone else.

[Kraken]

Unfortunately converting office buildings to apartments is difficult. There's too much windowless internal space, and the whole building needs to be re-plumbed to create kitchens and bathrooms. Their HVAC systems, designed for large open spaces, are all wrong. A recent study in Boston found fewer than 10% of offices that could be converted for less than the cost of erecting a new building.

Life sciences are the hot economic sector here, so many office towers are turning into lab space. Lab technicians don't have the luxury of working from home. Unfortunately there are far fewer of them per square foot, and they tend not to leave their buildings for lunch or to socialize after work. The buildings are successfully repurposed and remain on the tax rolls, but they don't contribute much to the life of the city.

Cities will each find their unique path through this transition, but wholesale conversion of office space into residential isn't going to solve it.

[LawBeefaroni]

Unfortunately converting office buildings to apartments is difficult. There's too much windowless internal space, and the whole building needs to be re-plumbed to create kitchens and bathrooms. Their HVAC systems, designed for large open spaces, are all wrong. A recent study in Boston found fewer than 10% of offices that could be converted for less than the cost of erecting a new building.

Bah, capitalist pragmatism. Boooring.

[malchior]

Unfortunately converting office buildings to apartments is difficult. There's too much windowless internal space, and the whole building needs to be re-plumbed to create kitchens and bathrooms. Their HVAC systems, designed for large open spaces, are all wrong. A recent study in Boston found fewer than 10% of offices that could be converted for less than the cost of erecting a new building.

Bah, capitalist pragmatism. Boooring.

Sure some of it is pragmatism. Still I recall a land use advocate arguing that NYC was doing it for 100+ years until it stopped in the 80s because the city basically shut it down when real estate moguls essentially bought city hall. Even so they managed to make it work downtown where they spent years turning old office space into multi-million dollar condos.

[Jaymon]

Beyond the expense to building owners of converting downtown offices into apartments. The residents of those apartments would face severely increased costs of living. Not from rent (which may or may not be quite high) but "downtown" is not generally designed for affordable living. Lunch may be cheap, but there are no affordable grocery stores, no affordable general goods stores. Clothing and haircut places will be all boutique, and how much of it is going to be open on the weekends?

My point is transitioning from office buildings to apartments is a wider process than just the office buildings themselves, the entire neighborhood will need to transform as well to make it into a livable place.

[LawBeefaroni]

Amazon and UBI. Problem solved.

[malchior]

Beyond the expense to building owners of converting downtown offices into apartments. The residents of those apartments would face severely increased costs of living. Not from rent (which may or may not be quite high) but "downtown" is not generally designed for affordable living. Lunch may be cheap, but there are no affordable grocery stores, no affordable general goods stores. Clothing and haircut places will be all boutique, and how much of it is going to be open on the weekends?

My point is transitioning from office buildings to apartments is a wider process than just the office buildings themselves, the entire neighborhood will need to transform as well to make it into a livable place.

No one said it was going to be easy. The issue is no one is even trying anything because the rent seekers have so much influence. They just want to turn back the clock using their soft power and encouraging the government to use hard power.

Amazon and UBI. Problem solved.

Haha. I only wish. I can only imagine the howls and rending of garments if we got anywhere near implementing UBI. Our ruling elite barely support the idea of unemployment insurance.

[Max Peck]

Remember how "quiet quitting" didn't mean quitting? Then it's no surprise that "quiet hiring" is the new buzzword for not hiring.

What Is 'Quiet Hiring'? And How You Can Use It To Your Advantage.

2022 came with a slew of new workplace lingo: quiet quitting, quiet firing and fast quitting. However, a new trend is likely to dominate the hiring space in 2023: "quiet hiring."

The concept of quiet hiring hinges on the idea that a business can add new skills and fill gaps without actually hiring full-time employees. Gartner research expert Emily Rose McRae told CNBC that quiet hiring often comes in two different forms: internal and external.

Internal quiet hiring means current employees might temporarily move to other roles or take on different assignments within the organization. External quiet hiring means hiring short-term contractors to keep the business running without taking on more full-time employees.

[ImLawBoy]

So, business as usual? Just with new buzzwords?

[LawBeefaroni]

You end up paying the middle man.

We actually gave our on-staff nurses a 20% raise to retain them and to try to reduce agency (temp nurse) spending.

[Max Peck]

Here they're doing everything they can to avoid paying nurses more, then loosening up regulations to make it easier to poach nurses from developing countries (who conveniently see the status quo as great pay, I guess).

Not enough doctors to go around? No problem, just change the regulations so that pharmacists can prescribe common drugs without any input from a physician. And then to put a cherry on top, change the regulations so that they can substitute the cheapest available biosimilar generic drugs (which will naturally be their own inhouse brand) for anything that they don't just prescribe themselves.

[gilraen]

So, business as usual? Just with new buzzwords?

Pretty much. I've been doing the work of 4 people ever since we got acquired in late 2019, and the following 8-10 months saw half the original staff (small company) either leave or get laid off.

[Smoove_B]

The quiet cost of COVID:

Some 1.5 million people missed work because of an illness last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The month before that, it was 1.6 million. In October, 1.3 million and in September 1.2 million. In fact, the last time there were fewer than a million Americans missing work because of an illness was November 2019.

That year, in fact, there were nine months with fewer than a million people missing work because of an illness. In 2018, there were another nine such months. In 2017, there were seven months under a million, but every single month that year saw fewer people missing work because of an illness than the month with the lowest level of missed work in 2022.

Data points:

In the years before the pandemic (2017 to 2019 are shown below), there was a much closer relationship between flu cases and missed work. In fact, the month in the 2017 to 2019 period with the most people missing work was January 2018, also the year in which positive flu tests were at their peak. In the past three years, there have been 26 months in which the number of people missing work exceeded that January 2018 peak.

The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, in a sense, meant a constant flu season — and a bad one. Fewer people are dying of covid-19, happily, but that doesn’t mean it’s not having a significant ongoing effect.

Keep working

[YellowKing]

The good news is that with more people working from home, more people can work while they're sick! It all balances out!

[Smoove_B]

On that note, McKinsey has some thoughts:

Missing workers:

Do the math, and 315 million to 1.05 billion worker days were likely lost to COVID-19 last year, equivalent to 1.3 million to 4.3 million workers dropping out of the workforce for the full year. At the high end, that’s about double the average number of sick days taken by US workers in the decade before the pandemic. Stated differently, the cumulative impact of lost time due to COVID-19 is equivalent to a 0.8 to 2.6 percent reduction in the availability of the US workforce. In our view, this is a hidden loss that could help explain the persistent US worker shortage.

Missing work:

COVID-19 affects productivity in four ways:

Missed work due to acute illness. The average symptomatic person loses some productive working time because of COVID-19, and the amount of time lost varies. Some will isolate for the full recommended period, which is currently five days. (We account for these workers separately.) Others will miss work only while they feel unwell—for example, missing work for a couple of days, working at 75 percent of their usual capacity for ten days, or similar adaptations. Finally, a smaller though still meaningful number of people experience severe acute illness and miss work for a longer period.

Productivity loss due to long COVID. Long COVID is a complex and poorly understood syndrome. We recently estimated one form of its economic impact: the affordability challenge that it places on the nation’s healthcare system. Reduced productivity is another such challenge. A relatively large number of people experience mild to moderate medium-term symptoms, which cause a modest productivity decrease. A smaller number suffer debilitating symptoms and are unable to work for a substantial period of time.

Missed work due to isolation based on COVID-19 protocol. While compliance is far from universal, some people, irrespective of symptoms, do follow the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) recommendation to isolate for at least five days after testing positive.

Productivity loss while caregiving for a dependent family member. Cases in dependent family members can also lead to workdays lost, as parents may have to care for sick children (or grandparents).

Impacts:

A billion workdays lost to COVID-19 is enough to have a substantial impact on the economy. Even the midpoint scenario of roughly 600 million workdays lost represents nearly a week missed per worker on average, more than doubling the prepandemic number of sick days taken by Americans. The implied reduction of 1.5 percent in the US labor force is material at a time when unemployment stands at only 3.7 percent, and many sectors are labor constrained.

The last time I saw this type of analysis was for foodborne illness outbreaks. The number of deaths each year due to foodborne illness are rather low, but the time lost (work, recreation, school) and the associated economic ripples are staggering.

Anyway, their thoughts on 2023?

Moreover, reduced productivity from COVID-19 is likely to continue into this year. Without a change in trajectory, the United States will experience hundreds of millions more COVID-19 cases in 2023, although the situation could improve if milder variants become dominant or if new preventive or therapeutic modalities reduce the average severity of cases or rates of long COVID.

In the meantime, workers continue to get sick and miss work. Amid the many ways that COVID-19 has slowed economies, the impact on economic productivity may be among the most enduring.

[malchior]

On that note, McKinsey has some thoughts:

I know some folks are on a McKinsey is evil kick (and they sort of are sometimes) but this analysis is spot on IMO. This is along the lines about what I was arguing awhile back. A lot of our economic performance issues were directly related to the pandemic. We have relatively solid data sources for employment and this was becoming apparent earlier in the year. I'm glad someone with big swing is saying it out loud. Not that it'll change anything in the short-term but it's still helpful to at least be able to point to a rigorous analysis like this.

Anyway, their thoughts on 2023?

Moreover, reduced productivity from COVID-19 is likely to continue into this year. Without a change in trajectory, the United States will experience hundreds of millions more COVID-19 cases in 2023, although the situation could improve if milder variants become dominant or if new preventive or therapeutic modalities reduce the average severity of cases or rates of long COVID.

In the meantime, workers continue to get sick and miss work. Amid the many ways that COVID-19 has slowed economies, the impact on economic productivity may be among the most enduring.

This feels correct. "Luckily" it is a race to the bottom now with China throwing in the towel. From a strategic point of view it seems everyone is screwed long-term.

[Smoove_B]

I know some folks are on a McKinsey is evil kick (and they sort of are sometimes) but this analysis is spot on IMO. This is along the lines about what I was arguing awhile back. A lot of our economic performance issues were directly related to the pandemic. We have relatively solid data sources for employment and this was becoming apparent earlier in the year. I'm glad someone with big swing is saying it out loud. Not that it'll change anything in the short-term but it's still helpful to at least be able to point to a rigorous analysis like this.

It's one of the reasons I shared it - because my eyebrow went up after seeing McKinsey was suggesting the pandemic was (and still is) screwing with our economy. Not just helping to explain where the workers went, but how sick workers are going to continue to cause problems.

[malchior]

One thing I'd point out is they are touching on workforce impacts that may be indirectly and directly observable since consultancies often have access to internal company data and are able to use some form (e.g. anonymized aggregate data) in these sort of metadata projects. They didn't even appear to directly try to model out the impact on the participation rate and such. I still believe in the absence of a better explanation COVID either via direct infection, long COVID, or the issues they raise in this summary are at play at reducing the participation rate which is additional drag on the economy.

[LawBeefaroni]

The layoffs keep coming. Amazon 18K earlier this week. MSFT 10k announced today.

[Octavious]

From what I'm seeing a lot of those companies went hiring crazy during covid and now are regretting it. That may be me just trying to find the positive in it.

[Kraken]

The spin that I read says that this wave of layoffs will lead to a wave of new startups, as the people being set free are young, well educated, and generally have highly valued skills. Unless the economy goes into a prolonged and widespread recession, they'll be fine.

[coopasonic]

The spin that I read says that this wave of layoffs will lead to a wave of new startups, as the people being set free are young, well educated, and generally have highly valued skills. Unless the economy goes into a prolonged and widespread recession, they'll be fine.

I am not so sure the money is out there to support this idea right now, but I am a dumb software engineer that has worked at a bank for 20 years after a traumatic startup experience so what do I know?

[Grifman]

[Alefroth]

I'm not seeing any recent reporting on that, and it looks like it's for some employees.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/10837204 ... nimum-wage

Still, it is quite commendable.

[Kraken]

The spin that I read says that this wave of layoffs will lead to a wave of new startups, as the people being set free are young, well educated, and generally have highly valued skills. Unless the economy goes into a prolonged and widespread recession, they'll be fine.

I am not so sure the money is out there to support this idea right now, but I am a dumb software engineer that has worked at a bank for 20 years after a traumatic startup experience so what do I know?

I found the story I was referring to: Big tech layoffs could generate wave of future startups.

“Unemployment is potentially a destructive experience,” concludes a 2014 study from The Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research. “But unemployment also triggers creativity.”

“Most people working at a big tech company in the not-too-distant past wouldn’t have thought to leave and start a company because that was a pretty comfortable place to be,” said Lee Hower, one of three founding partners at the firm. “But now those companies are changing their focus and taking less moonshots.”

The half-dozen or so companies chosen for the NextView accelerator will participate in weekly programming and advice sessions and get $400,000 each in backing.

NextView has had some hits from betting on what the firm calls “alumni pods,” Hower said. The founders of advertising-tech startup TripleLift got to know each other at AppNexus, for example, and the founders of Drift worked at HubSpot.

“High-caliber teams that have worked together before are just so far ahead in their ability to execute,” NextView’s Rob Go said.

Venture capitalists gonna venture.

[Smoove_B]

In case you're wondering what it's still all about:

At the swearing-in this month for her third term as the District of Columbia’s mayor, Muriel Bowser delivered a surprising inaugural-address ultimatum of sorts to the federal government: Get your employees back to in-person work — or else vacate your lifeless downtown office buildings so we can fill the city with people again.

It was a somewhat daring political gesture, albeit couched in polite terms. For one thing, the federal government is led by Joe Biden, the guy Bowser will be urgently counting on to wield his veto when the newly Republican House of Representatives tries to interfere with her not-quite-sovereign city. There’s a reason D.C. mayors don’t typically call out Democratic presidents.

...

“It is a challenge to have a quarter of the economy sitting on the sidelines,” Falcicchio says. The total number of jobs has dropped significantly, notably in hospitality. “We think that’s because those jobs are really kind of indirect jobs that are somewhat dependent on the vibrancy that the federal government being in the office offers.”

“Or another way to look at it is Metro,” the regional transit system, he says. “It’s about a third of what it used to be.” When rider revenue plunges, the local jurisdictions have to make up for it out of their general funds — money that could otherwise go to schools or public safety. It’s a dangerous cycle for any municipality.

In the local nightmare scenario, a downtown that’s perpetually short of workers has disastrous knock-on effects: Taxes on retail sales and commercial real estate don’t come in, public services get cut back, transit gets slower, empty streets feel increasingly scary, and the capital regains its 1980s-era image as a place people flee.

Because it's easier to force people back to their cubicles, I'm guessing that'll happen faster than D.C. being re-imagined as a modern city that doesn't need a population of working commuters to thrive.

[Zarathud]

Business leaders are looking to assign blame as the economy remains weak and challenging.

The drumbeat of returning to work to “stop failing” has been increasing over the last 6 months. It may not be strictly necessary for business success, but I expect employers are going to take it into account when assessing staffing.

My real estate clients have been panicking. Empty downtowns mean continuing turnover in their leases, and they can’t refinance without getting hit with much higher interest. Towns dependent on tourism generally don’t survive more than 2 bad years.

That lack of business impacts city revenues and budgets. The current House isn’t going to help any local government.

I don’t like it, but there is reason for business panic.

[Max Peck]

The federal government is trying to push people back into the office here as well. Apparently they did a lot of hiring in the last couple of years, so in many cases there aren't enough desks to go around. No worries, they have a plan for that.

Federal workers return to the office — but not the one they left

Federal public servants returning to the office after years working from home are adjusting to a new emphasis: shared work spaces, rather than a cubicle to call their own.

This hybrid work model is shifting tens of thousands of employees back to in-person work a few days a week. With it comes a host of complications, from making sure they have the right technical hookups to organizing schedules so team members can truly be face-to-face.

Unions have pointed to "chaos," saying there aren't enough desks and that some employees have even worked on the floor.

But while the federal government went on a hiring spree during the pandemic — core departments grew by 17,600 people from 2019 to 2022 in the capital region alone — the change in office style isn't due to a lack of space but rather a rethink that was already in motion.

"The pandemic has really just accelerated that," said Stéphan Déry, the assistant deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada in charge of office needs and real estate across the country.

"Ha ha, we were going to make your work-life experience miserable anyway, but the pandemic just gives us the opportunity to jumpstart the process."

[LawBeefaroni]

Venture capitalists gonna venture.

The private equity bubble is going to blow up soon, don't worry.

[malchior]

Business leaders are looking to assign blame as the economy remains weak and challenging.

This has been the weird part of current story telling. The economy grew at an estimated real 3.7% in 2022. That's a fine performance by any measure. Corporate profits are at 10 year highs. Yet we keep hearing about the economy being weak or actually in a recession despite having no indicators it's happening generally. It's very strange.

The drumbeat of returning to work to “stop failing” has been increasing over the last 6 months. It may not be strictly necessary for business success, but I expect employers are going to take it into account when assessing staffing.

My real estate clients have been panicking. Empty downtowns mean continuing turnover in their leases, and they can’t refinance without getting hit with much higher interest. Towns dependent on tourism generally don’t survive more than 2 bad years.

There are definite weak spots like this. Hopefully they don't turn into contagion but ultimately the overall economy was performing fine based on what we can see. Some of the leading indicators are softer but it's still unclear that it's going to definitely lead to a downturn.

I don’t like it, but there is reason for business panic.

I don't totally disagree or agree here. It's probably a tad more accurate to say business panic is happening despite general strength due to overemphasis of risks. It's somewhat irrational in a broad sense.

[Zarathud]

Irrationality can drive markets. The increased labor cost and borrowing costs are spooking business owners. They’re past the existential threat of COVID and terrified.

For example, IT should be able to reposition but cutting people is easier and doesn’t involve accepting blame later.