Relaxation of Restrictions, Part IX *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Polar101

Multipass wrote: »

Had to go into my nearest town, very depressing, most cafes aren’t even open for takeaways anymore. Most disturbing was seeing a homeless person lying on concrete in a doorway wearing a mask.

That's disappointing to hear. In my village, all the cafes (ok, there aren't that many to begin with) are open for takeaways, and I didn't see any homeless persons in the doorways. It very much looks like business as usual, except that you can't dine-in anywhere, or drink at the pub.

normanoffside

normanoffside wrote: »

I have a 1 in 43478 chance of Dying if I did contract Covid and a 1 in 2639 chance of being Hospitalised.

Edit: proof it's an official NHS approved tool

I raise you 1 in 200,000 risk of death with a 1 in 4,902 chance of hospitalization.

"In other words in a crowd of 10000 people with the same risk factors, 1 or less are likely to catch and die from COVID-19 and 2 to be admitted to hospital during a 90 day period similar to the recent peak."

growleaves

average_runner wrote: »

Not sure what industry you are in, but wages did not go down in the industries that were growing and loads were growing.

House prices are lower than they were pre 2008 and wages are higher than pre 2008.

House prices have risen faster than income.

The house price to income ratio rose from 2014 to 2019 according to the Central Bank of Ireland. Link

It is the same, and will be the same, for any asset class whose cost cannot be artifically deflated in some way.

Windmill100000

Silentcorner wrote: »

You might miss browsing, some won't, is my point, habits have changed, some will go back, some won't, 10% is a lot to lose to any business and many businesses are looking at losing more than that!

I do love the accusations of doom mongering and misery, it is precisely that that got us here...we reacted to doom mongering...we can't all pretend that all will be well a lot of us have to live in the real world.

People are going to do what they want to do. None of us have any control over that. Business has to adjust and move with current trends. It's always been that way. The explosion of the Internet was always going to impact on people shopping and if something can be bought online cheaper than a high street, that was always going to impact business.

LuckyLloyd

walus wrote: »

Pent up demand for what exactly and how is that going to drive the economic recovery?

Humans will have a huge desire to be together and be merry together. We will spend hugely on socialising and hospitality when our broader circle of friends have been vaccinated and we have confidence in being close to each other again.

One strand on this thread that i agree with is the fact that we have not all been affected equally by the pandemic. For those who have been lucky enough to continue working from home, they will have cash on hand and a desire to spend it when they receive the opportunity. There is a pent up demand to buy property, perform home improvements, go and trips away, etc - and the money is there within the economy to fund these things.

More importantly, the financial system has money to lend. There has been no credit crunch or stock market crash. There is money to invest in business ideas. Covid has forced innovation and invention and there will be things to invest in as a result.

The government has no funding difficulties and has no motivation to trend towards austerity.

I'll be honest - to think there will be no significant economic recovery seems mental to me. It is such a short sighted and incredibly negative position. As Graham says, I simply cannot share it.

timmyntc

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Humans will have a huge desire to be together and be merry together. We will spend hugely on socialising and hospitality when our broader circle of friends have been vaccinated and we have confidence in being close to each other again.

One strand on this thread that i agree with is the fact that we have not all been affected equally by the pandemic. For those who have been lucky enough to continue working from home, they will have cash on hand and a desire to spend it when they receive the opportunity. There is a pent up demand to buy property, perform home improvements, go and trips away, etc - and the money is there within the economy to fund these things.

More importantly, the financial system has money to lend. There has been no credit crunch or stock market crash. There is money to invest in business ideas. Covid has forced innovation and invention and there will be things to invest in as a result.

The government has no funding difficulties and has no motivation to trend towards austerity.

I'll be honest - to think there will be no significant economic recovery seems mental to me. It is such a short sighted and incredibly negative position. As Graham says, I simply cannot share it.

There will absolutely be a recovery compared to what we have now - however there is no evidence to say that it will return to pre-covid levels anytime soon.

Yes there is pent up demand for socialising, but the service industry cant remain open based on pent-up demand. They need income now, not in 6 months time.
By the time restrictions are lifted there will be too much damage done, it will be a long time before we come close to pre-covid status.

LuckyLloyd

A cafe or a pub or a restaurant is a low barrier to entry business. So what if one closes, another will take its place in time. This thread doesn't like hearing that and I appreciate it is a somewhat cold reality for those who own such businesses or were employed by them. But it is nonetheless how it will pan out.

Silentcorner

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Humans will have a huge desire to be together and be merry together. We will spend hugely on socialising and hospitality when our broader circle of friends have been vaccinated and we have confidence in being close to each other again.

One strand on this thread that i agree with is the fact that we have not all been affected equally by the pandemic. For those who have been lucky enough to continue working from home, they will have cash on hand and a desire to spend it when they receive the opportunity. There is a pent up demand to buy property, perform home improvements, go and trips away, etc - and the money is there within the economy to fund these things.

More importantly, the financial system has money to lend. There has been no credit crunch or stock market crash. There is money to invest in business ideas. Covid has forced innovation and invention and there will be things to invest in as a result.

The government has no funding difficulties and has no motivation to trend towards austerity.

I'll be honest - to think there will be no significant economic recovery seems mental to me. It is such a short sighted and incredibly negative position. As Graham says, I simply cannot share it.

It's mad...people just don't want to see it!!

A number of posters have already said the changes in our economy were underway before Covid...and call me a doom merchant for suggesting it is going to pick up pace because of strict lock downs.

You are right, people will have saved a lot of cash over the last year, but how can they spend it? The price of the wanted items like home improvements or week ends away will increase...

Let's take weekends away, there will be massive demand for them...but the hotels they wish to stay in will have lost a lot of their Corporate Business so will have to make it up on weekends, so the price of a room may well increase, would you be willing to stay in a bland hotel for €900, a room that would have cost half that..we all like going to the same places at the same time of the week or time of the year..if we don't start spending our money quickly our government will start taxing it quickly....if people don't get their jobs back quickly our government are going to have very difficult choices to make!

How about building an extension, where will they find the labour? Have we produced an amount of brick layers I'm not aware of? The costs of these improvements will rise...

This isn't anywhere near as simple as going back to business as usual.

Silentcorner

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

A cafe or a pub or a restaurant is a low barrier to entry business. So what if one closes, another will take its place in time. This thread doesn't like hearing that and I appreciate it is a somewhat cold reality for those who own such businesses or were employed by them. But it is nonetheless how it will pan out.

It is very difficult to succeed in any of those industries that you mentioned in ordinary times...who will be willing to front up the tens of thousands it costs to start up?

This thread doesn't like asking itself that!

LuckyLloyd

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

A cafe or a pub or a restaurant is a low barrier to entry business. So what if one closes, another will take its place in time. This thread doesn't like hearing that and I appreciate it is a somewhat cold reality for those who own such businesses or were employed by them. But it is nonetheless how it will pan out.

So what if livelihoods are lost. Reveals much about you, reminds me not to take a single offering of yours seriously.

paw patrol

Deleted User wrote: »

So what if livelihoods are lost. Reveals much about you, reminds me not to take a single offering of yours seriously.

he ignores the fact that the business closing will lose money - the owner probably too from their funds. regardless of who opens up in their place the financial hardship and emotional loss is just poo-poo'd by LL.

not through mismanagement but due to government decree.

heartless is the polite word for his posts

OwenM

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

A cafe or a pub or a restaurant is a low barrier to entry business. So what if one closes, another will take its place in time. This thread doesn't like hearing that and I appreciate it is a somewhat cold reality for those who own such businesses or were employed by them. But it is nonetheless how it will pan out.

You have no idea, none. Leasing, small business loans, licensing legislation, the list goes on and on. And if one closes then it's often a lifetimes work or a chunk of it in tatters with debts to banks and revenue that will follow you for years.

Necro

Mod:

ypres5's threadban lifted after discussion with poster

Graham

paw patrol wrote: »

not through mismanagement but due to government decree.

and a pandemic

timmyntc

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

A cafe or a pub or a restaurant is a low barrier to entry business. So what if one closes, another will take its place in time. This thread doesn't like hearing that and I appreciate it is a somewhat cold reality for those who own such businesses or were employed by them. But it is nonetheless how it will pan out.

In time. What 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?
You seem to think restaurants/cafes/pubs are non-stop popping up all the time - they arent. Some units will have a decent turnover and every few years a new restaurant/cafe opens up after the last closes, but there is no mass turnover of all units.

What we are looking at here is mass closures of restaurants/bars and possibly some hotels (depending on how things look when restrictions are eased).
Short of govt bailouts/grants to the service industry there could be large amounts of closures.

These businesses have been operating at low capacity (or not at all) for almost a year - with rent & other costs still to be paid all the while.

ypres5

Graham wrote: »

and a pandemic

in all fairness though the unwarranted exceptional length of our lockdown hasn't done irish smes any favours.

ypres5

timmyntc wrote: »

In time. What 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?
You seem to think restaurants/cafes/pubs are non-stop popping up all the time - they arent. Some units will have a decent turnover and every few years a new restaurant/cafe opens up after the last closes, but there is no mass turnover of all units.

What we are looking at here is mass closures of restaurants/bars and possibly some hotels (depending on how things look when restrictions are eased).
Short of govt bailouts/grants to the service industry there could be large amounts of closures.

These businesses have been operating at low capacity (or not at all) for almost a year - with rent & other costs still to be paid all the while.

the notion that people are going to be opening up small businesses left right and centre after the government has hobbled their activities for nearly a year and there's still going to be the looming threat that they may have to close again in the future is false optimism. these businesses are gone and they won't be replaced any time soon

walus

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Humans will have a huge desire to be together and be merry together. We will spend hugely on socialising and hospitality when our broader circle of friends have been vaccinated and we have confidence in being close to each other again.

One strand on this thread that i agree with is the fact that we have not all been affected equally by the pandemic. For those who have been lucky enough to continue working from home, they will have cash on hand and a desire to spend it when they receive the opportunity. There is a pent up demand to buy property, perform home improvements, go and trips away, etc - and the money is there within the economy to fund these things.

More importantly, the financial system has money to lend. There has been no credit crunch or stock market crash. There is money to invest in business ideas. Covid has forced innovation and invention and there will be things to invest in as a result.

The government has no funding difficulties and has no motivation to trend towards austerity.

I'll be honest - to think there will be no significant economic recovery seems mental to me. It is such a short sighted and incredibly negative position. As Graham says, I simply cannot share it.

I admire your optimism, even for it to be very idyllic. ECB have printed as much money during the last 10 months as they have in the previous 10 years to stimulate the economic recovery from the 2008 recession. That should give you a scale of the problem that we are facing. That is how much wealth needed to be thrown at it just to keep the light on this past year.

I don't think how can we even consider pent up demand for restaurants, weekends away, hairdressers, gyms etc. Money that has not been spent in those sectors is gone from there for ever - i.e. someone who did not spend on 20 outings to the restaurants over the space of last year is going to return to eating out for sure, but all those 20 meals are lost forever. He is not going to come into the restaurant and order 20 meals all of a sudden. One meal will suffice. Same for weekend away, hair cut, gym and so on.

Wealthy people will spend on things they need, for sure. They always do, especially in recessions - much better value. Most people will not though. It is only a question of time when the inflated stock market returns to normal levels and the credit window shuts due to defaults on loans. Forget to borrow money to lift your business off the ground or start a new one. Especially in one of the sectors affected by the lockdown strategy. Money velocity has already dropped and will be low for the next few years and that means very slow growth regardless of liquidity.

And no, this time will be no magic recovery because this recession/depression is somehow different to others. It is not. If anything is worst than most of them to date. I expect very slow recovery with deflation initially. Unemployment will not return to 2019 levels before 2025-2026. I'm not being pessimistic, I'm being realistic. Growth is not something you can generate by just throwing money at it. It does not work that way.

Graham

ypres5 wrote: »

in all fairness though the unwarranted exceptional length of our lockdown hasn't done irish smes any favours.

In all fairness, it's your opinion that restrictions are unwarranted.

SMEs would equally suffer if we opened everything up tomorrow and closed everything down again in three weeks time with cases an order of magnitude higher than they are now. Like happened at Christmas.

I'd love to see the restrictions end. I think the safest/fastest way is to get the new cases right down, then ease the restrictions gradually alongside the vaccination program.

Doing it that way should avoid the necessity to reintroduce restrictions once they've been lifted.

Graham

walus wrote: »

And no, this time will be no magic recovery because this recession/depression is somehow different to others. It is not.

Apart from the fact it's been brought on by a pandemic.

Which is different.

paw patrol

Graham wrote: »

and a pandemic

no closure due to government decree - they didn't have to react like that to a pandemic.

Just out of interest - you do realise that to be a pandemic an illness just needs to spread around the globe.
It can be benign and still be an pandemic.

cos you are nicier than some of the others

What is the definition of a pandemic?

A pandemic is defined as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/

timmyntc

Graham wrote: »

In all fairness, it's your opinion that restrictions are unwarranted.

SMEs would equally suffer if we opened everything up tomorrow and closed everything down again in three weeks time with cases an order of magnitude higher than they are now. Like happened at Christmas.

I'd love to see the restrictions end. I think the safest/fastest way is to get the new cases right down, then ease the restrictions gradually alongside the vaccination program.

Doing it that way should avoid the necessity to reintroduce restrictions once they've been lifted.

With vaccinations ongoing we would likely never see anything close to number of hospitalisations as we did at christmas. The number of positive cases becomes irrelevant as the outcomes of those cases are much better.

Also we can look at how many businesses in hospitality were allowed open all over Europe and they fared just about as well as us anyways - so it lends credence to fact that our restrictions were overreaching and unwarranted.

ypres5

ypres5 wrote: »

the notion that people are going to be opening up small businesses left right and centre after the government has hobbled their activities for nearly a year and there's still going to be the looming threat that they may have to close again in the future is false optimism. these businesses are gone and they won't be replaced any time soon

Exactly. It's too risky to open a small business with the never-ending threat of lockdowns.

walus

Graham wrote: »

Apart from the fact it's been brought on by a pandemic.

Which is different.

No, it has been brought by the governments who subscribed to lockdown-until-vaccine franchise. Viruses don't crash economies. People do.

Spanish flu did not crash the economy, funnily enough...

ypres5

Graham wrote: »

Apart from the fact it's been brought on by a pandemic.

Which is different.

what difference does it make being brought on by a pandemic? will the economic impact be any different as a result? when business owners aren't able to meet their overheads the bank manager won't give a **** pandemic or not

Graham

walus wrote: »

Spanish flu did not crash the economy, funnily enough...

Spanish flu had a very significant impact across economies.

Graham

ypres5 wrote: »

what difference does it make being brought on by a pandemic? will the economic impact be any different as a result? when business owners aren't able to meet their overheads the bank manager won't give a **** pandemic or not

I know you'd like to just ignore the pandemic and hope it goes away without any significant economic or societal impact.

Pandemics don't work like that.

ypres5

Graham wrote: »

In all fairness, it's your opinion that restrictions are unwarranted.

SMEs would equally suffer if we opened everything up tomorrow and closed everything down again in three weeks time with cases an order of magnitude higher than they are now. Like happened at Christmas.

I'd love to see the restrictions end. I think the safest/fastest way is to get the new cases right down, then ease the restrictions gradually alongside the vaccination program.

Doing it that way should avoid the necessity to reintroduce restrictions once they've been lifted.

according to an oxford uni study the harshness of our restrictions put us in such illustrious company as eritrea and cuba? did we really have to take those measures? we spent weeks with cases hovering in the 20s being fed bull**** from nphet saying we weren't where we need to be with no elaboration given

walus

Graham wrote: »

Spanish flu had a very significant impact across economies.

Very brief. Businesses were operating. It caused no recession.

Graham

ypres5 wrote: »

according to an oxford uni study the harshness of our restrictions put us in such illustrious company as eritrea and cuba? did we really have to take those measures? we spent weeks with cases hovering in the 20s being fed bull**** from nphet saying we weren't where we need to be with no elaboration given

Are you talking about the measures that subsequently allowed us to have a much lower level of restrictions for a large part of last year?