Economic pain train's a coming (Florida: depreciation, subsidized, closing)

[charolastra00]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

That’s a very suburban view. 1/3 of Boston/Cambridge households don’t have a car. NYC is the clear leader. DC is #2 pretty far back with Boston #3.

And households can include roommate situations.


I lived with roommates for almost a decade - always at least 2 - and I think only 1 or 2 had their own cars during that time. I had one, but that was almost entirely because I was diagnosed with cancer and told not to take public transit until it was resolved.



Between $800+ for a room, $1000 for student loans, paying for parking and car insurance (mine dropped by more than half when I moved from Medford to Marlborough - and it's still than my parents pay for both cars together in Georgia), and stagnant wages, cars don't make much sense even for middle class people in Cambridge, Somerville, Allston, Brighton, and Boston - as well as some neighborhoods of Malden and Medford.


Moral of the story - how do you think people who still need to physically go to work will do so if they live in the city or an urban suburb?

[bugelrex]

Originally Posted by charolastra00

.

Between $800+ for a room, $1000 for student loans, paying for parking and car insurance (mine dropped by more than half when I moved from Medford to Marlborough - and it's still than my parents pay for both cars together in Georgia), and stagnant wages, cars don't make much sense even for middle class people in Cambridge, Somerville, Allston, Brighton, and Boston - as well as some neighborhoods of Malden and Medford.


Moral of the story - how do you think people who still need to physically go to work will do so if they live in the city or an urban suburb?

Everything you mention is absolutely correct, which makes it even more frustrating that the MBTA is so badly managed. People of lower income rely on it the most, yet its still allowed to rot away. Mbta should be the pride of such a liberal city

[charolastra00]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

Everything you mention is absolutely correct, which makes it even more frustrating that the MBTA is so badly managed. People of lower income rely on it the most, yet its still allowed to rot away. Mbta should be the pride of such a liberal city

I definitely don't disagree.

[OutdoorLover]

The good news, such as it is, is that new unemployment claims have been lower each week for the past 8 weeks, falling from a high of about 6.8 million newly unemployed in the last week of March. But even the latest reports of 2.1 million last week, are about 3x worse than the worst week of the Great Recession of 2008/2009.

I am afraid that we will likely see peak unemployment of at least 23% this year, and maybe worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...s-coronavirus/

[yesmaybe]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/t...t-workers.html

Google rescinding tons of contractor and temp offers from all across the company and slashing existing too. As the article mentions, Google 'employs' more temps than actual FTEs. Employing temps makes it real easy to discard them when not needed.

Google I am pretty sure has (had?) offices in Cambridge.

[audemars]

More and more companies in my field (finance) including mine are now offering WFH permanently. I love the idea and indicated my intention to take them up on it, but if this becomes widespread, this won't be good for the downtown market. Commercial REITs, lunch places, bank branches, parking garages, shoe shine guys - there's an entire ecosystem built around downtown commuters that's going to suffer. Take it a step further and the state loses sales tax on all this stuff and will have to let employees go - fewer tolls, less tax on gas sales, etc.

Vacation locations are up next - there was an article on the Nantucket I&M the other day quoting restaurant owners saying that Memorial Day weekend, typically one of their banner weekends, was 15-20% of normal. That's going to be hard to make up when potential employees either can't come over from abroad or are making more on UI and don't want to work. Finally you have the highly levered property owners and AirBnB folks who bought and can't rent to support mortgage payments who will be forced sellers by the end of the summer. Who wants to rent a house where a previous family with unknown distancing and hygiene stayed there for a prolonged period hours before?

It feels like the next step is social unrest and we're already seeing that in Minneapolis. In the past these movements burned themselves out as people were more focused on their jobs and families than external social issues. How does that change with 30 million+ people unemployed, sitting at home watching this and becoming increasingly desperate as the next round of aid becomes the victim of an election year?

[mdovell]

The Brimfield fair for July has been canceled. This happens in May July and September.

[Shrewsburried]

Originally Posted by audemars

It feels like the next step is social unrest and we're already seeing that in Minneapolis. In the past these movements burned themselves out as people were more focused on their jobs and families than external social issues. How does that change with 30 million+ people unemployed, sitting at home watching this and becoming increasingly desperate as the next round of aid becomes the victim of an election year?

Most countries with civil unrest have a common theme - lack of opportunity and high unemployment. Add polarizing leadership and equity markets highlighting the divide and ... yeah, I don't see this wound closing too quickly.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by Shrewsburried

Most countries with civil unrest have a common theme - lack of opportunity and high unemployment. Add polarizing leadership and equity markets highlighting the divide and ... yeah, I don't see this wound closing too quickly.

We had plenty of opportunity and low unemployment until the government panicked and shut the country down.

[OutdoorLover]

"Don’t Expect A Quick Recovery. Our Survey Of Economists Says It Will Likely Take Years." The good news from the article is, most economists surveyed expect the economy to begin improving in the second half of this year. But they don't expect it to rebound as fast as it fell. Most think it will take at least another year for unemployment to fall back to the less terrible level of 10%, which is quite something.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ly-take-years/