We’re feeling it baaaad here in New Orleans. Roughly 8% of our workforce is in the service sector and our film/television industry has ground to a halt. I work in video production. My friends/colleagues and I are basically just sitting around now hoping productions can get back up again in a safe but still somewhat timely manner. It’s going to be rough for a while.
Hope your friend is doing alright. I’m talking to my sister about a project for small businesses and gig economy workers today. Hopefully we can get something going. Let them know that the New Orleans Business Alliance has also set up a fund for people out of work for 7 days or more!
Not sure how well this correlates to revenue lost though. I'm sure there is massive impact, I wouldn't be surprised if there is also a corresponding uptick in takeout orders.
> The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals
Can someone with an economics background tell me whether this is a sound argument? It looks like it could be reasonable to me, but it also looks a lot like the examples of deadweight losses in Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen".
I would guess that we should count the $3T transferred as a cost on one side of the book and as a benefit on the other side, and from an accounting standpoint not care much either way. I'd also guess we should somehow try to compare the relative value of the service on each side of the transaction to gauge somw "surplus" value. People get food they value at $3.1T, and they pay $3T, and the workers would have done the job for $2.9T, so society wins by $200B in aggregate. Or something. But maybe that's nonsense?
I don't know if that's reasonable, but I am fairly convinced that we shouldn't dig $3T worth of ditches just to fill them in. That is deadweight loss.
At the very least I think we can assume that restaurants are not a deadweight loss because they're profitable, though. People often choose to pay that premium over cooking for themselves, and we should trust that those choices reflect personal relative value well.
I think the most important thing is that they're both a net wealth transfer to local food service workers (who by and large are relatively low income) and fuel demand down the road.
Most people will be able to cook for themselves just fine, but by doing so they'll be saving money, which would otherwise have been spent locally. This means that that money won't go on to restaurant workers to be spent, and the remainder won't show up as profit for the restaurant. (Instead it'll go into savings, which will likely have a negligible effect at best since money is ~free to borrow these days)
Locally this will lead to a depressed demand for everything and globally lead to a decrease in paper GDP and profit for the companies (read: stonks go down).
So honestly, I would argue that paying people to dig ditches (vs do literally nothing else, though at that point you might as well just give them cash) is in and of itself beneficial, though of course less so than doing something that generates a benefit outside of that from the activity itself.
> So honestly, I would argue that paying people to dig ditches (vs do literally nothing else, though at that point you might as well just give them cash) is in and of itself beneficial
This is the point -- paying people to dig ditches breaks down into two activities:
- Paying people, which is net zero benefit. (Otherwise we could all sit in a circle and pay each other to riches.)
- Doing useless work, which is net negative. (Effort, materials and time spent that coukd have been spent on leisure or actually productive ends.)
GDP is obviously a bad measure here. For the same problem stated another way, Google and Wikipedia are free, but increase productivity and aggregate wellbeing immeasurably.
Paying people is only net zero if the people being paid go and do the same thing the people paying would have done with that money.
In this case, I'm arguing because of the economic class of the ditch diggers that this is not the case. The ditch diggers will spend the money locally, rather than saving it, on things that give them greater utility than what the people paying for ditches would have gotten (which is most likely just saving it).
I agree asking people to dig ditches for the money is stupid, but in reality they'd either be doing something productive that wouldn't have otherwise been done for structural reasons (building national parks, windmills, solar panels, etc., things where there is a positive externality that prevents the market from doing it) or receiving the money for free.
I don't even know how to comment on this. The restaurant industry isn't just about food. It's about life. It may make just 3.5% of world's GDP but for many people it's most of what they do outside of home. I feel it more acutely than ever now when all restaurants are closed due to the quarantine, in our place.
Sure, it's a big part of life for many, but my question is whether it'd be better if it were cheaper. If all of the staff were replaced by robots and prices dropped by 20% GDP would go down, but society as a whole would be richer.
“Richer” is an interesting word here, with the connotations to food and pleasure. I, for one, would not find a world of robot restaurants to be a “richer” experience.
There's certainly some broken window logic being applied, but not 100%. There's no doubt that some economic decisions (investments, employment choices,etc.) made before the virus would not have been made given what we know now. If we had an impossibly flexible economy where everyone could be immediately rehired as deliverers and expert physicians and restaurants and assets could be reatomized into hospitals and toilet paper then maybe the impact could be very small. It's possible that in such a world the investment decisions made not knowing the virus was coming wouldn't differ much from the decisions that would have been made with perfect prescience. But in reality there will be some cost caused by the difference in economic choices made not knowing this was coming. The sum over everyone's future income streams will be smaller than they would have been because of worse resource allocation. I agree it won't be the full $3T but don't have the expertise to estimate it.
You have to be careful to separate supply and demand.
In the US the Fed regulates total nominal demand (= spending) in the economy. When the Fed is doing their job well, it doesn't matter for nominal spending whether any one industry, like restaurants, is disturbed or not. Or whether some industries are booming.
The Fed will just adjust how much money they are 'printing'.
But what matters are supply side factors.
All those people patronising restaurants or working there presumably did so because they preferred it to the alternative ways to spend their money or time.
After a disturbance, they will have to make do with their second (or third or fourth..) best opportunities instead.
If the disturbance was a long term shift in consumer taste, we should hasten the transition of workers out of that industry.
But the current crisis is presumably temporary. So we pay for lots of friction of adaption back and forth, just to get back to where we used to be. (The adaption is still a good idea. It's probably better for waiters to become eg Uber Eats drivers than to twiddle their thumbs.)
Or it's just a correction; especially in the US, the eating out culture is ridiculous, and the staff are massively underpaid and taken advantage of (zero-hour contracts, low wages, dependence on tips which in practice means they're expected to do a lot of additional emotional labor, flirting, etc).
This money is not lost from the economy; people still have to eat after all.
The OpenTable data includes takeout and delivery. I think NYC actually might do a bit better than other markets, since there is a strong takeout and delivery culture with most restaurants below the fine dining level.
Does that data indicate that seated reservations are only presently down 56% YOY in the US ? That's pretty discouraging if that many people are still ignoring standard guidance.
There are a lot of people who don't really understand the importance of social distancing yet.
When we told in-laws that the state (MA) had just banned dining-in starting the next day their response was "wow good thing we went out for dinner tonight then."
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had to question the intelligence of family and acquaintances whom I used to hold in high regard. I've been asked to participate in "measle parties" with my kids. And to do a community stationary bike ride a the local gym to support them.
Movie theater box office numbers[1] are another good indication of the same thing. You see a similar large drop-off, but still a sizable amount of people gathering in these businesses. This is why it is crucial for the government to force these businesses to close. As long as they are open, people will gather in them.
If your favorite places offer gift certificates, that's a good way to support them. You're basically giving them an interest-free loan for the amount that you purchase. I've already done this with a bunch of my favorite local restaurants.
That's about to completely crater. My city issued guidance just yesterday (3/16) that all dining room service is to stop. Drive through, delivery, and curbside only.
The jurisdictions I'm aware of that have banned dining room service include:
Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, several places in the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Illinois, Ohio.
Basically, at this point, whenever a few large jurisdictions announce their intentions to take some coronavirus measures (such as closing schools or closing restaurants), everyone else follows through within 48 hours.
Thought the same thing, and came to a conclusion it was intended so it shows angry red first on smaller screens, the very punchline it was meant to show.
The page is obviously not responsive optimized (vertical table for narrow layouts maybe?) but the importance of the data makes me overlook hastiness in which it was put together.
It's a very good idea for time-series data which has a "freshness" aspect. If you started with the beginning of the dataset, February 18, you'd be adding significant weight to values which are comparative to, but no longer representative of, the current state of things on March 16.
Not to mention, if it was first-to-last displayed left to right, you may miss the scroll bar and not understand the value of the data being displayed.
You can still put the most recent data on the right, and zoom in to show the rightmost data points. This is an established practice in stock charts and works well.
I thought the same thing. More than anything, having the data in a table without a basic time series graph makes it harder to visualize the impact (for me).
The use of saturation of the background of the cell to indicate the severity makes it a combination of heatmap and table. Given the number of series in the data, this is actually probably a superior view of the data than trying to plot all the time series in a single line graph (it's dangerous to push beyond 6, IMHO), or devoting a single line graph to each comparison point.
Tables are a vastly underrated means of conveying data.
People (in this language) read from left to right, so they're used to what is on the left coming before what is on the right. If you have a time series that keeps growing, trim or scale it to the display size, or change the sample rate, or give some UI options to let them vary those parameters. Don't ask people to invert their expectation of "before" and "after". Those are too fundamental.
I agree that the presentation using a horizontal scrolling table is not the best. Maybe a vertical scrolling table with the x and y switched would of made more sense.
Thanks, I always open this on my mobile phone or vertical monitor, and on the previous version (the google sheet direct link), always had to scroll right, which was annoying.
That's bad enough, but they also put the month on the left (3/16 instead of 16/3). Odd for an international app to treat a date like that when only one country of note records dates in that silly way.
Have you ever actually watched a busboy wipe down your table? Sometimes I swear they just use a wet rag dumped into soapy water that's been reused over and over.
Right, so this is a good time for the health department to provide specific instructions on what is required (e.g. the type of disinfectant spray, how long it sits, and drying with paper towels not rags)
EDIT: HN is preventing me from replying to you so I’ll edit it in here...
Yes, of course, all of it...
- They of course should remove the salt & paper shakers. Single use packets can be provided.
- They need disposable or wiped down menus.
- There can be no self-serve dispensers for napkins or utensils, those have to be distributed one by one.
- Seating must be reorganized to keep reasonable distances.
- Chefs and waitstaff all must check temperature before their shifts and record in a logbook
These are all reasonable common sense measures we can take to keep a massive segment of the economy alive.
Restaurants can add a $10 COVID cleaning surcharge if they want to.
I mean, it’s only worth like $1 trillion dollars to the economy. There are ~15 million jobs at stake, and that’s not counting secondary effects. And the problem isn’t going away in a few days or even a couple weeks.
I saw a video of the Tesla Factory in China and the changes they’ve made to protect workers. For example, the cafeteria tables have been converted into single-person cubbies enclosed on 3 sides.
The surface of the table is just one thing out of dozens:
Are they going to spray down the salt and pepper shakers, the menus, the hot sauce, the napkin dispenser, the chair seat and back? For self-serve places, how often are the trash cans disinfected, or the ketchup and mustard dispensers (or packet piles)?
All that not to mention the other patrons in close proximity while you dine.
We don't realize how many communal surfaces we touch in a normal day.
Unless you go to the bathroom and touch the door handle. Or sit in the waiting area next to a sick person. Or one of the chefs is sick and doesn't have perfect cleanliness.
There are a lot more places where things can go wrong transmission-wise in a restaurant than a grocery store. Presumably you will not be touching your face during your shopping experience. But to eat in a restaurant sort of dictates putting things in your face.
Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like you should always do.
> Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person.
No queuing.
> One of the chefs is sick.
But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn’t any different.
The point isn’t that it’s “zero risk” (there’s no such thing).
We’re going to have to live with some element of risk in our lives as long as COVID exists without a vaccine. This is totally normal and to be expected.
We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying from Measles.
EDIT: You’re right, we’ve been living with Measles for millennia in fact. And as recently as the 1800s there are populations that have been decimated by it. Measles absolutely did consume a massive percentage of hospital resources, although it’s fair to say that hospitals were acclimated to the demand.
The “flatten the curve” graphic is extremely misleading. The axis have no scale and the two curves themselves are not to any scale. The actual ICU capacity is like 4 pixels off the y-axis.
But that’s besides the point. We should absolutely be taking common sense and appropriate actions to reduce the spread of this virus (and several other diseases come to mind which are more deadly). When possible we should do this in a way that doesn’t destroy people’s livelihood.
That means a rational and scientific approach, not the emotional reaction which is so prevalent and actually damaging. Restaurants cannot stay closed indefinitely, particularly when we have reasonable approaches which can make them safe.
> We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2.
We lived with measles for more than just decades, but it wasn't a sudden outbreak that was overwhelming medical facilities.
The key here is hospital beds. We need to flatten the infective curve right now so that the medical system isn't overwhelmed. Then we can go back to "just being cautious."
Repeatedly saying "flatten the curve" isn't a response to someone saying "flatten the curve without destroying the economy when you can avoid it".
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...all have managed to contain this virus without kneecapping their economies. We should be following their examples.
Most of the US is nowhere near a crisis point, and locking down an entire city (or worse, country) over a small number of cases is like killing a fly with a nuclear weapon. Other, effective tactics exist to manage this kind of a threat.
I agree, we should be following their examples. But since we aren't doing extensive free testing, and don't have a culture of sick people wearing masks and self isolating, this is the best we can do for now.
Once testing becomes readily available we can look at loosening the restrictions.
As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead.
That's a pretty inflammatory statement by the Governor. Everyone being alive doesn't do much good if we're all unemployed, bankrupt, and starving because supply lines broke down.
Just maybe, somewhere in the middle, Rhyme and Reason can come back home from the Mountain of Ignorance and devise a plan that keeps people safe without cratering the economy.
I'm not sure how big a role testing actually plays. Even South Korea is only testing a fraction of a percent of its populace. And many cases are asymptomatic but apparently can also still spread. So I think what we need to be doing, regardless of testing, is seriously teaching extreme personal hygiene.
As in, shuttered restaurants need to be undergoing emergency training right now on how they can re-open and provide a safe environment.
Sure wish this stuff wouldn’t get buried. It should be fine to question and criticize the course we are all taking. Humans can be panicy creatures that love to imagine doomsday scenarios. We live in an age where feeding our imaginations with crap on the internet is a trivial operation.
We owe it to all of us to put on our critical thinking caps rather than downvote anything that says something other than “lockdown more, harder, faster, longer”.
I don't see how it's low-risk to have an infected person preparing your food in the kitchen.
At least with a grocery store, you can wash off the produce before you use it. With a restaurant, there's nothing covering the food at all.
And remember, the chefs in the kitchen are paid peanuts, and have no safety net whatsoever, so there's zero incentive for them to get tested or to stay out of work if they get sick. This is also the case during normal times. Eating out is a good way to catch something in a country where we think it's a great idea to fire cooks and other low-wage workers when they call in sick.
Where did I critique why dining rooms are closed? I didn't address that at all; I only addressed eating food prepared in a restaurant by low-wage cooks who could be infected.
A large number of unknown people from the general public have been in contact with the dine-in table. Only a handful of kitchen staff are in contact with surfaces involved in preparing takeout.
Eating at home is still a better idea for the reasons you state, but takeout is an acceptable if less-ideal alternative.
I'm not disputing the fact about unknown people from the general public being in contact with the table. That's enough of a reason to not dine-in. I'm just pointing out that I have no trust at all that the cooks aren't infected, and they're coming into intimate contact with your food.
low risk? Being in a public place with a lot of other people with a airborne virus? Do you sincerely believe that wiping down tables will protect you and your family?
I own a small share of a bar and we closed yesterday. Definitely hurts financially before St. Patrick's Day. We're lucky that our rent is low and we're a pretty small operation with limited food service. I can imagine for places in downtowns where rent is bigger percentage of sales, that's going to be tough.
Other countries don't have those filthy wet markets. They ARE absolutely filthy. They're on the same hygiene levels as the bushmeat markets in the poorest African countries. You know, Ebola?
Isn't it amazing that poorer, even denser countries like India or Bangladesh haven't originated the same deadly pandemics?
The PRC deserves the blame for this. Scientists have known about the issues with those markets for a long time, at least since SARS. They only just prohibited the trade of wild animals. Why not before?
(Of course some people will call this racism, but other ethnic Chinese countries like HK, Taiwan or Singapore have world-leading hygiene standards. This one is on the Chinese dictatorship, not the Chinese people.)
Past black swan events are not necessarily good indicators for future black swan events. This time it was (probably) bats and pangolins--next time it could be chickens and pigs.
I don't dispute that the wet markets are higher risk, but there is certainly some risk in industrial farming too.
> Past black swan events are not necessarily good indicators for future black swan events
SARS also originated from Chinese wet markets [1]. If you're trying to engineer a plague, crowding different species with one another's effluence is the traditional way to do it.
> there is certainly some risk in industrial farming too
Some. But not comparable to wet markets. The latter's only comparison is with medieval European cities, where people, sewage and livestock had constant and close proximity to one another.
The tragic thing is, the products of these wet markets are unaffordable for most Chinese. The entire world is put at risk because a narrow sliver of Beijing's elite want exotic wild game.
(There is plenty to say about industrial farming; the use of antibiotics in it is probably largely responsible for MRSA and the likes. But it has not resulted in a wartime-like conditions in the whole world.)
Whilst I would love to join you in your racist-freebie rant on the Chinese, I am reminded that 170 odd people died from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, caused by feeding hitherto vegan cows the brains of other dead cows.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 2012.
Can somebody explain to me how saying ‘generic bad thing’ and ‘China’ in the same sentence is racist? Is this question racist? Serious answers only because I’m in EU.
As I understand it, "Spanish Flu" was so named because it started during WWI. Spain was the first non-belligerent to be hit by the disease. Since news media in all of the belligerent nations was highly censored, it was Spanish media that was first to report heavily on the effects. Thus, the belief at the time that the disease originated there.
It's most likely CPC brigading. The only group on earth who sees anti-CPC rehtoric as being synonymous with racism against the chinease are the CPC themselves.
It's like when someone calls you an anti-semite for supporting BDS movements. I just assume they're isreali Nationals or shills when they say that crap. It's all dog whistling because the alternative is that evil organizations would have to admit that they do bad things.
Even with Dr. Li's silencing...we (USA) still had 2 months to prepare...but didn't. Trump bought us time with blocking flights to/from China, but travel from Italy and Korea were still happening...Korea STILL is happening.
The first cases in my city (Atlanta) were all from Italy.
I suspect banning flights from China was also motivated by politics.
Original GP went on "they're filthy" rant. If he had said the authoritarian state obsessed with wanting to always look good lead to failure in containing the infection and let it spread from Wuhan, making things much worse all over the world, I would've nodded in agreement.
The wet markets are filthy. Not an unspecified "they". The wet markets. No hygiene standards, live animals shitting and pissing next to slaughtered meat, no health inspection.
Trying to make this factually true statement look like bigotry is just reprehensible.
Perhaps US eat-out culture will die, and those who worked those jobs will just have to find some other means by which to negotiate value from the economy.
People don't realise that many of these business will be dead and wont come back after. The knock on effect will go up the supply chain. For example lobster trappers, fishers, ranchers, farmers bulk of their income comes from supplying to restaurants if restaurants are not buying prices will come down which will affect them further.
Having seen it first hand, the vast majority of those 20 million people are living check to check. even missing a few shifts puts them on the brink of homelessness. this is going to be very, very bad.
Maybe, given the financial shock, no other means are readily available. Maybe, given the lack of means to negotiate value from the economy the lose the ability to buy food or pay for their shelter. Maybe in that case they either band with other people unable to negotiate this value, abandon respect for the law, and take that value by force. Maybe they do not do this, and are forced into situations that put them in greater contact with other people and makes the pandemic worse.
Remarkable how quickly you were able to dehumanize the economic impact on millions of lives and yet simultaneously anthropomorphize the “economy”. A single sentence.
The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American middle class might not be strong enough to support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the existing system.
We could talk about things like the expansion of government programs, or we could talk about your theory of how I'm stripping people's humanities away. You would also presume quite poorly if you thought I haven't worked in the food industry.
If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario of collapsing American restaurants, go ahead. Such as more discussion on dehumanization.
I'd recommend keeping your first two sentences (which are interesting), and deleting the rest of the comment (which just continues an inflammatory line).
The assertion that restaurants failing in the wake of the government mandating them to close in response to a once in a lifetime pandemic is evidence of them being unviable as an industry is utterly laughable.
Whats more remarkable is that no one has made a peep about RENTAL PAYMENT DEFERRALS or SUSPENSIONS to even COMMERCIAL LANDLORDS of APARTMENTS / SINGLE FAMILY HOMES yet somehow sit-down restaurants and their health are a top concern.
These priorities are lop-sided at best.
Restaurants are not a critical component of your basic sustenance. They never were, in the course of human history. Heavy dependence on them for ones immediate sustenance needs is a very recent development.
Some other countries already have programs. NZ just introduced a program where everyone who’s job is locked-out will still get paid (so they can continue to pay bills). Other countries have different programs.
I don't understand how a program like that, paying just the workers, is going to help when the business they work for still goes out of business. It needs to be suspended payments for everybody: the renters, the landlords and homeowners paying their mortgages, the businesses paying their rent, and so on. You can't just target one group and forget the rest or everything collapses.
Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of
people are going to lose jobs.
No one disputes that. Although that 10% figure needs corroboration. As other comments have pointed out restaurants have switched to take-out and delivery and will need ample workers for those operations.
But meanwhile what happens to the other 90% Americans who are working who face uncertain futures - some even in underrepresented sectors or even non-union sectors? How do they make rent or their mortgage payments?
All I'm asking is why are restaurant workers deserving of such singular attention and their concerns need such elevation over the rest of the entire working classes of America including other blue & white collar workers?
It's a SINGLE INDUSTRY that represents 10% of our workforce; I think that's more than any other. Overwhelmingly they are non-unionized. Profit margins for restaurants are very slim (avg. around 5%). Take-out/delivery is not going to come close to replacing the lost business. Many restaurants will close - many already have.
This is not to say other industries (like hotels) won't also be badly hurt. But restaurants are probably the single largest highly effected sector.
>If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario of collapsing American restaurants, go ahead.
You didn't quite offer anything interesting, just stated the industry is collapsing and workers should get other jobs...that isn't interesting or helpful.
Curious how many people you employ and if your business is immune from the economic impact of this pandemic, maybe some of these workers would like you to hire them.
I simply responded to what you wrote, without assumption or prejudice.
This is a far more interesting statement: “The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American middle class might not be strong enough to support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the existing system.“
If that is what you intended to communicate, then maybe that is what you should have written.
I would conjecture that it describes much of the US economy, not just the food service industry.
Not if I can help it. I'm ordering delivery constantly, and as soon as restaurants reopen my ass will be in a seat every night of the week to support what is personally my favorite industry. And I'll be tipping extra.
I would argue that an interesting intervention has to come from something more, because the restaurant industry has been suffering terribly and consolidating already, perhaps due to an increasingly unhealthy middle class.
How exactly has the industry been "suffering terribly"? In places I frequent (SF Bay Area, NYC) I see hundreds of long-term restaurants persisting, plus a constant stream of brand new places, all in the face of increasing minimum wages and other employer mandates/regulations. I'd also argue that the quality of both food and service have never been better. I'm not saying you're wrong (I have no clue), but it feels to me like I've been living in a golden age of eating out (expensive though it may be).
Expensive as they may be, restaurants have terrible margins. James Beard nominated, objectively successful places with >$1M gross are netting the annual income of someone who washes dishes [1]. They are operating on a fine line and I would imagine most of these places do not have the cash to weather through even a minor hitch in business.
That “up to two years” applies to how long it would take for 60–70% of people to get the virus if you are aiming for a “herd immunity” scenario. It doesn’t claim that the present lockdown will last two years.
Sure, plenty of people do. Head down to the local bow tie store, or visit your nearest seasteading ship and you'll find that almost everyone talks this way. Just be careful not to violate the NAP or you'll be blown away by someone's rocket launcher.
It’s simple emotional distancing. For many, talking about sad things makes them irrational or depressed, so if it has to be discussed it will be done so in academic terms.
The less conversant you are with the actual academia, the more contrived the terms you invent will be. I doubt many did more than undergrad business or economic here.
Most restaurants moved to take out and delivery mode. Obv no one is doing online reservations these days. I don't understand what's OpenTable trying to say here.
The government has talked about bailouts for various industries from airlines, to cruise ships, to shale companies. But almost every sector of the US economy is going to be hit by this and I have no idea how we are going to react. Will there be a restaurant bailout? What would that even look like? It is much easier to work on bailing out a handful of airlines but how do you handle it for literally thousands of small businesses?
Loans don't solve this. It isn't like once this is over restaurant patronage will jump up to 200% of normal. This is business these companies will never get back. Giving them a loan that they can't repay is just delaying the problem.
Spreading the problem out over a long period of time keeps the company in business. It's a no-brainer good idea for the SBA to do this. Not sure what you would prefer instead.
It is like CPR. It is better than doing absolutely nothing and gives extra time for more extreme measures, but on its own it is just delaying the inevitable.
It is not delaying the inevitable. There will be many profitable restaurant businesses who find their business lacking liquid cash over the next few months. Being thrown a credit lifeline means that they can make it through this period of time and come out on the other side as a profitable business again. Paying down the debt is a common business practice that people do all the time.
Throwing out a credit lifeline can be a practice that benefits everyone in times of crisis.
>There will be many profitable restaurant businesses who find their business lacking liquid cash over the next few months
Like I said in my earlier comment, the best hope for these businesses is to return to normal revenue numbers. They aren't going to make up for the business they are currently losing. They don't have a liquidity problem. They have a lost revenue problem. They are still accruing costs without accruing revenue. Delaying those costs doesn't fix that disconnect.
>Paying down the debt is a common business practice that people do all the time.
Taking on debt to allow you to make investments and improve future outlook is a smart business decision. Taking on debt in order to meet recurring operating costs rarely works out when there is no hope of future growth.
I think you're overestimating the magnitude of lost revenue. We're talking about 1 month of lost revenue.
A profitable restaurant's unit model might be: 10% net profit, 30% COGS, 30% fixed cost, 30% labor cost
During this one month shutdown, the restaurants won't incur labor cost or COGS. So, they're really only in the hole 30% of one month's revenue. With a little back of the envelope math, you'll see that the restaurant owner can pay back a loan for this amount by allocating 10% of their monthly profits (or 1% of monthly revenue) to loan payback.
Now, if the restaurant is NOT profitable, then we have a problem. But, they were probably going to go out of business soon anyways in that case.
You're forgetting that businesses can jack up prices after a crisis. Let's say there are 10 restaurants. One of them survives because it has taken a loan and others just crumble. Suddenly all the competition is gone and people are storming your place.
I'll take a crack at it. I would prefer commercial rent abatements combined with commercial property tax abatements. The same would make sense for residential as well. Unemployment payments should be increased and restaurants should temporarily lay off staff as needed.
I'm assuming the loans are to make payroll for work already done. Many businesses don't have the cash on hand to pay for the work that was already done, they're relying on revenue from that work or past work that is now being paid to pay their employees.
Frankly, I think the restaurant industry is over built and many of them deserve to close. The margins are non existent, most of the food is terrible, it's the ultimate bubble economy business.
Ok, shut that business down then. Layoff all workers. If all you can think about is profit at the expense of everyone else then this is the course of action. I personally am in favor of solving a liquidity crisis with liquidity but well if people want to throw a wrench in the gears that's fine with me.
The problem with loans are you have to repay them. Giving out loans as a social safety net is a cruel joke. It just makes people worse off in the long run.
Zero percent interest loans over a long enough repayment period (eg. ten years) would work though. It allows spreading the immediate loss in sales over a much longer period.
For restaurant owner running on 3-5% margins, when salaries are a significant expense, it would be suicide to take a loan to make payroll; your business would probably never be profitable again. Better to let the business die and reinvent yourself in June/July.
Yes, better from a personal standpoint, but jeez, from a humanitarian perspective, can you really blame any restaurant owner from wanting to make payroll at any cost so that their employees can continue to feed themselves, pay rent, and take care of their loved ones?
The employees should be able to apply for unemployment payments from the state. Which can a problem on its own, to be sure, but an employer doesn't have to bear the weight of lives all by him or herself.
My point is why are we putting them in this position? How about a GRANT instead of a loan?
The restaurant is TOAST when the loan starts being due as they try to reopen in the middle of recession after a forced closing and they'll all be out of work trying to feed themselves, pay rent and take care of their loved ones.
You mean free money, just because? How could you even begin to figure out who deserves it? That'd be a lot of offices and bureaucracy to set up to solve the question. Unless you just want to give wads of cash to any restaurant claiming to need help, in which case I'm glad you're not leading the economy.
Maybe it could be like farm subsidies, but we pay restaurants to close for a certain amount of time / certain days of the week, on the condition that they pay employees normal wages for those days.
> "Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S. exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the minimum wage.
Restaurants are required to bump tipped employees up to the non-tipped minimum wage if the tips don't put them over it. Thus, "normal wages" in this case would be the non-tipped minimum wage.
What a bizarre interpretation of 'minimum wage' and 'tip'! This means that the restaurant owner essentially collects (part of) the tips?
So you could employ a restaurant worker at $0/h and then bump them to minimum wage, because the tips will never cut it? Basically, you'd be collecting all the tips? This cannot seriously be legal!?
There's a separate "tipped employee" minimum wage, which must be paid by the employer regardless of tip income. Last I'd checked, though, it was only about $2/hr.
What they need to do is provide everyone with restaurant vouchers paid for by the government. Then we can all have a big meal after this is over and keep our favourite eateries alive.
If it's known that restaurants will get paid eventually, it makes it easier to finance. I guess it's still not gonna be easy to stay afloat. The staff will need a handout. Either special law or they get unemployment. Not sure.
In the end the money for UBI comes from taxes one way or another. Even if every dollar is taxed the same amount, not everyone makes the same amount of dollars.
$1000 a month per person...Trump has announced at least 2 months of it. I have my salary still. My wife and I get $4000 of free money. What do you think we're going to do with it?
You need to think long term what this money can do.
Software engineers are a tiny fraction of the population, and any money given to them can always be recouped via taxes anyways. The added bureaucratic/administrative complexity on such a time-sensitive measure just doesn't seem worth it.
I think targeted redistribution will work better. If you want to protect the economy, take the people with excess wealth — providing no utility right now — and give some of their wealth to those who cannot earn income during this crisis. It avoids the inflationary effects of printing money. You could accomplish this by raising taxes on the wealthy and sending the revenues directly to those who will lose their livelihoods and the small businesses which need to make rent to stay afloat. Obviously the political appetite to do this doesn't exist in the US, but I think it is easily the best solution.
That's why we (US, and much of the world) have progressive tax rates for earned income. Though in the US, we then give lower tax rates for unearned income...
You alluded to this, but in reality effective tax rates in the US are actually flat or even regressive due to the favorable tax treatment of investment income as well as the massive deductions for property ownership:
>take the people with excess wealth - providing no utility right now
Most "excess wealth" is tied up in business and other investments. It's not like wealthy people just horde cash like Scrooge McDuck. That wealth is currently working to support the economy. It is hardly passive.
Forcing the wealthy to pay increased tax on this value will cause them to close business functions, sell stocks, etc.
Is that really wise at this point in time? To redistribute value from existing, proven formats into unspecific, theoretically useful ones?
Theft is not immoral simply because it is unfair or mean. It's because it causes systemic dysfunction.
Shorter working hours is another solution. I think that makes a lot of sense now that the global economy is contracting. More fair that jobs are "shared fairly" rather than that some gets to keep theirs and others don't.
The WSJ Editorial Board has suggested that the Fed create a new facility that gives very cheap loans to businesses that need them. These loans will not need to be repaid right away and should sustain any business that needs it during this period. It sounded workable.
Not an economist (just trying to understand all this) but wouldn’t this just be kicking the can down the road? I understand how loans and credit works in healthy markets/seasons but to me this feels like making a bet that these businesses would be able to take this infusion, weather out the storm, and then raise profits enough above what they were before to pay it all back.
It’s fundamentally different from me starting a small business and going to Chase saying, look here’s a healthy prospect and I’ll be able to pay it back within x years.
If you can kick the can down the road until the virus goes away, you just saved the whole economy. The ability of my local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an ultimately temporary law.
> The ability of my local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an ultimately temporary law.
Agreed on this. But the rent paid out during the period of reduced revenue coming in creates a delta that this loan is filling in. The loan still needs to be paid back (even assuming 0% interest). That extra money needs to come from somewhere: increased prices, increased traffic, or decreased expenditures.
A better way would be to suspend all debt collection and rent collection for x months. That will keep lots of small businesses alive, and employees on reduced salaries will still be able to feed their families if they don't have to worry about rent.
Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most of the way to keeping a nation going.
Far, far, far better. In fact, it's the only thing that might actually work. All this talk of loans is just people refusing to admit that a capitalist system (I hate saying that word) simply doesn't function under these conditions. The economy needs to be paused.
The rental payment from a shop is income for the landlord. The income from the landlord is payment for his/her obligations - all the way up the chain.
If you force rental payments to stop, then who gets hit? The landlord is going to default on their obligations. So do you then bail them out? If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property. So it's just somebody else suffering, rather than the tenant.
The loans work, because the obligation to pay back this loan will come from a future where you have the capability. The govt is the eventual guarentor of this loan, and hence, they take the hit if the eventual future does not come to pass (e.g., the restaurant never regain their full business). The gov't can't take the full hit of all these defaults all at once, but they can if it is spread out. So a loan will spread them out into the future (even perhaps, far future), and the economy survives, even if a lot of the business that took the loan didn't.
I see plenty of places that landlords just sit on waiting for some maximal amount of rent to be agreed to, only for the business to crumble under high rents, rinse, repeat.
> The income from the landlord is payment for his/her obligations
Read my post again. The rent holiday goes hand in hand with a debt holiday. That's the only way this works. Tenants don't have to pay rent, and landowners don't have to pay a mortgage.
Sure some businesses will fail as a result of this, but far more (on a massive scale) will fail if you don't do this.
I don't think you've thought this through. What are the banks going to do if they don't receive their payments? How are you going to bail them out? With a loan? Why not give that loan to those who need it instead of kicking the can down the road?
> What are the banks going to do if they don't receive their payments?
They'll be bailed out by the govt as usual. Which is the point.. the govt has to keep humans fed and housed through this. This is the best way to achieve that end. Kicking the can down the road is exactly what needs to be done. The economic problems and readjustments can happen later. The immediate problem is people fucking dying.
> If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property
As others have pointed out, this is not what any of us are saying. Those debts are paused too.
The loans DO NOT work, because most of these businesses are barely profitable at all. Now they have to recover to their previous levels of income AND pay back a loan? They can't. It's a ridiculous expectation.
why is it ridiculous to expect a business to not make any profit after a crisis? The alternative is to close down the business, which, imho, is worse. At least, with the loan, a business that's barely making any profit can continue to barely make any profit after the crisis (but even less profit for the loan repayment). That's a better outcome than losing the business entirely. The employees remain employed, and the economy doesn't grind to a screeching halt into a depression.
This has already been explained to you, over and over again. The alternative is not to close down the business. It's to make it so the business owner doesn't have to pay anything during the crisis, except supplies for himself, so that the business doesn't close permanently. The loan is a really, really stupid idea, because it burdens the business more during the recovery, which guaranteed will be less profitable than before this, so it just delays the bankruptcies. You might as well have them not pay it back at all, but then why single out just business owners for free money? Why not everyone else too? And worse, everyone else runs out of money too because debts weren't paused, because enough people are stupid enough to think that loans are the way out of this instead of realizing that the economy doesn't work when nobody's buying anything but food and toilet paper, and pause it to prevent it from destroying itself. If this doesn't get done by the end of the month we're looking at another Great Depression.
> A better way would be to suspend all debt collection and rent collection for x months.
I know this would help for people I personally know in this industry.
Dine in has been reduced almost entirely but takeaway orders hasn't deviated too much from the standard.
The reality here is that a lot of small hospitality businesses don't actually make much profit at all so it's unlikely that they'd survive too long with this forced reduced business. And it's always unhelpful to hear (in general not from you) comments like "maybe they should have saved up more earlier" or "they shouldn't be opening up a restaurant then" because a lot of times they can't work in any other industry - this is all they know.
Imagine having reduced business through no fault of your own yet you're still liable for paying the commercial rent of $1.2k per week. You can't sell the business because no one is buying. You can't sell it because you lose all the goodwill which is bad especially if you've spent any money renovating the place up to standard.
If by “suspend” you mean cancel the debt due in the quarantine months than I definitely agree: in both moral and economic terms it would be best for the rent-seekers to take as much of the hit as possible.
But if it’s just a pause in collection, and you still owe that money, then it’s the same old margin problem: very few restaurants make enough money to repay that loan no matter who it comes from.
You might want to read up on The Irish Potato Famine.
Some landlords were letting people stay rent free out of compassion because no one had money and it was tough all over and no one else was going to rent it. Then the government decided to bleed the landlords and insist it get paid if the unit was occupied, even if no rent was being paid.
Landlords had no choice but to begin evicting people. Things got ugly fast.
That was a fairly unusual scenario though, where the government actively disliked their citizens, many politicians explicitly happy to see the Irish suffer, others viewing it as the will of God, and none of them dependent on Irish votes.
It's an indication of how things can go wrong with the government working against you, but I don't know that it maps well to the current pandemic.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Irish example is a real world example of the government tampering in some way with landlords and it having unintended consequences that were disastrous.
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of the event. Ascribing good intentions to Westminster with regard to the famine is unjustified. Some wanted to help, others distinctly didn't. It would be beyond charitable to suggest that all their actions were designed to minimise Irish suffering.
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of my comment. (Trying to be light-hearted here, not mocking.)
I wasn't ascribing good intentions to Westminster. I was saying that their intentions, good or bad, and the intentions of the current American government are irrelevant. What's relevant here is they did a thing and it got x result. So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.
> So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.
Except nobody is suggesting a similar thing. I started this thread by suggesting that the government do x, and you replied with the assumption that the government would do x+y.
> The ability of my local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an ultimately temporary law.
Six months from now, when the quarantine ends, you aren't going to go to your local Teriyaki and Wok, and order six months wroth of Chinese food.
The restaurant will never recoup those six lost months of rent. The employees will never recoup those six lost months of wages. These loans will never be repaid.
That's not how margins work. God didn't descend down to earth and declared all restaurants to be low margin. Margin is a matter of competition. If there is lots of competition then the margin will shrink to barely cover costs of running the business. If suddenly every restaurant has a problem finding customers and a load of debt then restaurants are forced to increase their margins to cover their debt payments.
Low margins are the result of heavy competition. If there is less competition margins will be high again.
1. I didn't say one word about margins in my post.
2. The problem is that after the pandemic ends, the margins will remain low. Because new entrants, with no outstanding debts or obligation will eat the lunch of any of the restaurants that remained 'open' during the pandemic.
> he ability of my local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an ultimately temporary law.
I have thought quite a bit about whether this situation will cause long-term behavioral changes.
Do you expect the restaurant business to bounce back to where it was after the crisis ends? I would expect that to happen for a short-duration event. But what if this persists for months, or into next year?
I have searched for papers that explore this idea (say after the 1918 Spanish Flu), but haven't found anything relevant.
How would loans help? A lot of employees aren't currently needed so they will be laid off regardless of whether the business owner can take out cheap loans. I don't see how loans can make up for the much reduced economic activity.
I imagine the WSJ Editorial Board is focusing on a solution to keep businesses surviving, not employment. They may have other ideas to help with that later. Without businesses, there will be no employment.
The economy is an engine that isn't allowed to stop or it will break. The idea behind loans is that you force the engine to keep turning through external support. Yes this is obviously a money losing strategy but the value of the engine is much higher than the cost of keeping it running during the pandemic.
Loans may already be super cheap and expanding that option further will extend the current run but lead to a bigger crash once those loans come due given the economy continues to flat line after the pandemic ends.
Not to trivialize the numbers, but people still have to eat, so these dollars are largely being re-allocated elsewhere, primarily to takeout, food delivery, and grocery stores. Other sectors that are service-based represent real net loss in GDP.
Yep. Food cost is usually about 1/3 of the bill; 1/3 to rent and overhead, 1/3 to staff. If a few percent can be squeezed from any of those areas, there's the restaurant's profit.
In Pennsylvania at least liquor stores are state run and closed at the moment. You can get beer or wine at some gas stations but that's about it. Anything less popular than huge international brands or very, very popular micro-brews you typically have to go to a beer distributor for and most of those are closed, too (the only ones open are those defying the Governor's strong recommendation to close).
Basically if you want anything less popular than Sam Adams-level of popularity, you have to get it from a restaurant.
You can get to-go beer (6-packs, growlers, etc.) at any restaurant with a liquor license (provided they sell it that way). You can also get beer AND wine from a large number of grocery stores (Giant, Wegmans, etc.). Only liquor is sold by the state-run stores.
It’s crazy that PA shut down the liquor stores, hopefully there’s enough beer and wine left for the truly bad alcoholics that will seize and die without it, seems like a very foolish decision to me, to add the potential strain of alcoholics in withdrawal to the medical system.
That's probably only possible in places like New Orleans. I was surprised to learn about the notion of the "to-go cup" a few years back. It has significant explanatory power in some parts of the city.
It's not legal in most places, but being temporarily legalized in some. Washington, DC is passing a bill this afternoon [1] allowing takeout places to deliver beer/wine if ordered with at least one food item. I'm guessing other cities will pass something similar.
The one time I bought on Grubhub I had trouble getting the price to something reasonable even with the coupon I had (only reason I was trying it) because all the menu prices were way higher than at the actual restaurants. Even with (IIRC) the delivery fee waived and a significant % off (I wanna say 20 or 30?) it was about the same as going in. Does Grubhub do the menu-price adjusting part, or do the restaurants?
Unlike your average delivery joint the numbers kept getting worse the more you added, too—no "two large two-topping pizzas and breadsticks at 70% menu price" deals or anything like that.
The pricing was a big turn-off for me. The way it added more to the delivery cost per-item rather than being some kind of flat delivery fee, which didn't make much sense, and how it seemed like they were trying to hide the cost of delivery.
I noticed the same thing a while back with DoorDash when trying to order some Cracker Barrel breakfast. It was something like a 30-40% hike across the board. I emailed DoorDash to ask what was going on with the prices and got a super misleading response along the lines of "our partner restaurants set their own prices" [1]- basically deflecting the blame back at the restaurant. So I emailed Cracker Barrel, and they are not (or were not at the time) partnered with any delivery service.
[1] actual text from email: "As stated in our Terms and Conditions, the prices for menu items on DoorDash may differ from the prices on the restaurant's own menu. For example, our restaurant partners are responsible for setting the price of their menu items on DoorDash, and some restaurant partners choose to set different prices than they offer for in-store diners."
Actually, it may have been DoorDash I used, now that you mention it. Seemed like a really gross way to price delivery, giving fake, higher prices on every single menu item. And then still a delivery fee on top of that! I seriously had to shop around several of their restaurants and several menu combos to find one where I wasn't still paying above-menu even with the fairly "generous" coupon.
I noticed the same thing a while back with DoorDash when trying to order some Cracker Barrel breakfast. It was something like a 30-40% hike across the board.
If DoorDash or Uber Eats charges 30% (which is fucking insane if they do), where do you think that comes from? Restaurants aren't making 30% profit.
Compounding the problem GrubHub, and presumably other "gig economy" delivery services, preemptively adds non-partner restaurants against their will:
This is US-specific. Some companies like Just Eat (UK, Canada, Mexico and others) specifically say that the price has to be the same. To avoid the situation where you use their service as a convenient menu/opening time check, and then call the restaurant directly.
Restaurants lose margin on those orders with the expectation that it's made up by more people ordering.
Previous poster said take out, not delivery. Some restaurants bump up take-out item price or add a surcharge, factor in no need for waiting/cleaning staff and the profit is substantial.
Protip: call in your orders, those take-out apps often take a cut that's just added to the restaurant's list price (last night I saw a $12 half-duck = $16 phone-in takeout or $25 Caviar take-out)
I know the owner of a restaurant who stopped delivery after the apps took over.
It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver, but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being long-term employees and most of them deliver for the apps.
I still don't understand what a multinational adds to local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste any better or get here faster, and my local restaurant makes less. Do not want.
> Your local restaurant might make less (I'm not sure I buy that), but the delivery driver likely makes more per hour.
I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen to know the place in question pays a good wage, comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.
>If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.
You say "and yet, here we are" as if you've proven something, when you have no evidence to back up your statement and rely on passive aggressive pseudo-insults to imply that I don't know what I'm talking about.
And where's your evidence that restaurants are profiting off of Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash / whatever? Restaurants are suing to be removed from these services. Presumably it's not profitable for the restaurant.
Let's not forget that in most states these "gig" jobs hire people as contractors who are then ineligible for unemployment and social security and are not guaranteed a minimum wage. Restaurants typically hire folks as employees.
and whenever there's a knowledge gap, the "market" exploits it for arbitrage. But eventually (which may be a long time), this exploit would stop working as more people try to exploit it causing the profits from it to go down, or the lack of knowledge for which this exploits exist starts to disappear.
There's no rule to say that the market is super efficient at all times - just that it tends towards efficiency.
On the other hand, restaurants are operating on economies of scale (and they get wholesale prices for their raw materials -- their groceries are much cheaper per-portion than yours). Don't get me wrong, cooking at home can be cheaper than eating out -- but only if you're cooking large batches of food or are buying ingredients that can be used for more than one meal.
You'd be surprised how cheap individual portions of food are for restaurants.
> Don't get me wrong, cooking at home can be cheaper than eating out
cost of raw materials in restaurants are a very small portion of the overall bill the customer pays. A large portion is rent, and an even larger portion is labour/wages. I hear the margins are razor thin at around 5-10% (which is low considering the risks). Not to mention capital expenditure (of which the value, i guess, isn't gonna disappear overnight, so there's that).
Cooking at home also tends to be food that you get in season and/or on discount. You don't have a menu at home, and hence, costs at home are both lower in raw materials, and labour costs are zero (assuming you don't pay yourself, and your time isn't able to be spent productively anyway so zero opportunity cost).
Yes, that's all true but I don't quite see what you're disagreeing with.
I agree that it definitely is cheaper for restaurants to cook large numbers of the same meal, and they have many other expenditures which raise the price of your meal. But for a single meal, the question is whether you can cook it for less than the price at an equivalent restaurant. In many cases, this isn't the case unless you're cooking in large quantities and eating the same meal for several sittings. Yes, using seasonal ingredients is a good idea -- but a lot of restaurants also do that, and their groceries are still much cheaper than yours anyway.
For example (in Australia), if you want to make just one portion of Thai curry you need at least $60 worth of ingredients (your protein, chillies, lemongrass, galangal, palm sugar, shrimp paste, fish sauce, peanut oil, coriander, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, limes, lychees if that's your thing, and so on). So if you're only making one meal it's seriously not worth it (you can buy a decent Thai curry for a fraction of that price). But if you make 10-12 portions of curry (or you make a large batch of curry paste and use it for different dishes) then it starts to become cheaper per-portion.
Restaurants will shutter, and hourly workers dependent on tips will majorly suffer. Even the economic stimulus mentioned today won’t go to all the immigrant labor that runs many (most?) kitchens.
For sure but don't forget that many people cannot work right now and are not getting paid so many people and spending far fewer dollars in whole so their spending may be far far less as a result, for example, buying some bags of rice, beans etc.
I have 2 cousins who manage a restaurant in upstate New York. Everyone was told to apply for unemployment (which has had its waiting period waived), except for the manager and assistant manager.
The game plan is to trial take-out only dinners, but since less than 5% of their previous business was take out, their hopes aren’t high.
I’m really interested to see how many small businesses like this pull through.
Though some of the major ones may have the restriction, not all US metros have the regulation yet. It would be good to have a data on how much of the number is under the regulation.
It also seems to be year over year data and February last year was pretty warm, potentially driving more people outside instead of into restaurants compared to the relatively rainy month we just had.
Opened opentable.de, they say they have 1744 restaurants in Berlin alone, 624 in Hamburg, and 1122 in Munich, plus many other cities/regions. I wonder why only Munich and Hamburg are in the Cities table, and why there's e.g a jump of 19% in Munich for Sunday March 1.
This year it was warm (for winter) and dry on that Sunday, and last year it was presumably wet and dreary.
Is this really that surprising given that states and countries are now explicitly prohibiting dine-in options and mandating restaurants to be takeout only? I'd love to see this data overlaid against the changes in takeout orders.
Absolutely. My town shut down restaurant eat in this week, but when I went my favorite Thai place for pickup the owner said they had one of their busiest Saturdays ever. Despite fear, rational or not, people still need to eat.
People are buying triple or quadruple their normal weekly amount in anticipation of being locked down and not being able / willing to go out. That’s not “panic buying”, it’s quite prudent given what has happened to China and Italy.
Perhaps China forbid grocery store visits, but Italy did not and the US will not either. It’s panic, pure and simple (unless you’re in a high-risk category, then it’s simply preparing to truly isolate)
I’m 36 and I’m not worried about catching the coronavirus, I’m worried about spreading it.
As far as I'm aware people in most / all Chinese cities can go get groceries. At least that was the case in Beijing. Not sure about Wuhan itself though.
I expect grocery stores here to remain open but I still want to avoid going out as much as possible. So I’ve stocked up on extra food to accommodate that. It’s pretty simple, I’m not panicked, and I’m bewildered as to why this is difficult for you to grasp.
It's not prudent, or cautious, it's exactly panic. People are irrationally afraid, and as a consequence are buying crazy amounts of things with little reason. Even in Wuhan the lockdown wasn't severe enough to make that type of hoarding necessary. The only common thread in discussing quarantine in the US is that Wuhan is far more drastic than would ever happen here.
Consider for instance the absolute run on bottled water; what possible explanation other than mindless panic could explain that?
There's no reasonable scenario in which the water supply is interrupted by this current flap. All this panic buying means is there will be a huge amount of unnecessary plastic waste this year.
Grocery stores don’t need to close for me to not want to visit them. I’m safe and sound at home with supplies so I don’t need to go to the store for awhile. I feel calm and prepared. The only person spinning out of control here is you.
Most of those changes were AFTER this data represents. The situation escalated very quickly.
I have a niche SaaS that helps brick and mortar retail stores in North America. There was a drastic shift on Thursday. And it escalated daily.
To give a sense of the speed and scale of the shift. All of 2020, at least 1/2 of stores were up at least 10% daily (great growth for retail).
On Thursday, a majority of stores were down for the first time all year. By Sunday, 3/4 of stores were down at least 10%. On Monday, 1/4 of stores were down 50% for the day.
I am not looking forward to reviewing the numbers tonight.
Could you do something with Venmo plus a manual ledger? Send money, write down the person's name etc., if they come in later you can look it up and give the credit.
I truly hope your friend can figure out a way through this ... however isn't selling gift cards just kind of punting the problem down the road? If their customers buy gift cards now, and then return to use then in X weeks/months, wouldn't they just be working for "free" at that point (assuming all the funds from the gift cards were used to get them through the customer-less time)?
The golf pro shop near me uses a laser printer and colorful paper. The actual liability is recorded in a ledger. You could do this with email and a spreadsheet.
Off the top of my head I would say open a Shopify store and find a module that creates a unique order code(Assuming Shopify doesn't do this already). From there build your products for different gift card amounts and then have people redeem the order in store. Most POS f&B systems I assume will let you keep a note for order customization's. In that field I would enter the order code after verifying that the order hasn't been marked delivered in Shopify.
The note keeping isn't super necessary but it can be helpful when trying to track down the order being given to a customer.
In this I'm also assuming Shopify lets you mark orders as pending, delivered, etc. I've only used competitors to it so I'm not 100% sure.
I would love to see similar data for other industries as well. Any form of retail is going to get hit by this. Those that don't have online ordering setup are in for a world of hurt, and those that have it but don't advertise it well may not change the message fast enough.
The long term impact for a lot of people is terrifying, but I don't see a way to avoid it without instead badly damaging our healthcare system and potentially killing a lot of people.
We have built a dashboard to do this sort of tracking https://www.econdb.com/covid/Italy/ which will be improved gradually. Obtaining good proxies for economic activity can be hard on some sectors.
>the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous.
The entire hospitality industry is going to take a huge hit. I do work in the convention, corporate travel/event space, and my calendar up until June has been wiped out. Cascading is the key thing people seem to gloss over. Sure, servers and kitchen staff are obvious. The food delivery people will not be needed. Companies like Aramark that provide cleaning services for floor mats/uniforms/etc are not needed. Down the line it goes.
I also work in the conventions/trade shows/consumer shows space... we're also 100% cancelled for awhile. Had to lay off a bunch of staff this week, some who live paycheck to paycheck. Going to be a rough ride for a lot of people for awhile.
It's going to be wiped out far beyond June. Based on the recent models run by UK, the same models that prompted the White House to warn against gatherings of greater than 10 people, the curve doesn't end even without intervention until August. With intervention what we are going through right now could last well into 2021.
People will start dropping dead from social unrest, addiction, substance abuse, suicide, etc. this “lockdown” isn’t free. It has massive health impacts that could easily outweight any lives saved by the lockdown.
People need to put on their critical thinking caps around here. What is the end game of this lockdown? What data is it based on? How will we know when to end it—given all factors, which include vastly more than slowing the spread of the virus.
Also stop downvoting people asking questions. Asking questions and thinking critically and rationally is what this forum is supposed to be about.
The end game of the lockdown is the disease burning out over the course of 9 months instead of 1 month, giving more time to find a treatment or vaccine and fewer people dying untreated because hospitals are full.
The alternative is to let 2 million Americans die this summer.
Yup, my gut feeling is that follow on effects from rampant unemployment and financial insecurity will have a much larger effect (via stress-induced heart attacks, suicide, etc.) than the 3.4% mortality rate among reported cases (WHO numbers, not all infected, maybe not even most infected.)
I would love to see an actual statistical comparison. spookthesunset is making an excellent point. Unless we know that deaths from the virus are greater than the deaths caused by the second-and-third-order effects of panicking, you can't say for sure that the lockdown is the best thing to do right now.
>Unless we know that deaths from the virus are greater than the deaths caused by the second-and-third-order effects of panicking
Do you believe that when the death toll raises from non-panicking and not imposing a lockdown (not to mention the total saturation of the healthcare system), that wont create even more panic and self-lockdown -- and have their own second and third order effects?
Yes, and this is why - the population of investors is honestly not all that panicky. If people start dying, investors will watch the death rate, and companies' share prices will reflect some instability but it will be somewhat in line with the actual economic impact, which traders are smart enough to price it at the small level it would actually be given the mortality rate.
By imposing lockdown, we have created a real economic slowdown, that traders are smart enough to deem catastrophic (because a month or restauranteurs going without wages is actually catastrophic and represents a much larger loss of future incomes that the still-small-but-blown-up-in-the-media death rate from the unchecked coronavirus.) Unlike the non-lockdown option, there is no optimistic case. You can't say, "earnings are slow, but people will be sorry if they panic sell because when the media frenzy dies down things will settle." You have to say, "earnings are slow, and might not actually pick up again because the lockdown lost a bunch of people their job."
Doomsday panic? Ill informed opinion? I'm literally looking at the chart used by the White House that comes from the data generated by the UK government. Look for yourself:
For that one paper you showed me you’ll find another dozen research papers that say something entirely different.
Until we know how many people have this or had it, suggesting multi-month lockdowns is ill informed, dangerous doomsday nonsense.
PS: while bitching about downvotes is lame, it is quite disappointing to see HN devolve into yet another panic fueled echo chamber where only “rooting for” the worst case scenario is tolerated.
Don’t let this place turn into an echo chamber people. There are plenty of subreddits and social media groups where you can get your fill of doomsday scenarios. This place bills itself as full of rational thinking people, let’s put on our critical thinking caps and consider the problem from all angles.
Ps: /r/corvid19 seems to be one of the few places on the internet where people are discussing this stuff rationally and not immediately jumping to the worst case scenario.
What research papers have you seen with more optimistic projections? You're calling the projections that two governments are relying on as ill informed based on what credentials?
We don’t have enough data or understanding to project anything. Many countries stupidly aren’t doing pervasive testing.
Places that do have pervasive testing (some town in Italy, South Korea, and Singapore) suggest this virus is widespread and has a >1% death rate. But this data is early and subject to change.
Suggesting we are going to be locked for months or years is irresponsible fear mongering at best.
A few times in my career, I have been in a meeting that I didn't want to be in. One of the meeting-runners hinted that the meeting could be shorter than scheduled. Failure to deliver on that was not well received.
If you're going to say anything, you're better off overestimate how long it's going to be.
2 weeks tops. Calling it now. 2 months of this will result in rioting and all kinds of crazy shit. And for what? The data based in SK and Singapore doesn’t suggest this virus is worth risking compete societal collapse. Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a full order of magnitude lower.
Sorry doomsayers, you better have some good evidence to suggest a 2 month lockup is worth the massive damage to our society. Better also outline what “lockup” means. Is that in big cities? The whole country? The planet?
What is your exit criteria? Who will have to go out into the world to keep shelves stocked and your Uber eats meals delivered? Who is going to be manufacturing your heart medicine? Who will clean that plugged drain? Who will repair that drain unplugger persons tool when it breaks?
2 weeks tops. Perhaps slightly longer for very small isolated hotspot areas. Any more than that and shit is gonna go down.
You seem like you're panicking. If you need evidence for the necessity, go read literally anything about what Italy is facing. China locked down cities with 0 infections pretty completely for ~4 weeks, and they still have isolation measures going. I believe the heavily hit cities are still totally locked down. This is what it took to get numbers under control once it had spread, and because of the US' late reaction, it's what's necessary now.
And because China reacted with extreme measures, they got the virus under control, and are now starting to reduce the restrictions, and commerce is starting back up. It's nowhere near normal, but by reacting quickly and decisively you reduce the likelihood of longer lockdowns being required in the future (as well as the likelihood of significant loss of life).
America is not even close to Italy. Not demographically, not density, not medically. Nothing is the same between us. And it isn't "Italy" it is a region in Italy with the problem. Same with china. China isn't locking down "China". Just a small part of it. You cannot take those two datapoints and apply them to the rest of the world. Not even close.
And I'm not panicking, I'm just tired of people running around doomsaying. There is so much trash information out there and people have completely shut down their ability to think rationally. It kinda ticks me off.
You're comparing America to Italy and saying they're different (which I don't fully agree with). You should also be comparing our response to Italy's and seeing they're the same. We're both under poor leadership who downplay and deny basic scientific facts. The spread here will be the same. The timeline will be the same. Our shortage of hospital beds will be here within a week. The interruption to life is not going to be measured in weeks; it'll be months. I'm not trying to stress you out more, but you keep saying "two weeks" without any actual reason for saying so. I'd put $100 that in two weeks all we see is the very well understood and predicted 2-4x in infection rates.
Last point: I live in Seattle. You have previously mentioned how people won't stand for this and there will be riots. What you're failing to grasp is that when people are scared, 90% of them stop going out on their own. Yes, there were some young people still going to bars, but Seattle shut down FAR before any kind of order to do so. People chose to stay in once it became apparent their choice was either staying in or risking needing a hospital that is oversubscribed. That will happen in many, many other places in our country, and there won't be riots because people don't want to be around enough people to riot.
You keep saying people don't think rationally, but you do not make any rational argument.
You say: "lock-down 2 weeks tops", when the incubation period is known to be around that or even more, and we have clearly seen that a 2 weeks period does not have any appreciable effect. You say the situation is different than in Italy, even when the number of people in ICUs and deaths is growing exactly in the same way in every other part of the world, with the only exception of countries who took measures earlier. You say it won't be so bad when you admit it will kill a 1% of the infected and all studies talk about at least ~50% of the population catching it at some point. You are not being rational.
I am also tired of the doomsaying but I have not seen any serious study that is minimally optimistic, and I've seen many pessimistic ones.
Assuming you have a perfect lock down now. People will continue for 7 days to get infected from asymptomatic cases (much longer for some). At the end of that week it will be one week until most symptoms have appeared (but again much longer for some). Now you have hospitalisations of the infected, or home care (as hospitals won't be able to cope). In UK you have to test negative from 3 tests on two subsequent days in order to be cleared for release (report on BBC Radio 4 from an infected patient); assuming a similar standard then we're looking at 7+7+17 days, 31 days until people are starting to be safe to associate with ...
I don't share your "2 weeks top" blind faith.
>Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a full order of magnitude lower.
I never said "years", 2021 is in less than a year. I think you're contrarian, misinformed and in deep denial. Anyway, facts are what they are and we'll see in due time.
FYI You're not alone in observing the echo chamber effect. Those of us who agree with you that some skepticism of the cost/benefit of the intervention is merited have largely avoided posting on our main accounts because of the massive backlash against anything counter-panic-dogma, or our posts have been flagged/deaded with worrying rapidity.
There were posts threatening _physical harm_ to individuals questioning the level of intervention (I believe the words were "I want to throttle the next person who says this isn't a catastrophe") and from typically well-respected users as well.
It's stunning to me to watch this community devolve in this fashion. I take it as a sign of the times, in terms of groupthink and fear-as-contagion, downvote-if-you-don't-agree behavior on the internet, and a broader eternal september effect on this forum.
I only wish individuals showed this much concern surrounding the massive cost in human life we incurred far more willfully via the opioid epidemic, the wars in the middle east, our prison system, etc; I'd go so far as to say I would be more willing to go along with the current overreaction if we didn't seem so hypocritical and self-serving in where and how we assign value to human life.
Makes you wonder if the real “virus” is a mental one? Society got infected with one hell of a meme.
It is like everybody has that X-Files “I want to believe” poster on their wall when they repeat some of this doomsday stuff.
We are all stuck inside all day, bouncing around with nothing better to do than read doomsday porn. And around and around that stuff goes into people’s head until you get where we are now.
People should be much less concerned about this virus and way more concerned about social unrest. Humans are social creatures. You can’t just “lock” people in their homes for an indeterminate amount of time and expect good things to happen.
Those toilet paper memes and work from home memes are funny at first, but once the novelty wears off over the next week or so, shit is going to get very real. It ain’t funny to see empty shelves of toilet paper or baby wipes when you actually need them.... it ain’t funny to have absolutely nothing to do but sit around and obsess about this virus.
You live a very sheltered life if you think all humans need is video conferencing and stocked grocery shelves.
There is a huge world of stuff that cannot be done remote. Sporting events, construction, weddings, restaurants, building maintenance, manufacturing, and millions of other stuff. Stuff that is critical to keeping our global economy happy. Healthy economy == healthy people.
Ps: have any of the doomsayers spouting nonsense stoped to consider what bullshit it is that all the white collar people can remain “safe” at home while all the blue collar grocery workers and the entire supply chain that feeds it gets to go out each day and expose themselves to a virus so deadly we took these extreme measures? Kind of bullshit, ain’t it?
Thanks a lot. My point was that you're being hyperbolic and panicky, and that doesn't help at all. Being stuck at home sucks, but it isn't as bad as you're saying. Talking with friends and family helps a lot.
People staying home don't just protect themselves; the more distancing is done by everyone, the better the outlook. I do agree with you that it's possible extreme lockdown measures won't have to last more than a month or two, but we really don't know at this point. Over the coming weeks we will continue to learn more about the virus and how it spreads, and testing infrastructure will continue to scale up. If the distancing measures work to get control of the outbreaks, and this can be confirmed through more extensive testing, then it should be possible to ease up and to try to find a balance between minimizing risk of spread and maintaining daily activities. Until an effective treatment/vaccine is found though, there is likely to be some level of continuing disruption.
Yes it's all crazed conspiracy and you happen to be one of the few people to see through it all. Your medical pedigree must be amazing. Your scientific prowess beyond imagination. You're not helping.
You may not have intended it, but this level of ad-hominem and dismissive response is exactly what I'm referring to. Ignoring the fact that my post had nothing to do with statements requiring Expert background, (which you know absolutely nothing about whether I have or not) I can assure you the majority of individuals here encouraging panic have what you seek. Once again, the hypocrisy here is laughable.
HackerNews used to pride itself in being better than this. YOU are not helping.
This is not clear. Right now we need lockdown because:
a) We have a large number of infected people (> 10,000) and have no idea who or where they are, because testing sucks.
b) If exponential growth continues (and it would, because we can't isolate all the people who are sick right now), we'll overwhelm hospital facilities and the fatality rate will hit 5% instead of <1%.
BUT
As soon as we clear out a), that kills b) too -- in South Korea they're doing effective contact tracing, testing, and isolation because they have few enough cases. Once we bend the knee of the growth curve, once we get get R0 below 1, we'll have exponential drop-off instead of growth. In 8 weeks, with few enough active cases and robust testing infrastructure, we'll be able to do what China has started doing, and what SK has been doing all along.
Of course, that's assuming we get our act together on lockdown & testing infrastructure. But if we do, we could be out of lockdown by June.
All these folks saying "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it over 41 years!" are extrapolating the wrong data points...
> "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it over 41 years!"
Is this hyperbole, or is anyone actually saying 41 years?
I haven't done careful math, but eyeballing it, roughly a year (give or take some months) is the longest I'd come up with to keep peak simultaneous cases under 1.5mil.
5% of cases need hospitalization for ~2-3 weeks; 2% require an ICU; 1% a ventilator. We have 96k ICU beds (and 160k ventilators) in the USA. Most constrained means we can't have more than 4.8 million sick at a given time -- but that's over 2-3 weeks, which yields ~2-3 years for 200 million people.
I assume the "41 years" people are using some other constraint.
If this approach works (and it's a big if) you'll still be vulnerable as a society for any flare-ups of the virus. The only long-term solution is to build up herd-immunity and spread it out enough to 50-60% of the population until we have developed a vaccin.
Food delivery to homes will probably boom. That's going to be the replacement for visiting a restaurant in the coming weeks or months.
But every luxury industry that involves going outside and meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in the mean time. But it's going to be a harsh year for a lot of people.
It's unbelievable how lucky I am that I can do my work from home.
if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for going out to eat is gone, at the end of the day you're no longer too tired to make food, you're not getting home too late to make it at a good time, you don't need to save time.
Thus the only spur left to wanting to order food is eating something tasty you can't make at home easily - I admit that is good but given that the delivery is also a potential virus delivery I expect that it won't be the replacement.
If you like the technical aspects of "tech", you could learn to love the technical aspects of cooking. You can treat cooking as a chore, an art, or a science. Your choice!
I want to agree with you, but I think we might both be underestimating the extent to which Americans don't know how to cook food at home. At a certain level of income, I know people who eat every meal out other than maybe breakfast. I can only guess that they're going to be having most meals delivered now.
>if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for going out to eat is gone,
Actually, if I'm home all day long, I like to go out to socialize. The normal daily interactions with co-workers/clients/etc is now removed by working from home. While I don't eat out that much, Happy Hour has become a thing for me. Now, I guess I'm going to have to start labeling myself an alcoholic since I've resorted to drinking alone at home.
I'd like to believe this is true, but I once was at my boss's house and saw inside his fridge. All it has was a few beers. I asked him where his food was and he said he ate out for every meal. He was a single guy in a 5000 square foot home on an acre of land. I suppose he could afford to buy every meal out. I kind of doubt he will magically start using his kitchen.
It's a spectrum. We normally eat out a lot and usually had a reasonably full fridge but ever since this all started I made sure our pantry and fridge were full, and we've been cooking at home ever since.
Have you thought about keeping your pantry full as a reserve and still eating out / getting delivery a lot? It’s what I’ve been doing since I want my favorite restaurants to still be around when this is all over.
Fair question - my wife is too nervous about getting us sick since both my daughter and I are in risk categories. We're fine with the occasional trip to the store but are holding off restaurants for now. And I get it - there's some local restaurants that I love and I feel bad for them, but the risk right now isn't worth it.
I think I'd actually rather order delivery than go to a supermarket where everybody touches the same carts and baskets. Do they wash those things down regularly? I sincerely hope so.
every statistic has its outliers. If I was rich enough I suppose I would have a catering deal to have food delivered to me from a few restaurants, but I'm not rich enough. Probably most people aren't rich enough and only eat out for the reasons I do, I'm just too tired to make the food once again and want something I like the taste of quick. Probably the people rich enough to eat out every meal have a 5000 square foot home on an acre of land - at least.
I think my wife and I could afford to eat out every meal if we really wanted to (and we didn't go to anything too fancy), but we certainly don't have a 500 m^2 home nor any land. That'd be 3 times the size of our home, and our home is already pretty big for our neighbourhood.
I've worked at home for many years. I also really enjoy cooking, and put a fair amount of effort into it. But that doesn't mean I don't like to go out to eat as well. I'm not going to be doing that for a while (Colorado has shut down all restaurants) but I'm looking forward to when it will be possible again.
Are you kidding me, how many people do you know who can put together a decent meal, let alone a tasty meal. Combined with the fact that people will stress-eat and stress-drink delivery food and liquor sales will experience a big-time boom.
While cooking isn't that difficult, that biggest thing I think people will run into is just not being equipped. I have known several people that enjoyed eating out all of the time and never spent time equipping the kitchen. Sure, your basic pots and pans, but not measuring cups or spoons, mixing bowls, etc. Forks, spoons, butter knives on hand, but not a decent paring knife or chef's knife. I'm not talking stand mixers and food processors, but basic equipment that makes cooking easier and not frustrating. It's no wonder wedding registries are full of kitchen items.
I think it's only in retrospect that it seems that way. Over time, you buy stuff as your needs change and you get a bunch of kitchen stuff. It takes very little energy and money to get some basic cheap gear together
Ya but you barely need those things for most cooking below a certain level, and in a time where you have no choice, it's okay to be a little frustrated. You can then go buy stuff as necessary.. probably.
I have a tiny kitchen with a single very basic pot and some super shitty baking sheets that I got from a thrift store, IKEA chef/paring knives, a mediocre damaged Henckels from Craigslist, and some mediocre non-stick skillets. All in probably $50. Ya, I might like a ~$120 French or Japanese chef knife, and maybe a nicer pot, but it's absolutely fine. My actual chef friend came by recently and made a killer meal with little trouble.
maybe it's because I live in Denmark and my wife's family is Italian, but I guess the answer to how many people I know is essentially everyone I know (even the younger 20 year olds at my work) and the answer to am I kidding you is no.
I admit when I lived in the U.S the answer might have been less but it was probably still "lots of people", I have generally been the worst cook I know and I can still put together about a dozen decent meals.
on edit: but note that I did say the spur left was the tastiness of delivered food so actually I am confused as to are you kidding me based on inability to produce tasty food?
You and I probably move in different circles. I love cooking and am pretty serious about good food, so my bar must be high. But I know less than 10% people who can make good meals.
Here we have full-blown quarantine, so all restaurants, cafes, and bars are closed. Those offering take-outs cintinue to operate. The report yesterday (first day of the quarantine) said "despite empty tables kitchen staff is busy as never before".
Of course, far from every dining place offers take-outs.
a landlord is not going to find a new tenant for that site, so their best bet is to not charge rent or charge a lesser amount and defer it. that way when things get back to normal he has a tenant who can get back into business a lot quicker otherwise he has to find a new tenant.
Land/property prices have boomed in the UK, usually the tenant is rich and can wait for the profits, years, perhaps decades. This in part is why our high-street is empty but shop rental prices are not deflated seemingly at all; the rent is gravy, they've doubled their investments already.
How about any property left vacant for 1 month gets a windfall tax of 10% the market valuation [this is obviously not a fleshed out proposal] ... that should incentivise landlord's to act to prevent losing tenants.
food delivery will boom. all the restaurants in the NY tri state area are closed but all are allowed to do take out and delivery so that's going to be a big thing.
Distribution networks and key service providers seem like the best place to intervene. Actual restaurants already float on bare margins, so if we are triaging...
I'd like to see similar data for real estate, though I recognize that the data is much more proprietary and there's a much longer lead time for some events (like closings) but for things like showings, open houses, etc. it would be nice to see.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 328 ms ] threadHere in NC we just joined the list of states that have banned dine-in service entirely. Curbside or delivery only, after 5PM today.
The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals.[a]
Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous.
[a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-restaurant-industry-a-global...
Can someone with an economics background tell me whether this is a sound argument? It looks like it could be reasonable to me, but it also looks a lot like the examples of deadweight losses in Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen".
I would guess that we should count the $3T transferred as a cost on one side of the book and as a benefit on the other side, and from an accounting standpoint not care much either way. I'd also guess we should somehow try to compare the relative value of the service on each side of the transaction to gauge somw "surplus" value. People get food they value at $3.1T, and they pay $3T, and the workers would have done the job for $2.9T, so society wins by $200B in aggregate. Or something. But maybe that's nonsense?
I don't know if that's reasonable, but I am fairly convinced that we shouldn't dig $3T worth of ditches just to fill them in. That is deadweight loss.
At the very least I think we can assume that restaurants are not a deadweight loss because they're profitable, though. People often choose to pay that premium over cooking for themselves, and we should trust that those choices reflect personal relative value well.
Most people will be able to cook for themselves just fine, but by doing so they'll be saving money, which would otherwise have been spent locally. This means that that money won't go on to restaurant workers to be spent, and the remainder won't show up as profit for the restaurant. (Instead it'll go into savings, which will likely have a negligible effect at best since money is ~free to borrow these days)
Locally this will lead to a depressed demand for everything and globally lead to a decrease in paper GDP and profit for the companies (read: stonks go down).
So honestly, I would argue that paying people to dig ditches (vs do literally nothing else, though at that point you might as well just give them cash) is in and of itself beneficial, though of course less so than doing something that generates a benefit outside of that from the activity itself.
This is the point -- paying people to dig ditches breaks down into two activities:
- Paying people, which is net zero benefit. (Otherwise we could all sit in a circle and pay each other to riches.)
- Doing useless work, which is net negative. (Effort, materials and time spent that coukd have been spent on leisure or actually productive ends.)
GDP is obviously a bad measure here. For the same problem stated another way, Google and Wikipedia are free, but increase productivity and aggregate wellbeing immeasurably.
In this case, I'm arguing because of the economic class of the ditch diggers that this is not the case. The ditch diggers will spend the money locally, rather than saving it, on things that give them greater utility than what the people paying for ditches would have gotten (which is most likely just saving it).
I agree asking people to dig ditches for the money is stupid, but in reality they'd either be doing something productive that wouldn't have otherwise been done for structural reasons (building national parks, windmills, solar panels, etc., things where there is a positive externality that prevents the market from doing it) or receiving the money for free.
In the US the Fed regulates total nominal demand (= spending) in the economy. When the Fed is doing their job well, it doesn't matter for nominal spending whether any one industry, like restaurants, is disturbed or not. Or whether some industries are booming.
The Fed will just adjust how much money they are 'printing'.
But what matters are supply side factors.
All those people patronising restaurants or working there presumably did so because they preferred it to the alternative ways to spend their money or time.
After a disturbance, they will have to make do with their second (or third or fourth..) best opportunities instead.
If the disturbance was a long term shift in consumer taste, we should hasten the transition of workers out of that industry.
But the current crisis is presumably temporary. So we pay for lots of friction of adaption back and forth, just to get back to where we used to be. (The adaption is still a good idea. It's probably better for waiters to become eg Uber Eats drivers than to twiddle their thumbs.)
This money is not lost from the economy; people still have to eat after all.
I understood that in the US, waiters make fairly good money because of tipping, no? Which isn't the case of other workers though.
You do know about this thing called service sector that accounts for more than half of the economy ?
All the drive-throughs only had 1-2 cars in them today at lunch, instead of the line being wrapped around the building like usual.
When we told in-laws that the state (MA) had just banned dining-in starting the next day their response was "wow good thing we went out for dinner tonight then."
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/date/?ref_=bo_nb_wey_secondary...
I wanted to help a couple of local business but there’s nothing on-line: Google Maps says that they are open (and my city in in lock-down).
If OT wanted to be charitable, they could lower their service fee, but nobody’s making any reservations right now anyway.
Probably don’t even need to click to know which one it is...
https://governor.nc.gov/news/north-carolina-close-restaurant...
Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, several places in the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Illinois, Ohio.
Basically, at this point, whenever a few large jurisdictions announce their intentions to take some coronavirus measures (such as closing schools or closing restaurants), everyone else follows through within 48 hours.
The page is obviously not responsive optimized (vertical table for narrow layouts maybe?) but the importance of the data makes me overlook hastiness in which it was put together.
Not to mention, if it was first-to-last displayed left to right, you may miss the scroll bar and not understand the value of the data being displayed.
My comment was addressing the OP's criticism regarding how tabular data was displayed in the article.
Tables are a vastly underrated means of conveying data.
Anyway graphs would be nice eventually but the heatmap works pretty well.
Thanks for doing this. It's a very interesting perspective into the impact this is having.
As in, less risky than picking up food from a grocery store where infected people are shopping and touching things on a daily basis.
EDIT: HN is preventing me from replying to you so I’ll edit it in here...
Yes, of course, all of it...
- They of course should remove the salt & paper shakers. Single use packets can be provided.
- They need disposable or wiped down menus.
- There can be no self-serve dispensers for napkins or utensils, those have to be distributed one by one.
- Seating must be reorganized to keep reasonable distances.
- Chefs and waitstaff all must check temperature before their shifts and record in a logbook
These are all reasonable common sense measures we can take to keep a massive segment of the economy alive.
Restaurants can add a $10 COVID cleaning surcharge if they want to.
I mean, it’s only worth like $1 trillion dollars to the economy. There are ~15 million jobs at stake, and that’s not counting secondary effects. And the problem isn’t going away in a few days or even a couple weeks.
I saw a video of the Tesla Factory in China and the changes they’ve made to protect workers. For example, the cafeteria tables have been converted into single-person cubbies enclosed on 3 sides.
https://youtu.be/9l_4ZH3iXbw
Are they going to spray down the salt and pepper shakers, the menus, the hot sauce, the napkin dispenser, the chair seat and back? For self-serve places, how often are the trash cans disinfected, or the ketchup and mustard dispensers (or packet piles)?
All that not to mention the other patrons in close proximity while you dine.
We don't realize how many communal surfaces we touch in a normal day.
No, cooking it yourself is.
There are a lot more places where things can go wrong transmission-wise in a restaurant than a grocery store. Presumably you will not be touching your face during your shopping experience. But to eat in a restaurant sort of dictates putting things in your face.
Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like you should always do.
> Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person.
No queuing.
> One of the chefs is sick.
But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn’t any different.
The point isn’t that it’s “zero risk” (there’s no such thing).
We’re going to have to live with some element of risk in our lives as long as COVID exists without a vaccine. This is totally normal and to be expected.
We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying from Measles.
EDIT: You’re right, we’ve been living with Measles for millennia in fact. And as recently as the 1800s there are populations that have been decimated by it. Measles absolutely did consume a massive percentage of hospital resources, although it’s fair to say that hospitals were acclimated to the demand.
The “flatten the curve” graphic is extremely misleading. The axis have no scale and the two curves themselves are not to any scale. The actual ICU capacity is like 4 pixels off the y-axis.
But that’s besides the point. We should absolutely be taking common sense and appropriate actions to reduce the spread of this virus (and several other diseases come to mind which are more deadly). When possible we should do this in a way that doesn’t destroy people’s livelihood.
That means a rational and scientific approach, not the emotional reaction which is so prevalent and actually damaging. Restaurants cannot stay closed indefinitely, particularly when we have reasonable approaches which can make them safe.
We lived with measles for more than just decades, but it wasn't a sudden outbreak that was overwhelming medical facilities.
The key here is hospital beds. We need to flatten the infective curve right now so that the medical system isn't overwhelmed. Then we can go back to "just being cautious."
https://medium.com/@yishan/its-the-rate-of-hospitalizations-...
> In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying from Measles.
Again, irrelevant. It wasn't overwhelming the medical system because the infections were spread out. Also we had a vaccine by then.
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...all have managed to contain this virus without kneecapping their economies. We should be following their examples.
Most of the US is nowhere near a crisis point, and locking down an entire city (or worse, country) over a small number of cases is like killing a fly with a nuclear weapon. Other, effective tactics exist to manage this kind of a threat.
Once testing becomes readily available we can look at loosening the restrictions.
As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead.
Just maybe, somewhere in the middle, Rhyme and Reason can come back home from the Mountain of Ignorance and devise a plan that keeps people safe without cratering the economy.
I'm not sure how big a role testing actually plays. Even South Korea is only testing a fraction of a percent of its populace. And many cases are asymptomatic but apparently can also still spread. So I think what we need to be doing, regardless of testing, is seriously teaching extreme personal hygiene.
As in, shuttered restaurants need to be undergoing emergency training right now on how they can re-open and provide a safe environment.
That's ridiculous, and I hope it's clear to you why it's ridiculous. You should feel silly for repeating it.
There's no rational, educated person who believes that "everyone" is going to die from this. It's not even close to a true statement.
We owe it to all of us to put on our critical thinking caps rather than downvote anything that says something other than “lockdown more, harder, faster, longer”.
At least with a grocery store, you can wash off the produce before you use it. With a restaurant, there's nothing covering the food at all.
And remember, the chefs in the kitchen are paid peanuts, and have no safety net whatsoever, so there's zero incentive for them to get tested or to stay out of work if they get sick. This is also the case during normal times. Eating out is a good way to catch something in a country where we think it's a great idea to fire cooks and other low-wage workers when they call in sick.
Eating at home is still a better idea for the reasons you state, but takeout is an acceptable if less-ideal alternative.
So really this is US data, since it looks like almost all of their restaurants are in the US. I wouldn't put much stock in the other countries.
That being said, this data certainly shows a devastating trend for the restaurant industry.
Source: I'm a former OT employee :]
https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/disaster-assistance
Thanks a bunch, Xi Jinping!
Isn't it amazing that poorer, even denser countries like India or Bangladesh haven't originated the same deadly pandemics?
The PRC deserves the blame for this. Scientists have known about the issues with those markets for a long time, at least since SARS. They only just prohibited the trade of wild animals. Why not before?
(Of course some people will call this racism, but other ethnic Chinese countries like HK, Taiwan or Singapore have world-leading hygiene standards. This one is on the Chinese dictatorship, not the Chinese people.)
SARS-CoV-2 appears to have originated in bats, been passed to Malayan pangolins, and then made its jump to humans [1].
That is likely in a wet market. It is not likely on a single-animal industrial farm.
[1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
I don't dispute that the wet markets are higher risk, but there is certainly some risk in industrial farming too.
SARS also originated from Chinese wet markets [1]. If you're trying to engineer a plague, crowding different species with one another's effluence is the traditional way to do it.
> there is certainly some risk in industrial farming too
Some. But not comparable to wet markets. The latter's only comparison is with medieval European cities, where people, sewage and livestock had constant and close proximity to one another.
The tragic thing is, the products of these wet markets are unaffordable for most Chinese. The entire world is put at risk because a narrow sliver of Beijing's elite want exotic wild game.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14738798
(There is plenty to say about industrial farming; the use of antibiotics in it is probably largely responsible for MRSA and the likes. But it has not resulted in a wartime-like conditions in the whole world.)
Except for the wee Mad Cow Disease thingie that jumped to people.
But you quickly sequed from "hasn't" to "well, they do but it did't kill enough to count."
The problem with wet markets has been known for decades. They've done nothing.
Besides, mad cow disease was not an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 2012.
Twit
Bonus question - is Spanish Flu racist?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...
https://www.livescience.com/spanish-flu.html
Was the name racist? Not sure, considering that likely it was incorrect. What do you think?
It's like when someone calls you an anti-semite for supporting BDS movements. I just assume they're isreali Nationals or shills when they say that crap. It's all dog whistling because the alternative is that evil organizations would have to admit that they do bad things.
Not sure how other countries would have handled it. But it still is a history-changing decision point that could have gone better.
The first cases in my city (Atlanta) were all from Italy.
I suspect banning flights from China was also motivated by politics.
Trying to make this factually true statement look like bigotry is just reprehensible.
We could talk about things like the expansion of government programs, or we could talk about your theory of how I'm stripping people's humanities away. You would also presume quite poorly if you thought I haven't worked in the food industry.
If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario of collapsing American restaurants, go ahead. Such as more discussion on dehumanization.
These priorities are lop-sided at best.
Restaurants are not a critical component of your basic sustenance. They never were, in the course of human history. Heavy dependence on them for ones immediate sustenance needs is a very recent development.
On the other hand, shelter is.
Some other countries already have programs. NZ just introduced a program where everyone who’s job is locked-out will still get paid (so they can continue to pay bills). Other countries have different programs.
Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of people are going to lose jobs.
But meanwhile what happens to the other 90% Americans who are working who face uncertain futures - some even in underrepresented sectors or even non-union sectors? How do they make rent or their mortgage payments?
All I'm asking is why are restaurant workers deserving of such singular attention and their concerns need such elevation over the rest of the entire working classes of America including other blue & white collar workers?
This is not to say other industries (like hotels) won't also be badly hurt. But restaurants are probably the single largest highly effected sector.
You didn't quite offer anything interesting, just stated the industry is collapsing and workers should get other jobs...that isn't interesting or helpful.
Curious how many people you employ and if your business is immune from the economic impact of this pandemic, maybe some of these workers would like you to hire them.
This is a far more interesting statement: “The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American middle class might not be strong enough to support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the existing system.“
If that is what you intended to communicate, then maybe that is what you should have written.
I would conjecture that it describes much of the US economy, not just the food service industry.
Maybe you need to reread what you commented on
https://www.eater.com/2020/3/9/21166993/how-much-to-run-a-re...
(Near the bottom of the page if you can read German: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/coronavirus-deutschland-rki... )
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-socia...
Do people actually talk like this about the livelihood of millions of people in real life, or is an affectation for HN?
The less conversant you are with the actual academia, the more contrived the terms you invent will be. I doubt many did more than undergrad business or economic here.
Throwing out a credit lifeline can be a practice that benefits everyone in times of crisis.
Like I said in my earlier comment, the best hope for these businesses is to return to normal revenue numbers. They aren't going to make up for the business they are currently losing. They don't have a liquidity problem. They have a lost revenue problem. They are still accruing costs without accruing revenue. Delaying those costs doesn't fix that disconnect.
>Paying down the debt is a common business practice that people do all the time.
Taking on debt to allow you to make investments and improve future outlook is a smart business decision. Taking on debt in order to meet recurring operating costs rarely works out when there is no hope of future growth.
A profitable restaurant's unit model might be: 10% net profit, 30% COGS, 30% fixed cost, 30% labor cost
During this one month shutdown, the restaurants won't incur labor cost or COGS. So, they're really only in the hole 30% of one month's revenue. With a little back of the envelope math, you'll see that the restaurant owner can pay back a loan for this amount by allocating 10% of their monthly profits (or 1% of monthly revenue) to loan payback.
Now, if the restaurant is NOT profitable, then we have a problem. But, they were probably going to go out of business soon anyways in that case.
Frankly, I think the restaurant industry is over built and many of them deserve to close. The margins are non existent, most of the food is terrible, it's the ultimate bubble economy business.
Not that it would happen though.
The restaurant is TOAST when the loan starts being due as they try to reopen in the middle of recession after a forced closing and they'll all be out of work trying to feed themselves, pay rent and take care of their loved ones.
You mean free money, just because? How could you even begin to figure out who deserves it? That'd be a lot of offices and bureaucracy to set up to solve the question. Unless you just want to give wads of cash to any restaurant claiming to need help, in which case I'm glad you're not leading the economy.
Maybe it could be like farm subsidies, but we pay restaurants to close for a certain amount of time / certain days of the week, on the condition that they pay employees normal wages for those days.
"Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S. exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the minimum wage.
While it might better than nothing, it's not liveable.
Restaurants are required to bump tipped employees up to the non-tipped minimum wage if the tips don't put them over it. Thus, "normal wages" in this case would be the non-tipped minimum wage.
So you could employ a restaurant worker at $0/h and then bump them to minimum wage, because the tips will never cut it? Basically, you'd be collecting all the tips? This cannot seriously be legal!?
That hourly worker w/o a job will pay rent and food. Software engineer...a carwash, new lawn equiment, or hell even a vacation.
Giving an airline a tax break won't drive them more customers. Giving their customers more money will give them customers.
You need to think long term what this money can do.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w20625
Most "excess wealth" is tied up in business and other investments. It's not like wealthy people just horde cash like Scrooge McDuck. That wealth is currently working to support the economy. It is hardly passive.
Forcing the wealthy to pay increased tax on this value will cause them to close business functions, sell stocks, etc.
Is that really wise at this point in time? To redistribute value from existing, proven formats into unspecific, theoretically useful ones?
Theft is not immoral simply because it is unfair or mean. It's because it causes systemic dysfunction.
Suspend loan repayments and rent collection for 6 months, and print food stamps for the unemployed.
Loans will help them bounce back when the crisis is over. Makes no sense right now.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/financing-an-economic-shutdown-...
It’s fundamentally different from me starting a small business and going to Chase saying, look here’s a healthy prospect and I’ll be able to pay it back within x years.
Agreed on this. But the rent paid out during the period of reduced revenue coming in creates a delta that this loan is filling in. The loan still needs to be paid back (even assuming 0% interest). That extra money needs to come from somewhere: increased prices, increased traffic, or decreased expenditures.
Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most of the way to keeping a nation going.
If you force rental payments to stop, then who gets hit? The landlord is going to default on their obligations. So do you then bail them out? If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property. So it's just somebody else suffering, rather than the tenant.
The loans work, because the obligation to pay back this loan will come from a future where you have the capability. The govt is the eventual guarentor of this loan, and hence, they take the hit if the eventual future does not come to pass (e.g., the restaurant never regain their full business). The gov't can't take the full hit of all these defaults all at once, but they can if it is spread out. So a loan will spread them out into the future (even perhaps, far future), and the economy survives, even if a lot of the business that took the loan didn't.
Read my post again. The rent holiday goes hand in hand with a debt holiday. That's the only way this works. Tenants don't have to pay rent, and landowners don't have to pay a mortgage.
Sure some businesses will fail as a result of this, but far more (on a massive scale) will fail if you don't do this.
They'll be bailed out by the govt as usual. Which is the point.. the govt has to keep humans fed and housed through this. This is the best way to achieve that end. Kicking the can down the road is exactly what needs to be done. The economic problems and readjustments can happen later. The immediate problem is people fucking dying.
As others have pointed out, this is not what any of us are saying. Those debts are paused too.
The loans DO NOT work, because most of these businesses are barely profitable at all. Now they have to recover to their previous levels of income AND pay back a loan? They can't. It's a ridiculous expectation.
I know this would help for people I personally know in this industry.
Dine in has been reduced almost entirely but takeaway orders hasn't deviated too much from the standard.
The reality here is that a lot of small hospitality businesses don't actually make much profit at all so it's unlikely that they'd survive too long with this forced reduced business. And it's always unhelpful to hear (in general not from you) comments like "maybe they should have saved up more earlier" or "they shouldn't be opening up a restaurant then" because a lot of times they can't work in any other industry - this is all they know.
Imagine having reduced business through no fault of your own yet you're still liable for paying the commercial rent of $1.2k per week. You can't sell the business because no one is buying. You can't sell it because you lose all the goodwill which is bad especially if you've spent any money renovating the place up to standard.
But if it’s just a pause in collection, and you still owe that money, then it’s the same old margin problem: very few restaurants make enough money to repay that loan no matter who it comes from.
It has to be a pause in collection (and interest), but at the end of the day the lender also has to get their money back.
Some landlords were letting people stay rent free out of compassion because no one had money and it was tough all over and no one else was going to rent it. Then the government decided to bleed the landlords and insist it get paid if the unit was occupied, even if no rent was being paid.
Landlords had no choice but to begin evicting people. Things got ugly fast.
It's an indication of how things can go wrong with the government working against you, but I don't know that it maps well to the current pandemic.
I wasn't ascribing good intentions to Westminster. I was saying that their intentions, good or bad, and the intentions of the current American government are irrelevant. What's relevant here is they did a thing and it got x result. So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.
Except nobody is suggesting a similar thing. I started this thread by suggesting that the government do x, and you replied with the assumption that the government would do x+y.
Six months from now, when the quarantine ends, you aren't going to go to your local Teriyaki and Wok, and order six months wroth of Chinese food.
The restaurant will never recoup those six lost months of rent. The employees will never recoup those six lost months of wages. These loans will never be repaid.
Low margins are the result of heavy competition. If there is less competition margins will be high again.
2. The problem is that after the pandemic ends, the margins will remain low. Because new entrants, with no outstanding debts or obligation will eat the lunch of any of the restaurants that remained 'open' during the pandemic.
I have thought quite a bit about whether this situation will cause long-term behavioral changes.
Do you expect the restaurant business to bounce back to where it was after the crisis ends? I would expect that to happen for a short-duration event. But what if this persists for months, or into next year?
I have searched for papers that explore this idea (say after the 1918 Spanish Flu), but haven't found anything relevant.
Basically if you want anything less popular than Sam Adams-level of popularity, you have to get it from a restaurant.
There are also all the local micro-breweries...
[1] edit: See section 203 photographed here: https://twitter.com/mitchryals/status/1239938801839099905
[1] http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=653228&f=109&s=277...
[0] https://ny.eater.com/2020/3/17/21182052/new-york-state-liquo...
Unlike your average delivery joint the numbers kept getting worse the more you added, too—no "two large two-topping pizzas and breadsticks at 70% menu price" deals or anything like that.
[1] actual text from email: "As stated in our Terms and Conditions, the prices for menu items on DoorDash may differ from the prices on the restaurant's own menu. For example, our restaurant partners are responsible for setting the price of their menu items on DoorDash, and some restaurant partners choose to set different prices than they offer for in-store diners."
I used the app once because I had a free delivery (that's the 1.99 waived), ending up costing a lot more than just picking it up myself.
If DoorDash or Uber Eats charges 30% (which is fucking insane if they do), where do you think that comes from? Restaurants aren't making 30% profit.
Compounding the problem GrubHub, and presumably other "gig economy" delivery services, preemptively adds non-partner restaurants against their will:
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF...
Restaurants lose margin on those orders with the expectation that it's made up by more people ordering.
https://www.just-eat.co.uk/pricepromise
Protip: call in your orders, those take-out apps often take a cut that's just added to the restaurant's list price (last night I saw a $12 half-duck = $16 phone-in takeout or $25 Caviar take-out)
It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver, but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being long-term employees and most of them deliver for the apps.
I still don't understand what a multinational adds to local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste any better or get here faster, and my local restaurant makes less. Do not want.
If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen to know the place in question pays a good wage, comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.
>If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.
And where's your evidence that restaurants are profiting off of Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash / whatever? Restaurants are suing to be removed from these services. Presumably it's not profitable for the restaurant.
Let's not forget that in most states these "gig" jobs hire people as contractors who are then ineligible for unemployment and social security and are not guaranteed a minimum wage. Restaurants typically hire folks as employees.
Insufficient knowledge of the wear and tear on ones car.
Desire to "work for themselves" (despite the fact it really isn't).
TL;DR actors in an economic system are often not fully informed.
and whenever there's a knowledge gap, the "market" exploits it for arbitrage. But eventually (which may be a long time), this exploit would stop working as more people try to exploit it causing the profits from it to go down, or the lack of knowledge for which this exploits exist starts to disappear.
There's no rule to say that the market is super efficient at all times - just that it tends towards efficiency.
Seriously, though - we do. But regulations take time to catch up. As they should.
You'd be surprised how cheap individual portions of food are for restaurants.
cost of raw materials in restaurants are a very small portion of the overall bill the customer pays. A large portion is rent, and an even larger portion is labour/wages. I hear the margins are razor thin at around 5-10% (which is low considering the risks). Not to mention capital expenditure (of which the value, i guess, isn't gonna disappear overnight, so there's that).
Cooking at home also tends to be food that you get in season and/or on discount. You don't have a menu at home, and hence, costs at home are both lower in raw materials, and labour costs are zero (assuming you don't pay yourself, and your time isn't able to be spent productively anyway so zero opportunity cost).
I agree that it definitely is cheaper for restaurants to cook large numbers of the same meal, and they have many other expenditures which raise the price of your meal. But for a single meal, the question is whether you can cook it for less than the price at an equivalent restaurant. In many cases, this isn't the case unless you're cooking in large quantities and eating the same meal for several sittings. Yes, using seasonal ingredients is a good idea -- but a lot of restaurants also do that, and their groceries are still much cheaper than yours anyway.
For example (in Australia), if you want to make just one portion of Thai curry you need at least $60 worth of ingredients (your protein, chillies, lemongrass, galangal, palm sugar, shrimp paste, fish sauce, peanut oil, coriander, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, limes, lychees if that's your thing, and so on). So if you're only making one meal it's seriously not worth it (you can buy a decent Thai curry for a fraction of that price). But if you make 10-12 portions of curry (or you make a large batch of curry paste and use it for different dishes) then it starts to become cheaper per-portion.
I have 2 cousins who manage a restaurant in upstate New York. Everyone was told to apply for unemployment (which has had its waiting period waived), except for the manager and assistant manager.
The game plan is to trial take-out only dinners, but since less than 5% of their previous business was take out, their hopes aren’t high.
I’m really interested to see how many small businesses like this pull through.
This year it was warm (for winter) and dry on that Sunday, and last year it was presumably wet and dreary.
I believe other states / municipalities have started to follow suit, but entire state shutdown has been surreal.
So, you can get pad thai takeout from a restaurant. But you may not be able to get a box of noodles from a grocery store.
I’m 36 and I’m not worried about catching the coronavirus, I’m worried about spreading it.
To what extend do you expect your awareness of what's happening in China to be accurate?
Consider for instance the absolute run on bottled water; what possible explanation other than mindless panic could explain that?
Seems like there is a good reason to buy more than usual - what constitutes "crazy amounts"?
> Consider for instance the absolute run on bottled water
Water being one of the most essential requirements for human life beyond breathable air?
The problem with panic buying is it breeds panic.
You buy a 24 roll of toilet paper every week? I feel sorry for your ... well, you know.
Those are panic buying. The other explanations aren't as charitable.
I have a niche SaaS that helps brick and mortar retail stores in North America. There was a drastic shift on Thursday. And it escalated daily.
To give a sense of the speed and scale of the shift. All of 2020, at least 1/2 of stores were up at least 10% daily (great growth for retail).
On Thursday, a majority of stores were down for the first time all year. By Sunday, 3/4 of stores were down at least 10%. On Monday, 1/4 of stores were down 50% for the day.
I am not looking forward to reviewing the numbers tonight.
What's the fastest way to set up a Gift Card program?
The note keeping isn't super necessary but it can be helpful when trying to track down the order being given to a customer.
In this I'm also assuming Shopify lets you mark orders as pending, delivered, etc. I've only used competitors to it so I'm not 100% sure.
The long term impact for a lot of people is terrifying, but I don't see a way to avoid it without instead badly damaging our healthcare system and potentially killing a lot of people.
The entire hospitality industry is going to take a huge hit. I do work in the convention, corporate travel/event space, and my calendar up until June has been wiped out. Cascading is the key thing people seem to gloss over. Sure, servers and kitchen staff are obvious. The food delivery people will not be needed. Companies like Aramark that provide cleaning services for floor mats/uniforms/etc are not needed. Down the line it goes.
Source: my ill informed opinion, same as yours. same source as yours.
Social upheaval against a "lockdown" becomes a moot point if people you know keep dropping dead.
Until this happens, I won't really think it was a "big deal" at all, and more along the lines of being merely a flesh wound.
People need to put on their critical thinking caps around here. What is the end game of this lockdown? What data is it based on? How will we know when to end it—given all factors, which include vastly more than slowing the spread of the virus.
Also stop downvoting people asking questions. Asking questions and thinking critically and rationally is what this forum is supposed to be about.
The alternative is to let 2 million Americans die this summer.
I would love to see an actual statistical comparison. spookthesunset is making an excellent point. Unless we know that deaths from the virus are greater than the deaths caused by the second-and-third-order effects of panicking, you can't say for sure that the lockdown is the best thing to do right now.
Do you believe that when the death toll raises from non-panicking and not imposing a lockdown (not to mention the total saturation of the healthcare system), that wont create even more panic and self-lockdown -- and have their own second and third order effects?
By imposing lockdown, we have created a real economic slowdown, that traders are smart enough to deem catastrophic (because a month or restauranteurs going without wages is actually catastrophic and represents a much larger loss of future incomes that the still-small-but-blown-up-in-the-media death rate from the unchecked coronavirus.) Unlike the non-lockdown option, there is no optimistic case. You can't say, "earnings are slow, but people will be sorry if they panic sell because when the media frenzy dies down things will settle." You have to say, "earnings are slow, and might not actually pick up again because the lockdown lost a bunch of people their job."
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
Until we know how many people have this or had it, suggesting multi-month lockdowns is ill informed, dangerous doomsday nonsense.
PS: while bitching about downvotes is lame, it is quite disappointing to see HN devolve into yet another panic fueled echo chamber where only “rooting for” the worst case scenario is tolerated.
Don’t let this place turn into an echo chamber people. There are plenty of subreddits and social media groups where you can get your fill of doomsday scenarios. This place bills itself as full of rational thinking people, let’s put on our critical thinking caps and consider the problem from all angles.
Ps: /r/corvid19 seems to be one of the few places on the internet where people are discussing this stuff rationally and not immediately jumping to the worst case scenario.
Places that do have pervasive testing (some town in Italy, South Korea, and Singapore) suggest this virus is widespread and has a >1% death rate. But this data is early and subject to change.
Suggesting we are going to be locked for months or years is irresponsible fear mongering at best.
If you're going to say anything, you're better off overestimate how long it's going to be.
Sorry doomsayers, you better have some good evidence to suggest a 2 month lockup is worth the massive damage to our society. Better also outline what “lockup” means. Is that in big cities? The whole country? The planet?
What is your exit criteria? Who will have to go out into the world to keep shelves stocked and your Uber eats meals delivered? Who is going to be manufacturing your heart medicine? Who will clean that plugged drain? Who will repair that drain unplugger persons tool when it breaks?
2 weeks tops. Perhaps slightly longer for very small isolated hotspot areas. Any more than that and shit is gonna go down.
This video gives a sense of the measures taken in cities outside of Wuhan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM
And I'm not panicking, I'm just tired of people running around doomsaying. There is so much trash information out there and people have completely shut down their ability to think rationally. It kinda ticks me off.
Last point: I live in Seattle. You have previously mentioned how people won't stand for this and there will be riots. What you're failing to grasp is that when people are scared, 90% of them stop going out on their own. Yes, there were some young people still going to bars, but Seattle shut down FAR before any kind of order to do so. People chose to stay in once it became apparent their choice was either staying in or risking needing a hospital that is oversubscribed. That will happen in many, many other places in our country, and there won't be riots because people don't want to be around enough people to riot.
You say: "lock-down 2 weeks tops", when the incubation period is known to be around that or even more, and we have clearly seen that a 2 weeks period does not have any appreciable effect. You say the situation is different than in Italy, even when the number of people in ICUs and deaths is growing exactly in the same way in every other part of the world, with the only exception of countries who took measures earlier. You say it won't be so bad when you admit it will kill a 1% of the infected and all studies talk about at least ~50% of the population catching it at some point. You are not being rational.
I am also tired of the doomsaying but I have not seen any serious study that is minimally optimistic, and I've seen many pessimistic ones.
This study (https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200370, small cohort of 21) had a symptoms-to-discharge period of 19+/-4 days (17+/-4 days in hospital).
Assuming you have a perfect lock down now. People will continue for 7 days to get infected from asymptomatic cases (much longer for some). At the end of that week it will be one week until most symptoms have appeared (but again much longer for some). Now you have hospitalisations of the infected, or home care (as hospitals won't be able to cope). In UK you have to test negative from 3 tests on two subsequent days in order to be cleared for release (report on BBC Radio 4 from an infected patient); assuming a similar standard then we're looking at 7+7+17 days, 31 days until people are starting to be safe to associate with ...
I don't share your "2 weeks top" blind faith.
>Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a full order of magnitude lower.
Could you source the proof of this please?
There were posts threatening _physical harm_ to individuals questioning the level of intervention (I believe the words were "I want to throttle the next person who says this isn't a catastrophe") and from typically well-respected users as well.
It's stunning to me to watch this community devolve in this fashion. I take it as a sign of the times, in terms of groupthink and fear-as-contagion, downvote-if-you-don't-agree behavior on the internet, and a broader eternal september effect on this forum.
I only wish individuals showed this much concern surrounding the massive cost in human life we incurred far more willfully via the opioid epidemic, the wars in the middle east, our prison system, etc; I'd go so far as to say I would be more willing to go along with the current overreaction if we didn't seem so hypocritical and self-serving in where and how we assign value to human life.
It is like everybody has that X-Files “I want to believe” poster on their wall when they repeat some of this doomsday stuff.
We are all stuck inside all day, bouncing around with nothing better to do than read doomsday porn. And around and around that stuff goes into people’s head until you get where we are now.
People should be much less concerned about this virus and way more concerned about social unrest. Humans are social creatures. You can’t just “lock” people in their homes for an indeterminate amount of time and expect good things to happen.
Those toilet paper memes and work from home memes are funny at first, but once the novelty wears off over the next week or so, shit is going to get very real. It ain’t funny to see empty shelves of toilet paper or baby wipes when you actually need them.... it ain’t funny to have absolutely nothing to do but sit around and obsess about this virus.
Also, grocery shelves will be full again as the stores limit per-customer amounts.
There is a huge world of stuff that cannot be done remote. Sporting events, construction, weddings, restaurants, building maintenance, manufacturing, and millions of other stuff. Stuff that is critical to keeping our global economy happy. Healthy economy == healthy people.
Ps: have any of the doomsayers spouting nonsense stoped to consider what bullshit it is that all the white collar people can remain “safe” at home while all the blue collar grocery workers and the entire supply chain that feeds it gets to go out each day and expose themselves to a virus so deadly we took these extreme measures? Kind of bullshit, ain’t it?
HackerNews used to pride itself in being better than this. YOU are not helping.
a) We have a large number of infected people (> 10,000) and have no idea who or where they are, because testing sucks.
b) If exponential growth continues (and it would, because we can't isolate all the people who are sick right now), we'll overwhelm hospital facilities and the fatality rate will hit 5% instead of <1%.
BUT
As soon as we clear out a), that kills b) too -- in South Korea they're doing effective contact tracing, testing, and isolation because they have few enough cases. Once we bend the knee of the growth curve, once we get get R0 below 1, we'll have exponential drop-off instead of growth. In 8 weeks, with few enough active cases and robust testing infrastructure, we'll be able to do what China has started doing, and what SK has been doing all along.
Of course, that's assuming we get our act together on lockdown & testing infrastructure. But if we do, we could be out of lockdown by June.
All these folks saying "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it over 41 years!" are extrapolating the wrong data points...
Is this hyperbole, or is anyone actually saying 41 years?
I haven't done careful math, but eyeballing it, roughly a year (give or take some months) is the longest I'd come up with to keep peak simultaneous cases under 1.5mil.
I assume the "41 years" people are using some other constraint.
But every luxury industry that involves going outside and meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in the mean time. But it's going to be a harsh year for a lot of people.
It's unbelievable how lucky I am that I can do my work from home.
Of course that depends on the variety remaining. It may not. It’s been 3 weeks and I’m already starting to tire of my local options.
Maybe I might end up learning to cook after all...
It's a great time to learn!
Also, due to the low margins of the restaurant business, I assume they’re using subpar ingredients.
Actually, if I'm home all day long, I like to go out to socialize. The normal daily interactions with co-workers/clients/etc is now removed by working from home. While I don't eat out that much, Happy Hour has become a thing for me. Now, I guess I'm going to have to start labeling myself an alcoholic since I've resorted to drinking alone at home.
I think my wife and I could afford to eat out every meal if we really wanted to (and we didn't go to anything too fancy), but we certainly don't have a 500 m^2 home nor any land. That'd be 3 times the size of our home, and our home is already pretty big for our neighbourhood.
You clearly don't have children. I need to work from home while also getting primary school children to do their schoolwork and not kill each other.
I genuinely enjoy cooking, it is what I do with the extra time I would otherwise be spent commuting.
Luckily, lots of people are not like me and cannot cook if their life depended on it. I am hoping they can keep the local restaurants in business!
I like the idea of buying myself gift cards at local restaurants. Its one way to help them.
I have a tiny kitchen with a single very basic pot and some super shitty baking sheets that I got from a thrift store, IKEA chef/paring knives, a mediocre damaged Henckels from Craigslist, and some mediocre non-stick skillets. All in probably $50. Ya, I might like a ~$120 French or Japanese chef knife, and maybe a nicer pot, but it's absolutely fine. My actual chef friend came by recently and made a killer meal with little trouble.
I admit when I lived in the U.S the answer might have been less but it was probably still "lots of people", I have generally been the worst cook I know and I can still put together about a dozen decent meals.
on edit: but note that I did say the spur left was the tastiness of delivered food so actually I am confused as to are you kidding me based on inability to produce tasty food?
I suspect this is going to start changing soon. High end takeaways will have to happen where restaurants would fail otherwise.
How about any property left vacant for 1 month gets a windfall tax of 10% the market valuation [this is obviously not a fleshed out proposal] ... that should incentivise landlord's to act to prevent losing tenants.
It not a lot, but if enough people do it, it could help them actually reopen.