Nice, maybe we can start embracing more sensible ways of feeding people that the ridiculously inefficient restaurant model with cooks, servers, individual food choice and individual tables.
Yes, soylent green for everyone. In the meantime, we should also destroy most of side-projects in github (heck, developers are using electricity while doing these non sensible projects), probably also kill youtube and facebook, and even commenting here in HN. Think of the server electricity bills we will save.
Just because you don't enjoy something, don't be so happy for others misfortune please. For some going to restaurants are their highlights of the week and for the people working there, their paychecks
I read a article pre-covid about a restaurant owner in SF who'd closed her sit-down, full service restaurant and opened a counter-service/takeout restaurant instead. Less staff, less overhead, more customers, and she felt it was a better model for everyone involved.
Even before Covid, the sit down restaurant service with it's hostess and waiters and 3 course menus seemed to be going the way of the movie theater. Who has time, who has energy, and who wouldn't be just as happy getting Doordash and eating in the comfort of their home and probably watching a movie at the same time? Fewer and fewer people it turns out.
I like eating in restaruants but it just doesn't happen very often. Mostly when I do (did) it's lunch with coworkers. Otherwise - while on vacation or maybe the oddball anniversary dinner, but not much else. I doubt I'm paying their bills.
I mean, OK? But other people are: restaurants collectively were booming before the pandemic[0]. And even in the midst of a pandemic, many people are still going out to them!
I think your anecdata is heavy on the anecdote and light on the data.
> sit down restaurant service ... seemed to be going the way of the movie theater ... who wouldn't be just as happy ... in the comfort of their home and probably watching a movie
Well, I'm just one data point, but I vastly prefer going out for dinner (and sitting down, getting a menu, having a waiter) and going in person to a movie theater to doing those things in my same-old living room that I see every night. I don't know just how in the minority I am, but there are some of us who think it's worth the extra money you pay to have the experience.
My family and I have been going to movie theaters as a weekly family outing for a long time (pre-covid), and I have always enjoyed that. You just don't get the same experience from home.
That's great, until Doordash or Uber eats is having server problems. (Like Uber eats is in my area. Right now. When we're having an online lunch meeting, and the management bought everyone lunch for the meeting in the form of Uber Eats vouchers, and several people cannot get their food because the drivers can't talk to the servers for a couple of hours so far.)
Who has time? I do, when I'm on a date. Takeout isn't the same. (When you're married, you can get takeout and take it home, but that's... kind of lame.)
Also, when it's bad weather (hot/cold/rainy), takeout leaves me with the question of where I'm going to go to eat it. Not to the park when it's 35 degrees (whether Farenheit or Celsius). In my car? That gets old. At home? Where?
In Portland (Pre-Covid), a popular upscale restaurant model was to wait in line to pre-order at the counter, then grab your own silverware and table, and a non-server would bring out your order.
Often this would allow restaurants to serve upscale food at cheaper prices due to low overhead. Even with their successfully efficient business model, many are closing permanently.
Let's just live in our pods, own nothing by renting everything, implement our social score system, and eat our bug bars. That'll make everyone happy...
This reflects my personal view of the "real" economy. Nearly everyone around me is absolutely destitute. Meanwhile, equities are trading at all time highs. There is an enormous disconnect, at least in my specific area.
That is a recent trend due to our governments selective action. Back in the 1929 crash it was the rich wall street types who lost everything and were jumping from tall buildings to their deaths.
The 1929 crash coincided with the great Dust Bowl, where many family farms were destroyed by a dust storm.
All those farmers left their broken farms, and went to the city looking for work... Only to find that the great depression wreaked the cities too. Back then, a much larger portion of America was farmers.
We are seeing a dramatic rise in the suicide rate in the USA in the last few decades as the middle and working classes lose the economic advancements that their parents generation worked to attain. All the while the economic have gain more.
Not saying the non-rich were spared from the great depression.
It is by design though as the government drops a lot of money to prop up the stock market instead of sending it to normal people to spend with stimulus checks.
> When did it call the liger a "lion" when it acts like a tiger?
In ascribing economic inequality to capitalism when economic inequality is a consequence of a captured regulatory regime that prevents the capitalists from engaging in market activity that would rectify the inequality.
> In my mind it's acting like a liger, but the lion bits are fundamental to the problem, and hence why the tiger is showing.
In my mind its acting like a liger but the tiger bits are the cause of the problem so its inappropriate to call it a lion.
I can see in Seattle the restaurants that went full covid seem to be doing well. ie. they converted their front door to a sales point and just gave up on trying to make indoor dining work.
Take-out is not compatible with the cost structures of many restaurants, it may slow the losses, but it won't save the business. Just look at the rent and property taxes that businesses in desirable (such as waterfront) locations pay; those costs are not affordable without liquor sales.
Yes, I've read about (and seen) restaurants in many areas now serving alcohol to-go, but their volumes are much lower, as they don't have a 'pseudo-monopoly on drinks with dinner'.
You have to remember that a single empty table (on a Friday/Saturday night) could be enough to make a restaurant lose money before the pandemic. The pandemic's effects are much larger than a single empty table.
Here in Phoenix, AZ, things are basically normal. People have masks on when they're indoors, but businesses (including restaurants and bars) are all open. A rough metric I've been using since march is how far backed up the cars are from the stoplight in front of our house at rush hour, and it's pretty much back to where it was in February.
Where are you at? I'm in the bay area and it's the same here. The bay area is full of tech folks who haven't seen any income disruptions since the pandemic started. I suspect many regions of the country are not doing as well.
I would agree from a non-American but still western view.
Where I grew up is looking more like the awful economy of the 70s and 80s in which it was in middle of an armed conflict.
Unemployment and suicide is already high here. Many feel a lack of future. We had been doing better but there was some backsliding these past few years.
This has just sealed its fate for a decade or more. I'm lucky in my position but many haven't been.
Well a lot of that business went online to the consolidated mega players. Additionally, equities are high because the Fed is buying anything and everything to trick people into believing everything is fine. We'll see what happens when they unwind their $7T position.
I'd argue the equities are trading so high is preciesly because of the action the government is taking. By lowering interest rates and offering low interest loans in an attempt to prevent deflation the fed has pushed a ton of money into the economy with the result that deflation is increasing. Because of that people have to put their money in something that will increase in value as inflation increases, the result being that tons of money is being pumped into equities which further drives up the price making them more attractive, because the government is pumping more money into the economy to prevent deflation.
This pandemic to me shows the fundemental problem with a lot of the fancy economic theories we've been living off of and the parasitic "financial engineers" fundamental failing. You can play all the games you want with numbers and spreadsheets to make it look like there is more money than there actually is, but you can't magically change the amount of stuff their is to buy. As such it doesn't matter what measure you use or what KPI you look at for the economy, if there isn't enough crap being produced for people to buy it at a reasonable price there isn't enough crap to buy, and telling people the economy is doing great when I can't afford a roast for dinner doesn't mean jack to me or anyone else.
The Fed pushed a ton of money in a very inefficient manner. If congress approved another round of direct stimulus and bolstered the unemployment programs, people who are now struggling would have funds to make ends meet and could stimulate the economy.
Instead, by purchasing large amounts of junk bonds, the Fed basically backstopped Wall Street, leading to the all-time highs in the stock market indices. The stock market completely decoupled from the economic reality on main street
I just posted the same as you. Just a minor comment, I do not believe this is inefficient, but their target is not the economy but the rich. There is no way an economist does not know what you said.
It's arguably inefficient from the perspective of the dual mandate (price stability and maximum sustainable employment), but what the fed did would be efficient under the view that employment is too high to be sustainable.
I mean all reasonable honest economists know this. The goal of the current program is to subsidize the 1% by making sure the stock market it stabilized and keeps growing.
If you want to actually help the economy you helicopter drop stimulus checks. The lower 95% spend more money when they have more, the top 5%/1%/.01% don't see a meaningful difference in their spending power.
I am far from the top 5%/1%/.01%, and do not spend more money they I have...
Infact for the last 15 years I have made it a point to monthly expenses be less than 50% of my net income, which meant living with family, having room mate, Driving a very old car or doing other things to lower my expenses.
> The lower 95% spend more money when they have more
This isn't saying that the bottom 95% are incurring massive debt or "living beyond means". It's just saying that if you give someone in the bottom 95% an extra $100, they'll likely spend some of that money. If you give Bezos or Gates or Buffett $100, it's such an inconsequential sum to them that it wouldn't change their spending
> If you want to actually help the economy you helicopter drop stimulus checks. The lower 95% spend more money when they have more, the top 5%/1%/.01% don't see a meaningful difference in their spending power.
They spend it on consumption and bid up the price of inputs while the people who own the businesses collect profit. I’m not sure thats any better than what the govt is doing now.
Yes, in a free market. This is a pandemic shutdown, not a free market and not the mixed economy it was before the shutdown. So the price increases, and profit increases, but only certain people are able to fill that demand while others are forced to remain idle along with their capital. Therefore businesses and people whom the government allows to work will make more money, and the stocks of inputs deplete because the businesses who replenish those stocks are operating at 50% capacity, and the baseline prices go up. This is all fundamental, I agree.
> People can eat?
Figure out how people can eat without someone working to produce and deliver that food and you can solve a lot of problems.
There's two things I don't see people talk about much. They are forgotten forces I suppose.
1) Inflation. You're living it. The stock market is inflationary. Printing money creates inflation. Yet somehow they will make everyone believe 2020 saw 2% inflation. The market is telling us it expects inflation to be higher; maybe. You don't want to hold cash or low interest bonds going into an inflationary period.
2) Global demand for US equities. If there is a global financial crises/disruption, and there should be, people view US stocks as safer than all other stocks. Money managers would be moving out of other stocks and into US stocks. Demand drives up price. It needs no further rationalization than risk management with limited optionality of where to put their money. US stock prices could be ridiculously overpriced on fundamentals but may still be viewed as safer than their emerging market alternatives.
The government a while back injected TRILLIONS into the stock market in a bid to keep the stock market afloat. Acts like that have gone far to increase the difference in fortunes between main street and wall street.
I think generalizing to the “government” as a whole is wrong. There’s a clearly define part of the government that is unwilling to do anything. Every effort has died in the senate.
The part that did that has been pleading with congress to do something.
They turned the only knob they have. It affected the only thing the knob is able to effect. Why are people acting surprised?
They’ve been clear it’s not a great solution and that Congress needs to do something. That their knob is not the best solution but they’ll do what the best they can.
I'm with you. I live in a very inexpensive apartment, where most people are low-income or on gov't subsidy, or both. I also walk my dog daily and interact with 3-5 different neighbors each day - so I have a view into their lives.
It's bad here. I'd say at least 1/3 have lost their jobs and are having a really hard time finding work. More uber/lyft signs have popped up in cars in the parking lot. One of my neighbors had to move their family of 3 from an already-small 2br to a 1br (2 kids). I don't know how they can make it work. There's more people who sit on the sidewalk curb and drink cheap beer and chain smoke. They're nice folks (I talk to them), but they can't find work.
On the flips side, anyone who can WFH is doing better than ever before. They save money by not driving, eating out, or doing the other things they'd normally do. I've also seen A LOT of brand new cars show up, presumably buying because of low interest rates. WFH folks seem happier than before.
The disparity between the haves and have-nots looks like it's been rapidly accelerating. If you always stay in the HN bubble, you won't see these people. They're 'invisible', but I assure you they are real. They need help, and they're not getting it. It's honestly very, very sad - it makes me sad. My empathy is on overdrive because it's so easy to see myself in that position. If I hadn't chosen tech, I'd be right there with them with a 6-pack, Marlboros, and no hope.
My neighbor runs a restaurant. This is really hard work. He seems to work 7 days a week from late morning till after midnight.
Restaurants are a really nice to have thing when your worn out from work and you do not want to have to think about cooking.
I think there is another aspect to this that goes beyond restaurants and more towards small businesses in general. If we consider that Yelp does more than just restaurant reviews, this fact of 60% closures is going to have a huge impact on state budgets with the loss of tax revenue.
And I'd argue the money is being spent somewhere, so the state won't have a total loss. It's likely offset by the fed stimulus spending, for now.
Somewhat related anecdote: I looked at a liquor store for sale. In a low-mid income area. After consistently growing sales ~$100k/year, 2020 is over a $1M increase over 2019. Of course, seller wants to base multiple off 2020 which is obviously needs an non-recurring item adjustment.
But the blood-suckers at Yelp are doing just fine.
They continue to bleed my wife's family business for 100 bucks a month - an extortion fee - otherwise all our reviews are removed (by which I mean all our positive reviews which are all we have) and are replaced by negative / fake reviews.
I cannot express my deep, unyielding absolute disgust and hatred for Yelp strong enough.
I would love to create an alternative, but I just don't see how viable that is even though I'm more than capable tech/coding-wise.
Edit/additional info: That $100 is the least we can pay a month; there is no lower amount.
No, many pay a lot more. Basically if you see any indicators of company highlights on Yelp, they're paying for it, and they're passing off Yelp's extortion to you by increasing margins. Yelp tries to keep a visible dichotomy on their site by offering "Sponsored Results," but the reality of their listings is that they're almost all sponsored results.
Their reputation is so poor among some circles now that I don't see them staying in power 10 years out. They're going the way of the BBB.
As a result, you're safer searching for certain types of businesses on Google Maps, but even Google has "GOOGLE GUARANTEED" and possibly other paid-for indicators which make me not trust their results.
The market incentives are so bad among rating and business directory sites that I can only imagine that at this point, only a mutual company dedicated to business directory services can survive long-term. I don't think any exist right now.
Although the Google Guaranteed program is paid, it's specific to certain types of businesses (service providers like plumbers and locksmiths). Google performs a background check and verifies the business's license and insurance. It also guarantees customers a refund (up to a cap) if they aren't satisfied.[1]
EDIT: In fact the background check and screening are free. The Guarantee only appears to refer to the refund guarantee.[2]
Disclosure: I work at Google, and knew some people on the team.
Pretty much, if you don't they hassle you with calls and verbal threats. They were highly unpleasant to my wife on more than one call right when we opened. I tell our customers to not review us on Yelp, mostly pointing them to google which is the lesser of two evils in this situation.
Bad reviews and reviews targeting specific employees are nearly impossible to remove from Google. I saw somebody post a rumor that someone was having an affair in a review of her employer and even that took MONTHs to take down.
It’s absolutely incredible that there’s no real recourse for these things either.
I dunno, it doesn't really fit Google's business model and whatever money they could extort from you would be a drop in the bucket compared to other revenue. Besides, wouldn't you realize if you were being extorted?
I wonder if small business owners have journaled or otherwise kept records of those interactions. Do you think small businesses could somehow take on yelp? Does failure to comply with yelp lead to false accusations from their platform?
No but it does mean a higher chance that the legal battle ends up being protracted enough that the smaller party is forced to abandon their case because they can't afford legal fees anymore. Saying that having more money doesn't magically win court battles ignores the ways in which having deeper pockets lets you bog the other side down until they literally can't afford to keep fighting.
It's not magic. Yelp has already won at least one similar case [0]. And like a sibling commenter said, without enough money, you won't even get to court.
If one player has millions and the other has billions, the poorer party can prevail.
If one player has thousands and the other has millions, the larger player can just jam up the legal processes to make it virtually impossible to hold them to account.
It’s a nail and wax salon, probably an easy target as they are typically owned by Asian Americans (which is our case). It’s easy to scare someone with heavy rhetoric when English is their second language.
Maybe a better approach to this problem than a lawsuit or a direct competitor to Yelp is a website for business to log/track Yelps bullshit. A sort of class-action lawsuit gathering point.
Aka, something like 'YelpEvidence.com' where businesses can catalog this routine behavior, and gather the kind of information a law firm could actual use. It might be enough of to force Yelp to change their ways.
Is there a straightforward way to monetize the review business without resorting to what's essentially extortion (BBB, Yelp) or having a feature subsidized by other methods (Google reviews)?
Form a mutual company where businesses listed on the directory pay a nominal fee to list and collectively own the business. Profits are returned back to the owners to keep costs down.
That being said, I've heard everything about the ratings business is a lie, so there seem to be insiders claiming that there's a lot of fuzziness to the problem.
I haven't thought about it too deeply, but i'm wondering if theres just an unsolvable gap between "business owners just bury bad reviews" and "irrational customers can sink small business owners."
I'm assuming that manual curation of reviews is necessary here, it may not be.
I think there are compromises, such as doing away with a star rating review system, and only showing positive reviews.
The unfortunate side effect is you never end up learning which companies to stay away from, because a system like that only focuses on the good, but you need a system that benefits both buyers and sellers.
Not on a micro-level, no, but on a platform level irrational customers can be dealt with. If they consistently rank low across all businesses you just normalize their votes or remove them as outliers. If they vote randomly it will simply average out (both for the user and for the businesses with more than 10 reviews). If they have a particular consistent bias (e.g. against a particular ethnic group, or particular kind of food) clustering could help (if you can label the clusters, I have some ideas). You just have to work on this, but I don't know if anyone in power cares enough?
Also consider that customers themselves might have (non-algorithmic) reputation that will decide if/how they can affect the reputation of others. Pagerank, if you will.
The entire field is crying out for big data, but then drowns in big dollars.
The problem isn't technical. The problem is the lack of stable, profitable business models around reviews that are long term compatible with being honest.
For sure. Most businesses would be happy to pay a dollar or two for traffic sent their way from various channels, including some kind of directory with reviews. You just need to show proof that a given customer came from that directory. A single-use coupon code springs to mind, a fake phone number (one per directory service per business), bounced links embedded inside driving directions, direct link to a page where one can order or reserve a spot and such, etc. Anything that attaches a token to a user will work as a proof.
It's all possible, but simply asking for $100 is a lot easier because the power disparity is so huge.
Then there is the fact that is Facebook ever shows interest they can easily crush the entire market - they don't need to make immediate money and the identity of the reviewers is better known, providing higher quality score.
Probably not at scale. Newspapers, websites, guidebooks are going to be fragmentary and often not very fresh. There used to be actual restaurant guides (like Zagat--which sold to Google) but, like everything else, most people want free. I miss the old Zagat; the demographic and preferences of people who filled out their surveys was probably pretty close to me. There's still a website but it's not what it used to be.
I used to look at yelp reviews before deciding on a restaurant to eat at. I'm now completely ignoring yelp reviews because I don't trust them. Strange I do still trust google reviews. Maybe I shouldn't since I don't know how reliable that is either. But at least I'm not hearing about the same shaddy tactics there.
I use Yelp purely for discovery, and even then, only on Apple Maps (because Yelp provides the data for Apple Maps). I otherwise find that it directs me to higher-priced venues, presumably because those are the only ones that can afford the "value-add." This is not a rap on those venues, to be clear.
I think the local guide system google set up is the only reason I bother to read Google reviews. It's nice to have the guarantee of "here's a review by what is probably a real person who lives near this business and reviewed this out of kindness/boredom"
unless somebody hates on the business, not for their food or whatever, just hating the owner or a person there or whatever. than he makes a negative review and it's impossible to actually remove it. even if the comment just says "i don't like person XYZ". heck most people don't read reviews so they see this 3-3.5 star business and think it sucks (when it only has like 3 reviews)
basically google review is like the opposite of yelp. if somebody posts trash it will be their forever. even after the business died.
Not sure even if Google can be trusted as reviews can be from friends/family, I've seen owners give themselves five stars, and recently saw signs posted on stop signs about buying five star reviews for businesses on Google.
I think this is doom and gloom reporting. Yes these businesses may be closed "permanently", but others will eventually rise in their places. It'll take more than a year but it will happen. The great depression lasted for 4 (or 10 years depending on who you ask). I think we're much better equipped now financially and scientifically to deal with the pandemic (e.g. fast time to market for vaccines). Now it's just a matter of govt mobilizing.
I don't. A small business only has a 50/50 shot of surviving 5 years when there isn't a global pandemic. Since 2011, more businesses have been opening than closing each year [0]. This is worse than normal, but there's a lot of room between that and "gloomy".
> Yes these businesses may be closed "permanently", but others will eventually rise in their places.
Economically and in the aggregate yes. A few years from now, if you want to get a burrito or a bagel, you'll be able to. If the goal of society is to ensure reliable access to relatively interchangeable goods, the current policies support that.
Personally, though, I believe our societal aspirations should be a little higher. Each of these independent restaurants are owned by and employ real people and going out of business is an irrevocable chapter in the narrative of their life. That's a chapter that didn't have to happen for many if the federal government had made different choices.
Likewise, these restaurants are real, tangible parts of the history and fabric of a place. Seattle without Pike Place Market is not the same Seattle. New Orleans without Cafe du Monde is not quite New Orleans. When that history is destroyed, it is gone forever. And when a culture destroys their connection to their past, I think they lose some of their ability to invest in the future.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadJust because you don't enjoy something, don't be so happy for others misfortune please. For some going to restaurants are their highlights of the week and for the people working there, their paychecks
Even before Covid, the sit down restaurant service with it's hostess and waiters and 3 course menus seemed to be going the way of the movie theater. Who has time, who has energy, and who wouldn't be just as happy getting Doordash and eating in the comfort of their home and probably watching a movie at the same time? Fewer and fewer people it turns out.
I think your anecdata is heavy on the anecdote and light on the data.
0: https://www.nrn.com/sales-trends/us-restaurant-sales-reach-r...
Well, I'm just one data point, but I vastly prefer going out for dinner (and sitting down, getting a menu, having a waiter) and going in person to a movie theater to doing those things in my same-old living room that I see every night. I don't know just how in the minority I am, but there are some of us who think it's worth the extra money you pay to have the experience.
Who has time? I do, when I'm on a date. Takeout isn't the same. (When you're married, you can get takeout and take it home, but that's... kind of lame.)
Also, when it's bad weather (hot/cold/rainy), takeout leaves me with the question of where I'm going to go to eat it. Not to the park when it's 35 degrees (whether Farenheit or Celsius). In my car? That gets old. At home? Where?
Often this would allow restaurants to serve upscale food at cheaper prices due to low overhead. Even with their successfully efficient business model, many are closing permanently.
Your comment sounds dramatically bitter.
I'm not saying we should just do that, but in terms of raw efficiency, the only issues is freshness vs. transport/timing etc.
Otherwise - you don't make your own butter, grow your own food, or make your own furniture either.
That is a recent trend due to our governments selective action. Back in the 1929 crash it was the rich wall street types who lost everything and were jumping from tall buildings to their deaths.
The 1929 crash coincided with the great Dust Bowl, where many family farms were destroyed by a dust storm.
All those farmers left their broken farms, and went to the city looking for work... Only to find that the great depression wreaked the cities too. Back then, a much larger portion of America was farmers.
We are seeing a dramatic rise in the suicide rate in the USA in the last few decades as the middle and working classes lose the economic advancements that their parents generation worked to attain. All the while the economic have gain more.
Not saying the non-rich were spared from the great depression.
In my mind it's acting like a liger, but the lion bits are fundamental to the problem, and hence why the tiger is showing.
In ascribing economic inequality to capitalism when economic inequality is a consequence of a captured regulatory regime that prevents the capitalists from engaging in market activity that would rectify the inequality.
> In my mind it's acting like a liger, but the lion bits are fundamental to the problem, and hence why the tiger is showing.
In my mind its acting like a liger but the tiger bits are the cause of the problem so its inappropriate to call it a lion.
The state didn't do that well with Covid, mind you, but the local economy isn't dead, either.
You have to remember that a single empty table (on a Friday/Saturday night) could be enough to make a restaurant lose money before the pandemic. The pandemic's effects are much larger than a single empty table.
Here in Phoenix, AZ, things are basically normal. People have masks on when they're indoors, but businesses (including restaurants and bars) are all open. A rough metric I've been using since march is how far backed up the cars are from the stoplight in front of our house at rush hour, and it's pretty much back to where it was in February.
I've completely lost track of what you can do where in this country, and I think a lot of places are more open than I realize.
Unemployment and suicide is already high here. Many feel a lack of future. We had been doing better but there was some backsliding these past few years. This has just sealed its fate for a decade or more. I'm lucky in my position but many haven't been.
This pandemic to me shows the fundemental problem with a lot of the fancy economic theories we've been living off of and the parasitic "financial engineers" fundamental failing. You can play all the games you want with numbers and spreadsheets to make it look like there is more money than there actually is, but you can't magically change the amount of stuff their is to buy. As such it doesn't matter what measure you use or what KPI you look at for the economy, if there isn't enough crap being produced for people to buy it at a reasonable price there isn't enough crap to buy, and telling people the economy is doing great when I can't afford a roast for dinner doesn't mean jack to me or anyone else.
Instead, by purchasing large amounts of junk bonds, the Fed basically backstopped Wall Street, leading to the all-time highs in the stock market indices. The stock market completely decoupled from the economic reality on main street
I had friends 'in the market' who felt the rebounds after 9/11 were suspect already.
If you want to actually help the economy you helicopter drop stimulus checks. The lower 95% spend more money when they have more, the top 5%/1%/.01% don't see a meaningful difference in their spending power.
I think this is a bit simplistic. This is also how you get hyperinflation.
Perhaps the government should just have a clean separation from money, much like they do from state?
Infact for the last 15 years I have made it a point to monthly expenses be less than 50% of my net income, which meant living with family, having room mate, Driving a very old car or doing other things to lower my expenses.
> The lower 95% spend more money when they have more
This isn't saying that the bottom 95% are incurring massive debt or "living beyond means". It's just saying that if you give someone in the bottom 95% an extra $100, they'll likely spend some of that money. If you give Bezos or Gates or Buffett $100, it's such an inconsequential sum to them that it wouldn't change their spending
They spend it on consumption and bid up the price of inputs while the people who own the businesses collect profit. I’m not sure thats any better than what the govt is doing now.
And when demand increases, temporarily prices may spike. Usually in a free market, supply increases and price can go down. That's pretty fundamental.
> People can eat?
Figure out how people can eat without someone working to produce and deliver that food and you can solve a lot of problems.
1) Inflation. You're living it. The stock market is inflationary. Printing money creates inflation. Yet somehow they will make everyone believe 2020 saw 2% inflation. The market is telling us it expects inflation to be higher; maybe. You don't want to hold cash or low interest bonds going into an inflationary period.
2) Global demand for US equities. If there is a global financial crises/disruption, and there should be, people view US stocks as safer than all other stocks. Money managers would be moving out of other stocks and into US stocks. Demand drives up price. It needs no further rationalization than risk management with limited optionality of where to put their money. US stock prices could be ridiculously overpriced on fundamentals but may still be viewed as safer than their emerging market alternatives.
They turned the only knob they have. It affected the only thing the knob is able to effect. Why are people acting surprised?
They’ve been clear it’s not a great solution and that Congress needs to do something. That their knob is not the best solution but they’ll do what the best they can.
It's bad here. I'd say at least 1/3 have lost their jobs and are having a really hard time finding work. More uber/lyft signs have popped up in cars in the parking lot. One of my neighbors had to move their family of 3 from an already-small 2br to a 1br (2 kids). I don't know how they can make it work. There's more people who sit on the sidewalk curb and drink cheap beer and chain smoke. They're nice folks (I talk to them), but they can't find work.
On the flips side, anyone who can WFH is doing better than ever before. They save money by not driving, eating out, or doing the other things they'd normally do. I've also seen A LOT of brand new cars show up, presumably buying because of low interest rates. WFH folks seem happier than before.
The disparity between the haves and have-nots looks like it's been rapidly accelerating. If you always stay in the HN bubble, you won't see these people. They're 'invisible', but I assure you they are real. They need help, and they're not getting it. It's honestly very, very sad - it makes me sad. My empathy is on overdrive because it's so easy to see myself in that position. If I hadn't chosen tech, I'd be right there with them with a 6-pack, Marlboros, and no hope.
Restaurants are a really nice to have thing when your worn out from work and you do not want to have to think about cooking.
I think there is another aspect to this that goes beyond restaurants and more towards small businesses in general. If we consider that Yelp does more than just restaurant reviews, this fact of 60% closures is going to have a huge impact on state budgets with the loss of tax revenue.
And I'd argue the money is being spent somewhere, so the state won't have a total loss. It's likely offset by the fed stimulus spending, for now.
Somewhat related anecdote: I looked at a liquor store for sale. In a low-mid income area. After consistently growing sales ~$100k/year, 2020 is over a $1M increase over 2019. Of course, seller wants to base multiple off 2020 which is obviously needs an non-recurring item adjustment.
They continue to bleed my wife's family business for 100 bucks a month - an extortion fee - otherwise all our reviews are removed (by which I mean all our positive reviews which are all we have) and are replaced by negative / fake reviews.
I cannot express my deep, unyielding absolute disgust and hatred for Yelp strong enough.
I would love to create an alternative, but I just don't see how viable that is even though I'm more than capable tech/coding-wise.
Edit/additional info: That $100 is the least we can pay a month; there is no lower amount.
Their reputation is so poor among some circles now that I don't see them staying in power 10 years out. They're going the way of the BBB.
As a result, you're safer searching for certain types of businesses on Google Maps, but even Google has "GOOGLE GUARANTEED" and possibly other paid-for indicators which make me not trust their results.
The market incentives are so bad among rating and business directory sites that I can only imagine that at this point, only a mutual company dedicated to business directory services can survive long-term. I don't think any exist right now.
EDIT: In fact the background check and screening are free. The Guarantee only appears to refer to the refund guarantee.[2]
Disclosure: I work at Google, and knew some people on the team.
1. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7549288?hl=en
2. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6226575?hl=en&r...
It’s absolutely incredible that there’s no real recourse for these things either.
If the pattern is that predictable, I'm curious if you could gather enough data to successfully sue Yelp for defamation?
You don't know that. No one knows that. Having money doesn't magically mean automatically winning court battles.
0 - http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/09/02/11...
If one player has thousands and the other has millions, the larger player can just jam up the legal processes to make it virtually impossible to hold them to account.
Aka, something like 'YelpEvidence.com' where businesses can catalog this routine behavior, and gather the kind of information a law firm could actual use. It might be enough of to force Yelp to change their ways.
Did they tell you this outright?
Connect the dots.
That being said, I've heard everything about the ratings business is a lie, so there seem to be insiders claiming that there's a lot of fuzziness to the problem.
I'm assuming that manual curation of reviews is necessary here, it may not be.
The unfortunate side effect is you never end up learning which companies to stay away from, because a system like that only focuses on the good, but you need a system that benefits both buyers and sellers.
Also consider that customers themselves might have (non-algorithmic) reputation that will decide if/how they can affect the reputation of others. Pagerank, if you will.
The entire field is crying out for big data, but then drowns in big dollars.
It's all possible, but simply asking for $100 is a lot easier because the power disparity is so huge.
Then there is the fact that is Facebook ever shows interest they can easily crush the entire market - they don't need to make immediate money and the identity of the reviewers is better known, providing higher quality score.
basically google review is like the opposite of yelp. if somebody posts trash it will be their forever. even after the business died.
You don't think that's gloomy?
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/Frequently-...
Economically and in the aggregate yes. A few years from now, if you want to get a burrito or a bagel, you'll be able to. If the goal of society is to ensure reliable access to relatively interchangeable goods, the current policies support that.
Personally, though, I believe our societal aspirations should be a little higher. Each of these independent restaurants are owned by and employ real people and going out of business is an irrevocable chapter in the narrative of their life. That's a chapter that didn't have to happen for many if the federal government had made different choices.
Likewise, these restaurants are real, tangible parts of the history and fabric of a place. Seattle without Pike Place Market is not the same Seattle. New Orleans without Cafe du Monde is not quite New Orleans. When that history is destroyed, it is gone forever. And when a culture destroys their connection to their past, I think they lose some of their ability to invest in the future.