Posted on 07/30/2020 9:22:21 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 10.1% in the second quarter of 2020, according to economic data released on Thursday.
The data from Germany’s Federal Statistic Office comes amid fears of a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic across Europe.
“This was the sharpest decline since the quarterly GDP calculations for Germany began in 1970,” the statistics office said.
Compared with last year, Thursday’s figures were even worse. GDP was down 11.7% for April to June, with an overall collapse of exports and household spending alongside an increase in state spending.
“It’s clear that it was a really horrible quarter for Germany,” DW’s Chelsey Dulaney said. “We saw declines basically across the entire economy.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
Suicides and other “deaths of despair” will be outpacing deaths from the virus very shortly.
we are going to slip into a world wide depression soon if we don’t stop this nonsense! 10’s of millions will die during a depression, wars usually follow
Germany vs United States vis a vis Covid-19
Germany: 2nd Quarter GDP contraction of ~10%
About 9.2K dead or 110/1 million people.
United States: 2nd Q GDP contraction of ~30%
About 150K dead or 466/1 million people.
Duetchland Uber Alles apparently.
If you ask that one person out of a thousand how much should be spent to save their life from the virus, they might have no limit.
If you ask a doctor, how much should be spent on that one person out of a thousand who might die from the virus, doctors are in the business of saving and extending life. They are going to be willing to spend whatever is available to spend, no questions. This isn't a knock on physicians, but unless it is coming out of their own time or pocket, their answer is likely to be far more than what an individual might be willing to spend.
If you ask the 999 other people how much should be spent to save the life of that one single person who will die, the result may vary, but...it will be different.
If you say to those 999 people that if they each give one dollar that person's life could be saved, people would pull out dollar bills and likely ask "Do you want another dollar to save another life?"
Even if you said ten dollars, a lot of people might have the exact same response.
But if you ask those people to give a thousand dollars to save a life, people might ask "Well, who is it? Are they going to cure cancer or something?"
And if you said it would take their entire savings, whatever they had, most people would simply say they couldn't afford it.
And...if you told them that it was going to take your life savings, and the life savings of everyone you know, your children, your grandchildren, and their children too, that it was going to plunge the world into a universal depression with no hope, suicides up, wars started quality of life destroyed, starvation...most people would positively refuse and not only say no (even if THEIR life was one of those people who might well die) they might well get angry and say "Who the hell are you to go around and ask people this?"
Now take that whole scenario, direct this question not just to YOU, but to EVERY citizen of this country, and put the power of the government to enforce the making of laws, destroying of businesses, and the taking of wealth to do this regardless of your views...what would you have then?
Because that last line is exactly where we are right now, IMO. Anyone who thinks we can keep destroying the wealth of our nation by closing everything down, and keep cutting trillion dollar checks on top of what we already DON'T have is not only an idiot, but in many cases, is an active enemy of this Republic.
Often both.
I feel exactly as you do on this. This is utter insanity. I cannot believe we are willing as a nation to submissively self immolate ourselves over this.
Astonishing.
About the same as ours.
You made a classic mistake. The USA's GDP drop of 32% is ANNUALIZED data. The quarterly drop is around 8%, much lower than Germany's drop in GDP.
The quoted US rate was annualized, so it was about 8% for the quarter. I din’t know if the German rate was year vs. year, quarter vs. quarter, or quarter vs. quarter annualuzed.
Well stated and depressing. It’s possible that we are headed for some very dark times even if we correct course right now. A lot of damage has already been done.
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but it only helps to use the most up to data Infection Fatality Rate number, which is 0.64 - 0.66%, rather than 0.1%.
As for how much a life is worth, the US government already places a dollar value on our heads. In fact, it varies with each agency (FDA is the lowest at $7.9 million and the Department of Transportation is the highest at $9.6 million), but the average is about $9 million per human life. Using that figure times ~150,000 deaths, you get $1.35 Trillion. So we’ve done WAY more economic harm to ourselves in the response than what the US government figures suggest would be worthwhile.
Sensible precautions like washing hands, avoiding crowds, and wearing masks while indoors in public places are good, easy, and cheap. Shutdowns and lockdowns are pointless and destructive.
I just grabbed that out of the air, because...at some point is the principle, not the number. Besides, it is far likelier that the actual mortality rate is far lower, given the amount of false positives, and the real number of people who have the virus but are low-symptomatic or not at all symptomatic.
If this had a mortality rate of 40%, we wouldn’t be having this kind of discussion.
The country might still be shut down, but the rotting bodies in streets and houses would drive home the point that you shouldn’t go to work or vacation, but that you should stay in your house with tape along the doors and a gun in case anyone comes to the door that you don’t want to talk to.
To me, the mask is a symbol of compliance with government, business, or employer wishes. I wear it when I need to. And working in healthcare, I wash my hands dozens of times a day and don’t touch my face, nose, or eyes unless I have just washed them.
I don’t think you and I are far off in this.
It is dark and depressing. and being somewhat knowledgeable of history, when the stock market crashed in October 1929, the country kept on going for a year or two with a degree of relative normalcy on momentum alone until really bad things began happening everywhere.
My beef is that we are not making that value judgement of human life at a societal level or in an intelligent way.
We are letting people make those choices who have ill intent (Democrats, the Media, and the Left in general) or people like President Trump, business leaders and such who are being pushed in a direction by those same parties with ill intent.
I am impressed with the US economy, only an 8%-9% QUARTERLY drop in US GDP after all the reckless, destructive bogus lockdowns/shutdowns? 90% of the economy is fine!!! Is this all the fascist have?
I am always the optimist, and I fully appreciate your take on that. I mean that, because there is enough gloom and doom to spread around.
I admit that I am not looking at the specific numbers...I don’t know enough about them, how they are derived or anything to draw my own conclusions.
I tend to look at things through an empirical prism when I am in that situation, such at employment numbers during the Obama years. They said everything was fine, but my empirical view was that I was seeing a lot of belts tightened, people I knew losing their jobs, etc.
With this, I tend to be on the pessimistic side that we are going to come out smelling like a rose, but...I am fortified by keeping that open as an option...the “V” shaped recovery...:)
Look at it this way, they ( and you know who they are ) are trying to destroy the economy and they only managed ( so far ) to make a 10% dent in it. That is something to be positive about.
I like that...more in line with ME...
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