Are you seeing cracks in society in your city?

Lone_Wolf
Arizona
Hard to believe 50m people can be unemployed within a matter of weeks and not start to see cracks in society.

Phoenix is humming back to life. I'm seeing a much greater police presence driving around, seemingly more traffic accidents and, interestingly, many flat bed trucks carrying newer cars that I suspect are repos.

I'm not noticing an increase in homeless people at this time.

Are you seeing any symptoms of the slide into a depression in your city?

22 comments

Latest

Papi_Chulo
5 years ago
Not that I can tell.

What I assume will likely happen is people becoming more-indebted for a while - perhaps a certain# of people filing for bankruptcy as a way to get out of the whole.
Papi_Chulo
5 years ago
^ hole not which
max_starr
5 years ago
Shootings seem to be up here in Cleveland. A lot.
aleccorbett
5 years ago
Hot take. Most of the people that got fired are working service jobs that aren't actually that important. If they were they probably wouldn't actually have been fired. We have some mechanical and electrical engineers on our team that we are keeping on, even if they can't go into the lab, since thy are so valuable they are worth keeping. But many of our facilities are allowed to remain open.

This is why I think the whole, "Economic impact thing" is a bit overblown. The economy will suck but things will be fine in the long run. EVen medium run things will be close to normal.
shadowcat
5 years ago
No but live in a small town of 15,000. A suburb of Atlanta. All city and county offices are going to open tomorrow. Construction of new businesses has continued since it is outside work. We have one of the largest movie studios in the U.S. and the construction of new homes near it has doubled. French style town houses. My hair saloon opened the other day. I got my property tax assessment last week and was shocked at my assessed value. Was considering filing an appeal. So I went on line to see what the latest property sales in my neighbor hood were and was shocked again. 4 houses in my subdivision sold for more than my assessment. I'm not considering moving even though my house has gone up $85K since I bought it 5 years ago. No increase in crime. Almost all restaurants are open for at least take out. No strip clubs in the county though and probably never will be.
Warrior15
5 years ago
So far, people have just loaded up their credit cards. Many landlords have been forgiving. And stimulus checks have gone out. But those things will only last so long. That is why we have to get this economy back to going again and soon. Because we may have major long term problems if we don't. The governors in the states that are not opening up are doing their citizens a terrible injustice.
Lone_Wolf
5 years ago
Many of the talking heads are saying best case is 60% of unemployed get their job back upon reopening.

If true, that would leave aprox 20m unemployed. Benefits running out in the next few weeks. Absolutely untenable.
Player11
5 years ago
I think it will get worse once realization sinks in that many will not recover income they had. This is not something that is going away anytime soon. I expect a lot of bankruptcies, cc defaults.
Subraman
5 years ago
No changes here. I expect it will take weeks to months
whodey
5 years ago
You probably won't notice an increase in homelessness yet because most areas are not processing eviction or foreclosure cases right now. That will likely come this summer.

Luckily my area hasn't been hit too bad so no noticeable changes around here. Things in Ohio are slowly reopening and getting back to semi-normal. Still restrictions in place based on social distancing and a few types of business that haven't reopened yet but getting better.

I live in a very rural area and my township has a population of a whopping 4,735 within it's 60 square mile area. With less than 80 people/sq mi social distancing wasn't nearly as big of a problem as places like New York City with their 28,000 people/sq mi.
twentyfive
5 years ago
Nothing seems different around here, trouble won't ramp up until everyone starts going out of their homes because they want to, not because the authorities say they can, being real clear about the situation, just because there are crowds at the beach, doesn't mean that will translate into diners willing to eat a meal in a restaurant, I'm seeing restaurants that are opening with very few patrons for lunch or dinner, and still no lines at the drive through for breakfast, it's going to take a while to get out of this.
rickdugan
5 years ago
All of this will take a while to play out. Right now everything is on pause, but the expanded unemployment and PPP money won't last forever. Also, eviction and repo prohibitions cannot go on for much longer, nor can commercial landlords and consumer lenders extend payment deferrals indefinitely.

Eventually the economic ramifications are going to have to be allowed to take their natural course. That is when we will really start to see and feel the full extent of the damage caused by this mess.
Papi_Chulo
5 years ago
It's hard to say who is really struggling - the fed has really pumped $$$ in - how effective it is getting into people's hands IDK - e.g. if folks are able to get all the unemployment-benefits being touted, the avg person should be able to get by, and lower earners may actually be coming out ahead - as has been posted b/f, the fed is kicking in an extra $600 per week of unemployment benefits on top of state benefits, in many states that can total ~1K/week (~4k/month) tax-free $$$ (in several states more than that) - for certain folks in very high COL areas that may still not be enough, but one would think the avg person can at least get by (with a bit of belt-tightening) on ~4k/month, and for the lower wage earners 4k/month is a raise; again all this predicated on people actually getting those benefits (AFAIK it is retroactive but not sure if that is universal to all states) - i.e. if folks are able to get their hands on those benefits, there'll likely won't be in an unbearable situation and can likely get by for now (and of course this can't go on indefinitely). A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about a salon-owner that got PPP and she thought her employees were gonna be ecstatic that she could pay their salary - instead her employees were pissed b/c they stood to get more via the current unemployment benefits - I think the lady was in Washington-state which has better than avg state-benefits (to which the additional $600 fed benefit makes for a decent amount) - I also saw a restaurant owner being interviewed whom was ready to open his restaurant but felt he was gonna have a hard time hiring people b/c under the current conditions he wasn't competing against the restaurant down-the-street but competing against the government (in terms of pay).

The link below shows a list of unemployment benefits per state - some are not so great (often southern states; and some are decent especially when the $600 fed benefit is added) - the lowest I noticed is Mississippi at $235/wk, and the highest Massachusetts at $1,220/wk if one has dependents:

https://fileunemployment.org/unemploymen…
Lone_Wolf
5 years ago
@Papi - that's a good explanation why things aren't coming off the rails.

The risk of course is all this social support will be ending about the same time. A quicky approaching cliff.
gSteph
5 years ago
Just the last time a plumber was over.
Eeeek. But ok now.
nicespice
5 years ago
Apparently Mackie is 😝
skibum609
5 years ago
When they cut social security benefits; raise taxes 50% and the Democrats keep encouraging foreign welfare cases to sneak in and get taxpayer money, we will see a shooting war. This is the first mile of a 2,000 mile trip and an already failing country will fail quicker.
Player11
5 years ago
No
BBBC
5 years ago
I saw a crack and a full moon at RickDugan's house
BBBC
5 years ago
And then desertscrub tried to show me his, but his ass is so white I was blinded and saw spots
JamesSD
5 years ago
I definitely hope Donnie and friends don't cut social security like they clearly want to.
bigman226
5 years ago
Your average eviction will take 4 months to process if a tenant can pay at 1 month during that period, longer if tenant fights in court
You must be a member to leave a comment.Join Now
Got something to say?
Start your own discussion