re: #101 Romantic Heretic

This morning I read an article in Forbes that blamed inflation on COVID lockdowns. This ‘interrupted the flow of goods’, ‘kept people from working’ or some such.

They did not, of course, note that millions of workers dying would have a worse effect on the economy.

Lockdowns interrupted supply chain to be sure, but when you had significant numbers of covid hospitalizations and deaths at food processing plants, that caused major disruptions. When you saw lots of customer facing positions getting hit hard by covid, that caused people to say FTS and quit jobs where their lives were not valued as anything other than a commodity to be fungible with anyone else. We’re still seeing that fallout as people realize that a lot of jobs are not paying what they should. People quit the workforce entirely, and still others have gone WFH that reorients how cities and regions are coping with the new normal.

Supply chain will ease. Just in time shipping is fine under normal circumstances, but covid pandemic showed all of its shortcomings. Globalization limitations also reared up their head too - relying on far flung distribution channels means that a pandemic can screw up supply unless you can get things local (or vice versa, depending on where you’re at and what you need).