Pandemic inequalities are driven by fear

Grado de dificultad: 3 (Por el idioma).

Columnista: Roberto

This is about a revealing way to analyze new statistics about expenses. We, poor dummies, understand what it is about (fear of #pandemic), others don’t seem to.

The purpose of a washing machine

There was a weird article, dated June 17^th, on the New York Times’ webpage:

The Rich Cut Their Spending. That Has Hurt All the Workers Who Count on It

If you read it on a superficial level, you’ll think that rich people are out of touch (which they are, but that is not the point).

What struck me was the shallow analysis associated to financial statistics.

The figures and graphics shown in that article show that services are the most impacted.

It was completely predictable: Rich people spend less money because they are staying home.

Let’s be clear: rich people are more afraid of losing their job and their wealth that any others. So, what do they do then? They spend less money, far less.

The spending categories of very wealthy people are much more diverse than ours. Many of these costs can simply disappear, to save money.

I guess that many wealthy people are just discovering the purpose of their washing machine.

Note: This is supposed to be a sarcasm, but I wouldn’t be so sure it is one.

They won’t get out to a bar or a restaurant. So, no more tips, no more drunken nights, no more parties.

A “Public Health Problem”

Ironically, it also shows that the “flow” theory somehow works, in a twisted way.

It works in the direct neighborhood of the wealthy.

It doesn’t work in a reliable way, though. The distance they have always put between them and us was already a warning.

We, who live down in the real world, already knew about their insecurities.

Financial analysts don’t. They are surprised.

In the NYT article, a comment from an “Economist Researcher” states:

“If the underlying problem is that people are afraid of interacting in close proximity, and they’re afraid to go shopping in certain ways, then the only way to get things back to normal is going to be to solve the public health problem,” said Mr. Friedman, an economist at Brown and a researcher on the project.

This is a damning admission. Does the guy who says that know we are in the middle of a pandemic.

Is there any public health problem? I thought we all knew the answer to that question, not in Wallstreet, apparently.

And they also fail to understand that the effet they are seeing is a consequence of the increasing financial inequality.

The idea of an “autoregulated ecosystem” is a joke that does resist any corrosive event like this pandemic.

Wealthy people are driven by their fear … of us.