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ProfessorGAC

(65,012 posts)
9. It Was Definitely NOT A Criticism!
Sun May 17, 2020, 04:40 PM
May 2020

As to your question, yes, if... (I know that's squishy)
The thing the " hurry & open" gang chooses to ignore is that dead people are no longer consumers.
Consumption is 69% of GDP.
So, even a half percent loss of deaths is a 0.35% nominal GDP loss. And there's no chance of later rebound. So GDP does not recover absent a large increase in birth rate.
Consumer product companies & durable goods manufacturers would bear the brunt. This is compounded by the fact that older (not elderly) people do the most consuming. (No more mortgage payments, homestead exemptions on taxes, etc. frees up income for spending)
So the actual downward pressure on cars, & consumer companies like P&G, Lever, Colgate, and associated retailers see a contraction.
I'd also see telecoms hit, because people over 50 still tend to have cable, internet, land line & cell. Those people die in large numbers and its 10s of millions per month in lost revenues.
If bigger states do it smart, we won't likely see a correction, but from the economists I trust, (they don't make "cubic" models predicting zero deaths by May 15), a recession is almost a certainty.

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