Post covid-19 economics , fast recover or slow ?

[parmalee]

You may be right about the veggies. And yes I'm afraid the Anglophone countries have some unfortunate common dietary heritage. But at least when people cook their own stuff they can't so easily load it up with salt, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats and all the other shit that industrially prepared food contains for the convenience of the manufacturer. In the UK it was interesting what disappeared off the supermarket shelves apart from toilet paper: pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, tinned fish and vegetables, cooking oil, eggs and flour. The flour millers say domestic consumption has doubled. If that's what people are eating, they are not doing too badly.

Here in the U.S., produce sections in markets seem unchanged, but all those other things you listed are pretty picked over or wholly absent. What I am noting is that people seem to be "panic hoarding" non-perishables. No hard data, as yet, so it's mostly anecdotal, but still...

In the U.S., households spend roughly the same amount annually on eating out (and this includes simply getting coffee or alcohol) as they do on groceries. Personally, I find that mind-boggling--even when I was an urban dweller, I mostly ate at home. Still, I do not expect the restaurant industry to recover quickly. Proximity to countless strangers aside, I would expect people to have some reservations about consuming food handled by strangers only moments prior.

 

[exchemist]

Here in the U.S., produce sections in markets seem unchanged, but all those other things you listed are pretty picked over or wholly absent. What I am noting is that people seem to be "panic hoarding" non-perishables. No hard data, as yet, so it's mostly anecdotal, but still...

In the U.S., households spend roughly the same amount annually on eating out (and this includes simply getting coffee or alcohol) as they do on groceries. Personally, I find that mind-boggling--even when I was an urban dweller, I mostly ate at home. Still, I do not expect the restaurant industry to recover quickly. Proximity to countless strangers aside, I would expect people to have some reservations about consuming food handled by strangers only moments prior.

I agree. Ditto for travel and the hotel industry.

But it feels really bad. We are going to come out of this impoverished, and in many countries the leaders are people that have flourished by encouraging resentment against the outside world, which is a recipe for wars. The US is in a uniquely dangerous position, due to a total breakdown of national unity and purpose. The war risk there could be internal.

 

[river]

You may be right about the veggies. And yes I'm afraid the Anglophone countries have some unfortunate common dietary heritage. But at least when people cook their own stuff they can't so easily load it up with salt, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats and all the other shit that industrially prepared food contains for the convenience of the manufacturer. In the UK it was interesting what disappeared off the supermarket shelves apart from toilet paper: pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, tinned fish and vegetables, cooking oil, eggs and flour. The flour millers say domestic consumption has doubled. If that's what people are eating, they are not doing too badly.

Depends on the quality of the flour consumed . Organic or GMO Wheat based flour .