Question

Provide a short discussion of the impact on the US economy due to the coronavirus crisis. Address issues like impact on employment, economic growth and the stock market.

Answer 1

The elderly are a bigger proportion of the population and the vote. The country's median age rises around two years per decade, owing to increasing life expectancy and declining fertility. This causes raising pressures on families, state and other budgets, due to the increasing retirement and health care costs. There will be less money to pass to them, and as life expectancy grows, them will be older and older until they inherit anything from their parents, if they are still fortunate enough to have parents with enough income and savings. Economic disasters, like pandemics, intensify those tendencies.

Millennials are scarred by years of economic decline, wage hardship and financial uncertainty. As a consequence of the Great Recession, we are now emerging from losing money and opportunity. The upcoming recession would significantly hurt finance and purchasing power. And that Generation Z would struggle with high student loan balances, as younger millennials did, while entering a hostile and competitive labor market

Since inflation is a cumulative measure of many prices, the few products that are increasing due to supply bottlenecks and growing demand (including medical supplies and food, due to stockpiling) are not large enough to drive the overall inflation numbers that will remain subdued. We may be heading for deflation, but if the government gives employees a tax cut and offers payments, as it should, to those who lose their gig and other incomes, it will support the market.