<story><title>Coronavirus-afflicted global economy is almost certainly in recession</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-afflicted-global-economy-is-almost-certainly-in-recession-11586867402</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>analog31</author><text>Just reading the headline, what this means to me is that the &amp;quot;world economy&amp;quot; is doing a lot better than most of us are doing as individuals. I&amp;#x27;m on a 25% furlough. Sales from my side business have dropped to zero. My other side job has dropped to zero. Among working people, I&amp;#x27;m one of the lucky. My family actually has a little bit of money in the kitty.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The economy&amp;quot; refers to a system that&amp;#x27;s primarily designed to concentrate and protect private wealth, and a 3% loss of private wealth isn&amp;#x27;t all that bad at all. The people who are really hurting have no wealth to lose.&lt;p&gt;I hope an outcome of this crisis is that we start to think about &amp;quot;the economy&amp;quot; in more humane terms.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xvedejas</author><text>But when we&amp;#x27;re measuring the &amp;quot;world economy&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s not like we&amp;#x27;re measuring the heights of the stacks of gold behind scrooge mcduck&amp;#x27;s coffers, right? These numbers represent things like society&amp;#x27;s ability to make products people want, and peoples&amp;#x27; willingness to spend their savings on things that are useful (instead of stuffing it in their mattress). The effects on labor are terrible, and your furlough reflects that. I personally was recently laid off, and likewise many individuals are hit much harder than 3%. But it&amp;#x27;s not like we should wish that other parts of the economy were hit as badly. None of it is good.</text></comment>
<story><title>Coronavirus-afflicted global economy is almost certainly in recession</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-afflicted-global-economy-is-almost-certainly-in-recession-11586867402</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>analog31</author><text>Just reading the headline, what this means to me is that the &amp;quot;world economy&amp;quot; is doing a lot better than most of us are doing as individuals. I&amp;#x27;m on a 25% furlough. Sales from my side business have dropped to zero. My other side job has dropped to zero. Among working people, I&amp;#x27;m one of the lucky. My family actually has a little bit of money in the kitty.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The economy&amp;quot; refers to a system that&amp;#x27;s primarily designed to concentrate and protect private wealth, and a 3% loss of private wealth isn&amp;#x27;t all that bad at all. The people who are really hurting have no wealth to lose.&lt;p&gt;I hope an outcome of this crisis is that we start to think about &amp;quot;the economy&amp;quot; in more humane terms.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdavis703</author><text>The GDP (i.e. “the economy”) is a measure of all goods &amp;amp; services produced and consumed. Even if someone is paycheck to paycheck or hand to mouth, this means less goods and services they can make and consume.&lt;p&gt;If this response was about crashing financial markets the blasé tone would be OK (ignoring that many retirees rely on pensions or bank accounts tied to financial markets). But this is about the entire economy.</text></comment>