Piles And Piles of Cash

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No doubt this whole Coronavirus pandemic has had a significant short term economic impact. Both in terms of the now unemployed due to certain businesses being shuttered during the crisis, and the lack of people's ability to spend money the same way that they were able to just before this crisis took hold. There is simply less money entering the economy and landing into the bank accounts of certain businesses, and certainly certain employees. However. There is still quite a significant amount of economic activity still occurring. And while there may be many people currently unemployed, those who are still able to work are still earning, and are potentially earning at levels that they may not have been before. Truckers are working around the clock. Nurses and other medical staff are working around the clock and being paid enormous bonuses to work extra shifts, plus making significant amounts of overtime. Retail workers like grocery store employees and department store employees are still at work and a lot of those people are also earning higher wages due to overtime and extra shifts. Some businesses are even paying bonuses to their employees for their extra work. For example, my wife works part time at a grocery store in the pharmacy, and she was paid a $250 bonus. Full time employees received a $500 bonus. There are stimulus checks coming to almost every American. And a lot of those stimulus checks will go into the hands of those who have not necessarily experienced a financial hardship due to Coronavirus. Consider that even if the current unemployment number is at 10 million, the workforce consists of 65% of the total US population which is about 325 million people. This means that 211.25 million people are still working and earning paychecks through this pandemic. Many of those people will receive something from the stimulus. On top of everything else, in the United States, it happens to be tax season. And that means that roughly 50% of the population will be receiving a refund of some amount or another. Folks, this is a ton of cash that is being stockpiled on the sidelines if for no other reason than discretionary spending is not as much of a possibility right now due to Coronavirus. This money must go somewhere, eventually. And the fact is, that it will go somewhere. And that somewhere is directly into the economy. Some will bolster their savings, no doubt. But many will not. What does this mean for the long term economic situation, at least as it applies to the United States? Jobs will return, and jobs will return in droves. Because while all this cash sitting on the sidelines is reinjected into the marketplace, someone will be needed to make the goods, provide the services, and man the businesses. I still stand firm that part of what makes this situation more plausible, that is, a very swift and fast recovery economically, is the fact that we were hit by this pandemic at a time when the economy was in the best shape it has ever been historically. That presents a solid foundation. It helped us to also avoid a much more devastating impact since the economy was doing so well just before this hit, that people actually had a little bit more money to perform a little bit of self-rescue when jobs began to be affected. We still have a bit of a long road ahead of us. No doubt about it. But I think the future, at least from an economical standpoint, looks extremely promising. You simply cannot convince me that all of these piles and piles of cash are just going to sit around collecting dust. It's got to go somewhere. And it will. As a result, we may actually come out of this whole thing even stronger than we were before.