Shaved Monkey wrote:It will be interesting to see when we have all spent a few months gazing into our navels and contemplating our mortality making decisions on whats really important and whats not, whether we come out at the other end the same voracious consumers we started this journey as.
When you meet someone who has gone through the Great Depression they generally remain frugal for life.
Good thoughts.
Re personal experience and some reading -- parents, and a large proportion of people the age of my parents -- to SOME extent re the great depression. Not the majority, but a significant minority to be sure ARE compelled, through experience or fear or habit or teaching -- to be frugal FOR LIFE. And I mean FRUGAL in a way that makes a modern "frugal" person seem like a total PIKER!
Re observing, via lots of articles, the Great Recession -- wildly disappointing (to one who inherited/absorbed his Great Depression parents' extreme frugality while growing up). The VAST majority of people who were talking being long term frugal, etc. after the Great Recession -- within a few years once things seemed normal again -- BANG, back to the "good life", with little savings and LOTS of borrowing.
The Great Depression lasted for a LONG TIME -- a good two decades or so, re looking at a long term S&P 500 chart, to get an idea of the stock market, and thus "prosperity". The mess didn't really end until AFTER the 2nd world war. So about 20 years of pain (interrupted by a couple spikes of apparent recovery) would leave anyone scarred, perhaps for life.
Compare to the Great Recession, which while painful, was only really bad for a couple years or so. Assuming vaccines work, same thing for COVID-19 after perhaps 3 or 4 years (best guess -- opinions will vary, of course). So, respectfully, I have serious doubts whether this will actually cause a high proportion of people to be frugal for life.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500 ... chart-dataSo will things like watching cat videos, etc. on Youtube be enough to take most of the sting from a lack of freedom for months to maybe a couple years in total (hopefully worst case)? I suspect that in the end it will -- though I'll freely admit I could be wrong.
And I'll also admit, living alone and being use to not liking crowds and being relatively anti-social, the isolation doesn't bother me much. The lack of freedom to do what I want when I want (as a retiree for over a decade, I got used to that, even though what I wanted was simple things, like going out to eat, for a walk or drive, etc) is bothering me (re getting used to it) FAR more than the actual isolation, given that I have the internet and the phone.
SO, I'll freely admit that my estimate of the psychic pain from social distancing might be very badly skewed. (Hey, we ALL have our shortcomings).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
