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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What do you think the economy will look like over the next few years?

31 replies

AbsentmindedWoman · 08/02/2021 20:41

What are the biggest ramifications of covid going to be do you think? What industries will find it hardest to recover?

Globally, what do you think will happen?

Obviously, nobody knows. But I'd be keen to hear what knowledgeable folk think may be on the cards.

OP posts:
Tealightsandd · 06/08/2021 14:16

Robots are going to take a lot of the jobs. Covid has simply accelerated that. Hopefully the talk of taxing them will be achievable.

If fulltime WFH becomes permanent (and the genie is perfectly capable of going back - as other countries have demonstrated), it will lead to significant increase in inequality. Lower standards too. It's been terrible from a client and customer perspective.

Many office type employment and career opportunities will be limited to the privileged minority who can afford a suitable WFH environment and are at a settled stage of life
It will be devastating for the poor, insecurely housed, and the young.

Permanent WFH will hit public services as hard or even harder than George Osborne's failed austerity politics. Office based industries contribute hundreds of billions to the national economy.

WFH will harm the lower income groups particularly badly. Sandwich and coffee shop workers, cobblers, dry cleaners, bus, train, and taxi drivers, postroom operatives, office maintenance and office cleaners. Hardworking but low income groups. Millions of jobs and livelihoods at risk.

House prices won't crash. However, if a pp really is right re possessions there is a decent and moral solution (whether it happens is quite another issue). Ideal opportunity for the government to step in to tackle the serious public health emergency of homelessness and insecure housing. In the capital of homelessness alone, London, 165,000 people are homeless. Housing homeless families and vulnerable individuals in expensive temporary accommodation costs the taxpayer billions. Government could buy up the repossessions - to use for desperately needed social housing.

SmokeyDevil · 06/08/2021 15:02

I dunno if wfh becoming more common will affect other services to be honest. Maybe on transport, might have less trains and buses (not like we had many up here to begin with), but retail and hospitality not so much. People just get things sent to their homes up here, including their lunches. Cafes and restaurants have moved to delivery services, some of them have even closed down their shops and do just delivery now. Businesses need to adapt to the changing working conditions really. Can't expect it to stay the same all the time.

Not sure the housing market will collapse. Think it's just going to become more exclusive. If you aren't on the housing ladder by now, unless you come into a lot of money or move area, you may never get on it. That sucks.

Pazuzu · 06/08/2021 15:29

Hopefully this will actually kickstart a review of the high street. I doubt it will recover in it's current form due to WFH so it's time to reinvent what is left, not just pine over the high street of 30 odd years ago.

Yes, there's been a lot of spending but in a lot of ways it's been justified. Think some on here though would have been just as happy to come on here slagging off the nasty Tories for NOT providing support.

As for pandemic mismanagement, which country has done it more perfectly? Australia?? I also think that our measure of covid deaths has probably overstated the actual number but better overstatement than massaging the figures down.

DrManhattan · 06/08/2021 15:33

No idea but I am 100% sure that Boris, Rishi etc will be just fine. Maybe even a bit better off than before.

DynamoKev · 06/08/2021 15:45

Tories will continue to talk bollocks about "the covid debt" that "must be repaid" - they will use it as an excuse for ideology-based spending cuts, public sector job losses and pay freezes, and greater taxation for us ordinary drones. Meanwhile they will continue to dodge taxes in offshore funds and trusts - rich will get richer, and for some unaccountable reason, people will still vote for them.

Oblomov21 · 06/08/2021 16:01

I think it's going to be bad and shocked at the optimism. Snowsnow? So much damage, once furlough ends in September, it will hit hard. By Christmas and next spring many companies won't exist.

Many industries like flying, theatres, places serving Canary Wharf with no employees now, as offices close.

Plus Brexit and vat on exports, and not being able to get cement etc. I feel things are going to get very tough.

Fewer apprenticeships for our youngsters.

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