yeah Cutworm

You guys who "get it out of the ground" are in the hero column too!

John

No not the Farm . We have a concrete wall business. I do not hire much help for the farm

I do not think of myself as a hero. I worry about my business. I worry about how my employees will make their bread when unemployment runs out an I have no work because I loose it because I cannot deliver on a timely basis. There is always someone who will. and with things slowing down...

Cutworm,

 I was refering to getting the foundation out of the ground.

Im a carpenter by trade-done mucho framing but have poured my share of footings-general contracting stuff.

 Im from NJ and back in the 70's if you didnt have it out of the ground by Dec then you were waiting till March,

Winters were winters back then. Everything was cinder/concrete or Waylite block foundations. Keeping employees working during the winter-near impossible. Then the pain of putting a new crew together every Spring.

I work much more lite duty these days-too many years-too old.

As a good customer of mine always signed off-"Keep the faith brother!".

Thanks John I will, "keep the faith brother"

It makes me sad to read about your situation cutworm....and to realize that it’s playing out  with thousands of other businesses right now.

When I was watching the news about some of auto workers returning to work, I saw some that were happy but a lot that were very upset.

They were insisting that it was unfair to make them go back to work and risk their life for their job.

A lot of people have been convinced, I mean totally convinced of this by what they read and see on stations like CNN, that I remind you, 2 weeks ago was touting  a model that predicted the daily infections would be 8 times greater by the end of May because we were opening up too soon.

They are poisoning people’s brains with bs to keep the economy shut down as long as possible.

Unemployment benefits have been great and needed but like you state, if somebody will pay me to stay home where it’s safe and I can do what I want all day, why would I be happy to be forced to do work that is benefiting somebody else to get my money and at the same time have to risk my life to do it?

Capitalism forces people to be productive in order to generate an income.  Socialism makes them lazy and dependent. This seems to be an unintended experiment demonstrating that principle......is it intentionally being stretched out by the side that wants socialism? 

Is so, it’s evidence of failure.

My older son is keeping his workers on the payroll thru a sort of pay roll assistance gov't plan. Although his business has virtually come to a stop, he has his workers doing clean up and repairs on the building. It still costs him part of the payroll but cheaper than hiring a contractor to do repairs. When he lost his 1st big contract, he gave his workers the choice to go home and collect, for not working or working for the same old wages as always. Most could make more staying home, but he explained that money would stop some day and their job would not likely be there to return, as before. Nobody has quit their job although they have surely been tempted to stay home.

My son said once he runs out of work, after roof repairs and no contracts appear he will have no choice but to put the padlock on the building and go "turtle" as he calls it

He thinks he will have to hunker down for at least a yr or longer before business starts again

If that happens all over the country with partial opening and then supply chains disrupted, and time for sales to start again, this country may never fully recover, any time soon.

A stk market that goes up, mostly assuming better times will come, will eventually crash as fundamentals of reduced revenue finally sink in that the value is way over priced. which is what will eventually crash the stk market. The whole economy is ruined and it will take a long time for sales to reach pre-corona days. Revenue is sales and sales drive fundamentals and fundamentals will eventually drive stk market values

The way things are now the damage is beyond comprehension, for the average worker to comprehend. When you look at what it will take to repair the damage then you see a long roe to hoe. Many workers will never find work again in their life time, the damage is that bad. Nickel and dime consumer purchases will not repair damage, 

It takes big sales like air planes, construction equpment, infrastructure, rental cars sold by the 1000 for each contract,  buying appliances by the container load and ware houses turning inventory 3-4 or more times/yr and on and on as supply and demand slowly ramp up. Mostly on the demand side.

You need huge sales to make the country whole again and this partial opening will only prolong the road to recovery. Recovery  in the next decade, may be the best optimistic hope we have considering the damage done. The Federal gov't keeps talking a fast recovery all the while printing more money to keep the economy shut down. Not many can survive on partial revenue with partial opening. The Federal gov't has no choice but to talk a good game or our dollar would collapse, in a heart beat. There is nothing to back the dollar but thin air and confidence in the dollar. Nothing else. Lose the confidence and lose the dollar. 

Recovery is not even considering the amount of Fed money printing that we will have to live with, as the Fed keeps pumping money into house holds and zombie Co.'s with an illusion that we have the money needed. That kind of economic theory will not last forever, but when do you suppose the country will be wide open for business?? I think we will have a lot more money pumped into the economy from the Fed before we ever see a wide open economy. So what do we do with this humongous debt we have created???

The whole world has gone stupid with debt.

We have crashed the world economy. The world debt looks to be the next big crash