Frugality is a trait and a value as old as time, spiking in certain cultures and generations, living situations and individuals, out of both necessity and outlook. Behaving economically with money or resources has become both a rare virtue — on aspirational blogs like the Frugality or self-help tomes like Your Money or Your Life — and a cultural punchline, good for a joke about hoarders or one’s immigrant family, grandparents who lived through the Great Depression, or good old-fashioned tightwads. "What’s newer, in fact, is the idea that some items are immediately and obviously disposable"
What’s newer, in fact, is the past 70-ish years of American materialism, which birthed the idea that some items are immediately and obviously disposable, or that eating food that you bought and paid for, food made of food, is inherently strange. As a widespread attitude, it’s historically unusual and it may be, at least for now, fading.
Since quarantine started, following the spread of Covid-19, there has been a move away from this culture of waste. This new strain of frugality — call it the novel frugality — is defined by its attachment to this moment and its participants’ motivations. While it might mirror long-held practices (like not throwing away aluminum foil or consciously saving scraps of leftovers to make new meals), its impetus is slightly different.
The coronavirus pandemic is likely to trigger the sharpest recession in the United States since the Great Depression. An early signal of that came Wednesday, when the Commerce Department said the economy shrank at a 4.8% annual rate in the first three months of the year — the first quarterly contraction since 2014 and the largest since the Great Recession.
For the first 2 1/2 of those months, the economy was chugging along at a steady, if not spectacular pace. But the plug was suddenly pulled in mid-March — when bars, restaurants and retail shops were abruptly closed and tens of millions of Americans were ordered to stay home in an effort to slow the spread of the deadly disease. Deluge Continues: 26 Million Jobs Lost In Just 5 Weeks Coronavirus Live Updates Deluge Continues: 26 Million Jobs Lost In Just 5 Weeks
The first-quarter drop was the biggest since an 8.4% dive in the fourth quarter of 2008. It marked a reversal from the 2.1% growth rate at the end of 2019.
The number of people forced out of work during the coronavirus lockdown continues to soar to historic highs. Another 4.4 million people claimed unemployment benefits last week around the country, the Labor Department said.
That brings the total of jobless claims in just five weeks to more than 26 million people. That's more than all the jobs added created in the past 10 years since the Great Recession.
Still the pace of job losses is slowing. About 5.2 million filed during the week that ended April 11 and last week was the third consecutive week of declines.
The tension in America between the national government and states' rights is as old as the republic itself. That tension is about to play out in a starkly political way and on a grand scale over the next several weeks, as states consider how to reopen in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
President Trump seems to be itching for states to reopen — frankly, faster than his own administration's guidelines recommend.
Two of the nation's biggest banks reported plummeting profits during the first three months of the year as they sought to prepare for an onslaught of defaults in debt that ranged from credit cards and mortgages to business loans.
The country's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, said its profit fell by 69% as it set aside $8.2 billion — the largest amount since 2010 — to prepare for defaults.