The year 2020 hasn’t been functioning like the past 19 years have in the 21st century, at least to me living in Hyderabad, India. There never was a time when people were forced by the government to stay indoors for their own safety. CoVid19 Pandemic had made governments all around the globe to force shut their economic activities (making, providing, purchasing, or selling goods or services) and the general public to stay indoors to stop the spread of the Corona Virus.
India went into a nationwide lockdown in the month of March 2020 limiting the movement of the entire population of 1.3 billion as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown was followed until 30th June 2020. The lockdown period of 3 months had resulted in a fall in the gross domestic product. Rating agencies have reduced India’s forecasted GDP as well. The World Bank also stated that India is at risk of losing hard-won gains against poverty as the pandemic is pushing millions of Indians back to poverty. Due to the pandemic and its aftermath nationwide lockdown, households remained indoors and with no work they earned no income hence pushing the economy into poverty. Although with the increasing technology and internet usage, people were able to work from home but couldn’t spend their money to boost the economy.
The Circular flow of income tells us that with no economic activity no income is earned, either by the general public or the Multinationals. Hence to initiate the flow of income, The Indian government had removed lockdown barriers on the 30th of May, while still following few lockdown measures. People all around the globe have been and still are trying to maintain self-hygiene and follow social distancing norms. Right now, the entire world living in the month of September of 2020 is going through this odd and unfortunate times. Although the government has opened the economy to trade, there hasn’t been a vaccine to cure the Corona Virus.
Although the economy is trading, it isn’t functioning at its usual pace hence resulting in predictions involving recession, for instance, prices of tomatoes have doubled from 20rs a Kilogram to 40rs. Shortage in supply and high demand along with low earnings will be the possible future, 2021. And if there isn’t a vaccine any time soon, who knows until how long will the economy take to revive.
Pain as we know it.
“No pain, no gain!” is a phrase often used among athletes, but why is that even relevant? Pain as we know it, existed every time we tried to learn something! For instance, growing up every child tripped over when learning to walk! They hurt their knees, but over time they learn from falling often. When a person exercises, they get tired, they strain their muscles causing them extreme pain to move. However, to gain strength one need to endure and suffer the pain. Suffering is necessary in order to achieve something, and this applies to almost everything when a person decides and sets a goal!
Hate
Time is like a train on steroids, it doesn’t stop for anyone. Events that occur at a particular time get stored in our heads and we humans make sense of the real world with the experiences and knowledge we receive from our sensory organs. When an event is too memorable to a person, the person happened to remember the event more precisely rather than events which were boring. Similarly, unpleasant events which make you hate another person will remain BOLD in our memories creating grudges, which we do not want. Hate merely creates a hateful person within ourselves subconsciously, making us to hate more and not think straight. We cannot fight back this hate for, it is part of us and will cease to exist.
As mentioned earlier, as time stops for none, events that happen are merely passing trees as the time train keeps going. Events that sprout hate in us, should be treated like these passing trees! When we counter hate, all we ought to do is give it a big hug! A big hug to your inner subconscious self-will supresses hate because hate is all about anger and rage. Letting go of hate will sometimes bring you and people around you, peace.
Lemons problem
For a wide range of products (FMCGs) the markets are large and have perfect competition, and exchange is anonymous. There are, however, important exceptions. Consider the market for used cars. It is difficult to tell how good or bad a used car is unless you use it for some time. The seller, on the other hand, knows how good the car is.
In such situations, you would care about the identity of the seller. In fact, in such cases anonymous exchange is often impossible, as that would lead to a breakdown of the market. The customers are willing to pay a price based on the average quality. However, this price is not acceptable to the better-than-average quality car owner. This leads the owners of better-than-average cars to leave the market. Knowing this, customers would revise average quality downwards and consequently be willing to pay a lower price. But the same phenomenon then applies again, leading to further falls in average quality and willingness to pay, and so on.
The problem is called the ‘lemons problem’ or ‘adverse selection’.
