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- Jul 21, 2014
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- Broken Arrow, OK
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SoonerAviator
And what exactly am I supposed to do about that? Overthrow the government? Stage a coo? Or are you implying that I should feel guilty about buying cheap gas?
Yes lots of people are out of work. And others, myself included, are still working but at greatly reduced salary so that more of my employees can stay working. Nearly all who aren't working, including the 1099 gig workers, are eligible for unemployment compensation. That unemployment compensation is worth almost as much as what tons of them normally made, in some cases it will actually pay them more. And while there will definitely be businesses that fail because of this, most will not. Which means lots of those jobs will be back in a month or so.
None of that is meant to imply that this isn't bad because it is. But it could be far far worse than it actually is. I have employees who are asking me to lay them off because they'd rather stay home and collect than show up and work to insure their company is still there for them when this is all over. And you want me to fell guilty about buying cheap gas? Yeah that ain't happening. My company will survive this. The people I have laid off will come back. Or at least most of them will. The ones who have let us know they could care less about trying to keep the company afloat and would rather sit home and collect for as long as possible? Yeah they probably won't be asked back. The company is better off without them.
The thing is, the O&G issues started before the Covid-19 stuff did. Russia and KSA having a hissy fit, which they probably wouldn’t have done had either of them known what was going to happen with the pandemic stuff. They took a step towards resolving the production glut with OPEC today, but it’s going to take a while to dig out of the hole they made.
I don’t think Okie was implying that you should “feel bad” for paying low fuel prices. He was just lamenting that the absurdly low prices cut the legs out from a lot of people, especially those in smaller towns in rural America. The jobs that were cut in O&G probably won’t come back for a year or two. Most of the jobs that were cut/furloughed for Covid will likely be reinstated in a few months.