It occurred to me that the biggest winners of the past 5 months, during the duration of Covid and then later the BLM protests and riots, are high-income/wealthy people who have moderate/centrist views and high social status, and are insulated from the disruption and unrest. Guys like Tim Pool and Joe Rogan, but also Jeff Bezos and other wealthy and high-income Silicon Valley types. Joe Rogan recently signed a huge deal with Spotify. Other winners include media giants such as Washington Post and the New York Times, which racked up millions of clicks and ad impressions as people compulsively refresh their browsers and apps for the latest Covid and protest updates.
The winners:
1, Professionals and well-educated people with good-paying jobs, STEM people, etc. Similar to in 2008, jobs requiring a college degree fared much better than low-skilled jobs.
2. Tech companies, tech billionaires. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Zoom, and Netflix stock have all made news highs and have benefited greatly by reaping the lost business from dying brick and mortar stores.
3. Big box retail such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. The demise of small stores means more sales for big box stores.
4. Moderates and centrists with YouTube channels and podcasts, who have huge audiences and ad revenue and have seen a surge in popularity since Covid and the protests, and are largely immune from being banned. Tim Pool would probably have to do a live stream in which he burns a cross while donning a KKK robe to possibly get a strike, whereas Stefan Molenux gets terminated without any warnings for criticizing BLM and suggesting that IQ explains why some groups are more successful than others.
5. Colleges and universities. Not only did they get bailout money despite having huge endowments, but will be mostly unscathed due to huge demand from newly unemployed people going to college to boost their skills and credentials, in order to be employable in an increasingly competitive and difficult labor market made worse by Covid. Any decline in attendance due to Covid will be temporary. The college debt boom will resume in 2021 as if nothing ever happened.
6. Major media publications such as Vox, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Wasn’t in 2016-2018 media supposed to be dying due to bias against Trump and declining ad revenue? So much for that.
The losers:
1. Both the dissident-right and dissident-left, following a major Reddit purge that in a single Monday afternoon banned 2,000 subs, including both right-wing (/r/thenewright) and left-wing (/r/chapotraphouse) subs.
2. The dissident/alt-right. Tech companies are ramping up their censorship efforts against anyone deemed ‘too extreme,’ in time for the election. YouTube, on that same Monday following Reddit’s lead, banned multiple high-profile right-wing channels, such as that of David Duke , Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, and most surprisingly, Stefan Molenux (who, compared to the others, is not even that extreme and is not a white nationalist).
3. Low and middle-income people, who were disproportionately affected by the shutdowns and quarantine and ensuing layoffs. 40% of jobs loss due to Covid was among individuals earning less than $40k/year.
4. Small and medium-sized non-tech businesses owners. Many restaurants and other low-tech businesses shuttered due to Covid will never reopen.
5. Trump supporters. Trump is unable/unwilling to fulfill his promise to do anything about tech censorship against conservatives, and Trump himself has been the target of such censorship on Twitter. Nor can Trump restore ‘law and order’ if rioters are able to deface statues and monuments without fear of repercussions.
6. Biden supporters. Your candidate is suffering from cognitive decline and will likely lose to Trump despite what the polls say. But if Biden winning means less tech censorship (and we can go back to how things were in 2009-2017 under Obama) due to the threat of Trump being removed, that is a compromise I could possibly live with. There is really not much of a difference between Trump and Biden anyway. One talks tough but does not do anything, and the other forgets what he said.