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Prophesy about how everything will be different after we get through the crisis is one of the few growth industries these days. I don’t bother reading it. I don’t consult astrologers, either. Let’s face it. Nobody knows what the world’s going to be like. The prophets don’t know. You don’t know. I certainly don’t know. One reason to try to survive the virus is to see how it all turns out.

That said, there are three things I’d wager a week’s worth of toilet paper won’t change: demand and supply, moral hazard and working for a living.

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In this part of the universe, demand and supply are like gravity. They influence just about everything. My bet is they will continue to do so.

Take the current heroes of the pandemic. As has been widely noted, we upper-income, highly educated types adjust pretty easily to working at home. By contrast, shelf-stockers, check-out clerks, bus drivers, garbage collectors, workers in seniors’ residences and dozens of other not very credentialed folk can’t work from home. They are on the front lines, keeping essential services going.