This all comes down to customer behavior, beyond 2022.
I know its hard to believe there will be a breaking point. Especially, with how customers have responded pre-pandemic and now by just paying up. But the same could be said about the labor crisis. All the straws that had building up for years about working conditions, compensation, expectations employers placed on employees that weren't reciprocated... It seemed like none of it mattered to get people to change jobs, change careers, up until the moment where it *all* mattered and now it's a big problem to clean up. It's not a matter of just walking back the last few things to get things back to balance. I do believe the same will happen on the consumer side.
We are really bad at deprivation, we hate the word no. The sudden stop, the post-vaccination restart and fast acceleration, I feel like there is going to be a hard break at some point, to shed excess speed, before we get back to economic equilibrium. Another round of whiplash to endure. It's absolutely understandable that after 2020 was so much deprivation and not being able to spend discretionary money in the manner of which people are used to, that 2021 and early 2022 would be a gorge-fest by those who aren't used to having so much forced disruption and used to rewarding themselves for surviving the daily grind of life with things and vacations. Plus having 2020+2021 funds to finance it all. With real consequences for systems that aren't built to withstand large, unpredictable changes in demand (up or down, and we did both). I just don't see how the money holds out for enough people, long term. Or the lines of credit. We can already see, in general, people are showing signs of breaking. The blame game directed toward the usual suspects is already at cruising speed. But it will spill over into another round of changing purchasing decisions when the bills start piling up. The question is where does Disney end up, the one thing people try to hold onto or something that can be let go. Comments like today, are the things that make it a little easier to just let Disney go.
