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Economic output isn't just paperwork. It may seem to be just pushing papers for now, but thats because we're only 2 weeks in. All of what we have now is because

Economic output isn't just paperwork. It may seem to be just pushing papers for now, but thats because we're only 2 weeks in. All of what we have now is because of the fully functional economy we used to have. I'm all for what the FED is doing right now, but it's just a stop gap. You just can't print your way into actual economic output. there's a reason why we don't just always "push papers" instead of working. Human decency won't be enough to keep hospitals and supply chains running.Again, for a short while everything will keep working but that's an illusion. All of that can look abstract for us since we can mostly work from home and don't get to see the gears that make everything work from our tech jobs. But those gears are still very real. And even remote tech workers will eventually get hit by the impacts of a prolonged shutdown. Also, It's not that bill gates can't have an opinion on this, it's just that he is very obviously not going to be impacted by what he's preaching. Misery for them, because we need to save lives, but not for me.

carapace 7y ago
I feel like you're kind of missing my point. I don't want to downplay the severity of the problem we're having, but this isn't a "corpses in the street" plague, and the core of the economy will not falter (unless we really fuck it up, but we're already starting to get a clue.) The nightmare scenario here is rampant spread, followed by massive spike in demand for medical services just as the people providing them succumb to the virus themselves, followed by the various unpleasant consequences of that (like thousands of people laying in hospital parking lots in tents with improvised ventilators, dying from slow asphyxiation as their lungs rot inside them.) Now, my sister might well lose her job at any moment, and then she won't be able to pay her rent, and then her landlord... is a massive holding company or something based out of NY or S. Korea or something, and honestly who cares what happens to that entity this summer? No sheriff is going to evict my sister and our 80-year-old mother onto the street in the middle of a Goddamned pandemic, eh? The employees of the holding company that owns the subdivision she lives in are in the same boat. As for the owners, well, that's "paperwork": let's keep records and, when the fire is out, we'll sort it all out one way or another. And what do you want Gates to do? Sit in his backyard and rub ashes in his face? Didn't he just pitch in $100,000,000 to help?

carapace 7y ago

I feel like you're kind of missing my point. I don't want to downplay the severity of the problem we're having, but this isn't a "corpses in the street" plague, and the core of the economy will not falter (unless we really fuck it up, but we're already starting to get a clue.) The nightmare scenario here is rampant spread, followed by massive spike in demand for medical services just as the people providing them succumb to the virus themselves, followed by the various unpleasant consequences of that (like thousands of people laying in hospital parking lots in tents with improvised ventilators, dying from slow asphyxiation as their lungs rot inside them.) Now, my sister might well lose her job at any moment, and then she won't be able to pay her rent, and then her landlord... is a massive holding company or something based out of NY or S. Korea or something, and honestly who cares what happens to that entity this summer? No sheriff is going to evict my sister and our 80-year-old mother onto the street in the middle of a Goddamned pandemic, eh? The employees of the holding company that owns the subdivision she lives in are in the same boat. As for the owners, well, that's "paperwork": let's keep records and, when the fire is out, we'll sort it all out one way or another. And what do you want Gates to do? Sit in his backyard and rub ashes in his face? Didn't he just pitch in $100,000,000 to help?