7 ms·

I must be very naive, but I also don't understand why general lockdown has to have negative consequences. Couldn't we stop most non essential activities for a f

I must be very naive, but I also don't understand why general lockdown has to have negative consequences. Couldn't we stop most non essential activities for a few months, feed everyone in the meantime (thanks to the work of essential workers), and just start again exactly like it was before the shutdown?

conanbatt 7y ago
You can, albeit 70%+ retail businesses no longer exist and their former employees don't have jobs.
- azernik 7y ago
  Freeze mortgage payments/interest, waive rent - there are lots of ways of dealing with this, and most are all about removing any financial return on capital for the duration.
  - bequanna 7y ago
    This is the (horrible) idea that just won’t die. What do you propose that the parties who are due rent/mortgage payments do? Those payments aren’t simply ‘return on capital’ they pay taxes, utilities, insurance, employees.
    - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
      A lot of people don’t realize that one person’s debt is another person’s income.
    - azernik 7y ago
      You cut down as much of those as possible (e.g. not making people pay utilities, as many countries/localities have done), treating nonessential employees as laid-off and needing government aid like anyone else, adding tax and insurance-premium holidays. Lots of places have approached this model very closely; there is almost always some little bit that falls through the cracks, but it's doable.
      - bequanna 7y ago
        ”Insurance-premium holidays“. You’ve got to be kidding, right? Shortly after that you can expect the insurance companies to institute a “claim paying holiday”. The payment holiday concept is such a poor solution and mainly seems be proposed by people aiming to ‘punish’ those that they perceive as having more than themselves (landlords, banks, etc.) or by ultra liberal governments trying to appease their constituents. I don’t think you really fathom how much damage this would cause in practice. Our whole economy only works if people/companies meet their obligations. The much, much simpler solution is bottom-up vs some never ending crazy patchwork of bailouts and payment forgiveness. Give the people money via direct payments and generous unemployment so they can meet their obligations.
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    Sure, but its not free. In the best of cases that means that everyone elses capital/income is diminished in this grand-national subsidy from A to B. If you give income to a coffee shop that sells no coffee anymore you are spending your coffee money without getting coffee.
  - mrfusion 7y ago
    What about landlords living off the rent money? Until now it was a nice way to earn a return.
bbatha 7y ago
I don't think what you're asking for has ever been done before in human history. But here are some practical problems: 1. We can't just shut off the economy we need enough to keep running build up medical supply production, keep farms and grocery stores running, etc. This isn't a shutdown but also a reshaping. Those amazon warehouse workers will probably stay their instead of going back to their retail jobs, which were already in jeopardy because of market factors against retail. 2. Independently, the financial system needs to keep cash flowing so businesses can afford the essentials. Being in cryo-stasis isn't free. 3. We may have already acted too slow businesses are already firing people and shutting down. Reopening and rehiring may be too expensive for many low-margin business already. Any delays in restarting one sector of the economy will ripple to others. 4. How long can government rack up the debt propping up the economy? How long will the surpluses last in the economy before we start seeing shortages of non-essential goods that aren't being manufactured right now. 5. Uncertainty. How soon after we get the all clear are people going to leave their houses and carry out their normal business? Even counties with no confirmed corona cases and no lock down orders are seeing decreased economic activity from people staying homes. The airline industry started its death spiral well before the rest of the economy. When do we hit the tipping point for enough people to leave their houses that a restaurant is profitable again? Will we have another wave of corona after we complete this round of lockdowns?
danpat 7y ago
The difficulty is in deciding what needs to "stop". Do you "stop" rent payments when those businesses aren't allowed to operate? If yes, do you "stop" loan payments for landlords who depend on rent to repay loans? What about landlords who only half depend on rent for loan payments? This is why it's an economic problem - it's easy enough to determine which physical activities need to stop to reduce disease spread. It's much much much harder to untangle the interrelated economic activity and decide where pauses should be made. There isn't a clear delineation between people whose economic activities are unaffected, and those who have been brought to a sudden stop.
- vkou 7y ago
  > The difficulty is in deciding what needs to "stop". Do you "stop" rent payments when those businesses aren't allowed to operate? If yes, do you "stop" loan payments for landlords who depend on rent to repay loans? What about landlords who only half depend on rent for loan payments? Someone's going to end up getting left holding the bag, and it's going to suck for them, and it's not going to be fair. Life isn't fair. There's going to be edge cases, and those edge cases won't be dealt with correctly, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think the ROI on letting shuttered businesses keep existing in limbo is better than the ROI on making sure lenders and landlord-owners get paid... Because the businesses, not the lenders are the engines of the economy. The current approach to bailouts/economic aid does little but funnel government money directly from taxpayers into the pockets of landlords and lenders. It's miles better than letting everyone starve to death, but it's the least good of the options that we have.
  - eightysixfour 7y ago
    > Someone's going to end up getting left holding the bag, and it's going to suck for them, and it's not going to be fair. Life isn't fair. There's going to be edge cases, and those edge cases won't be dealt with correctly, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think you underestimate how big the edge case of "landlord" is and exactly how that would play out. There are more than 50 million commercial properties in the United States and most of the owners have loans against those properties. If we don't bail them out, those loans don't get paid, and then the bank doesn't get paid, if the banks don't get paid, they gain a bunch of assets that no one can afford and go belly up, which we already decided in 2008 is not an outcome the system can tolerate. There's no "buck stops here" that doesn't end with lenders because our system is built in such a way that debt is the leverage we use to build wealth. As long as that is the case, we either have to choose between unwinding the system and a hitting rock bottom that may not be recoverable or bailing people out and spreading the cost via taxes and inflation. Trying to target the pain to a specific class of people is nearly impossible in our system, it is giant and interconnected and someone will profit off of that, and it will almost never be the "little guy."
lordnacho 7y ago
Uncertainty: - People haven't eaten out for weeks. Will they now make up all those missed restuarant meals? - Expenses might be made up by intervention, might not. Does everyone get a rent break? What will landlords do? Production has got to be lost somewhere. Who eats the loss? - Will people and businesses change their minds about what they want to buy after the quarantine? For instance, how many people will decide that remote working is a good idea?
thedudeabides5 7y ago
Yes in theory. No in reality. Because of debt. Those forgone revenue cashflows were going to service debt. So a quarter of no business is existential. Now, could we try to plug that gap with printed money? Yes! Hence the SBA. Now whether it's possible to actually get than money with less than 30hrs of work filling out forms, I have yet to hear.
superhuzza 7y ago
I'm just going to address the economic impacts. Imagine a company that makes small plastic bits (like straws). Despite a crisis, they still have to pay their rent, and their loans. Because no restaurants are buying straws, revenue drops effectively to zero. The company can't stay afloat, and they have to shut down. Why aren't loans/rent/mortgages just put on pause? Well then the lenders suffer. Why doesn't the government reimburse the lenders? Well then the taxpayers suffer. It's all interconnected, and somewhere along the way someone is going to suffer somewhat. Back to the plastics company. Their machines are sold off at half price. Money is spent to remove equipment from the store. Employees who have been trained move on to unemployment or other jobs. All of those things represent an overall loss of capital that has been built up (it's not that black and white, but I'm hand-waving it). Once the economy gets going again, the economy is that much smaller. Those jobs don't exist anymore, and it will take a lot more capital to again build up a similar plastics company. If the owner decides to reopen that plastics company, he'll need new equipment, to train new staff etc etc. On the other hand, an enormous amount of capital is being built up in other ways. Many people are learning how to work remotely. Many processes are being made more efficient (unnecessary meetings).
- greysphere 7y ago
  If the government pays w/o raising taxes then then taxpayer doesn't suffer, the 'wealth holders' suffer (via inflation), which is exactly the correct thing to have happen. Their wealth 'value' was predicated on a smooth 5% annual growth rate. That isn't going to happen so it should just be worth less. No one really suffers in that case, the system is just corrected to match reality. Of course this isn't what will happen, the value of the wealthy will be protected at the cost of others sufferring. ("But what about my grandma who's CDs aren't going to be able to cover her retirement expenses, aren't they suffering?" Societal safety nets should cover her living expenses. The rest she's saved should go to luxuries, and yes those luxuries will go down, like everyone else's with excess wealth.)
  - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
    If you get the injection amount right there won’t be inflation because the amount injected will match the amount usually spent. Under the regime of falling demand, we would expect prices to fall (deflation, ie why the stock market has taken a hit) but if you can inject money now and take it out later, there won’t be a rise in total volume of money shuffling around, so no inflationary pressure
ss2003 7y ago
Lots of industries will not be the same for many years. For example people will not be going back to restaurants like they did. Their habits have changed and many people's attitude to being out with large groups of people is going to be changed forever. Same with tourism. Many workers will drift into different jobs and for other reasons not return to their former employers. All of their institutional knowledge is gone. Supply lines are broken and will not all turn back on at the same time. Many businesses will not recover from that. Plenty of economic activity will not be covered by the bailouts and those parts of the economy are now dead forever.
- paul7986 7y ago
  Exactly, especially the cruise industry. It may not even exist anymore after this. Until there is a vaccine that has proven effective ... wherever there was business where people gather is either cut 50 to possibly 100%. Personally, I've stopped getting any carry out (food not prepared by me in which I wash hands many times throughout) and do not go into the grocery store rather pick it up, put it away and wash my hands afterwards. Hopefully I'm going overboard but at this point who knows.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    FWIW, it's been shown that you can't transmit the virus through food. Your only risk with takeout is the packaging it comes in. When we get takeout, I unload it outside into our own containers, using one hand to open the takeout and the other hand to handle my own container. For things I can't transfer, I wipe them with a Clorox wipe. Then everything gets wiped down again inside, just in case. It's a bit much, but it's been nice supporting our favorite local restaurants in the hopes that they still exist when this is over.
    - jefftk 7y ago
      > it's been shown that you can't transmit the virus through food Link? I've seen several things saying that there's no evidence it's transmitted via food [1] but nothing that rules it out. [1] "Currently there is no evidence of food, food containers, or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19. Like other viruses, it is possible that the virus that causes COVID-19 can survive on surfaces or objects." https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-frequently-asked-questions https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
HereBeBeasties 7y ago
I don't understand. Can't we just turn the fuel supply of a rocket off mid-flight and then turn it on six months later and it would just continue on the same trajectory as before?
SkyBelow 7y ago
Take toilet paper. There are shortages, so people are learning how to do more with less. Be it just being a bit less wasteful with the tp to ordering and installing a bidet. This creates long term changes that will result in an overall decrease consumption of TP. This has an impact on the market. Now, if that was all there is, then it wouldn't matter much except maybe a few toilet paper factories would got from operating 16 hours a day to 15 hours a day. But this is applying everywhere. People are having to stretch food. People are having to learn how to cook. People are learning the importance of having a bit more saved up and a bit more non-perishables stockpiled. These factors will result in less restaurant eating and more bulk buying (not even counting continued virus fears). People are learning how to socialize from within their homes without leaving. This is pushing more people into electronic conversations. People are having to get more indoors, or at least socially distanced, hobbies. More people are reading, playing games, and watching streaming tv. This will lead to long term changes in consuming patterns. People who have never ordered off amazon or the like are now doing so for the first time, and some of them will continue to do so. People are buying games digitally who would prefer physical, and in turn this will lead to more digital purchases even once physical purchases become an option again (well, more of an option, since you can still purchase and have delivered). Each and every one of these changes the economy. And yes, over time people should reorganize and we should continue to be on our merry way. But until that reorganization occurs, there will be people being let go and the equivalent reorganized position may not be open for a few months. Or it may require a different skill set and people aren't going to be able to adjust as easily.
- Jommi 7y ago
  You are vastly overestimating the human capacity for seeking comfort and getting back to normal.
vsareto 7y ago
People with a small amount of savings will be curtailing spending until that savings is back, so I doubt it. This adds a guaranteed lag time to returning economic activity. The only way to fix this is give a free month or two of rent or mortgage payments (and not tacking those onto the end) which is the same as giving them cash. Worst case would be that people feel the need to save more. This is after you get over any initial caution of going back to crowded places.
soneil 7y ago
There's a lot of very heavy stones that'd need to be moved to make that happen. For a good start, you'd need every single bank to just pause every single loan. And to pass that down the chain, every single landlord to stop charging rent. And between these two basically impossible feats, you've solved a grand total of one problem. I think we'd need to nationalise every single essential good, and the entire supply chain behind it, and then just .. turn off capitalism for a few months. Just go full on communism for a fixed term. Have the weirdest Christmas party ever, and then just start 2021 like 2020 never happened. I don't want to call it actually impossible. But I rate our chances of forming a single planetary republic - Star Trek style - in time to actually act against this infection, as more likely. And you can be as naive as you like, but I'm sure you can imagine how minuscule a number that is too.

conanbatt 7y ago

You can, albeit 70%+ retail businesses no longer exist and their former employees don't have jobs.

azernik 7y ago
Freeze mortgage payments/interest, waive rent - there are lots of ways of dealing with this, and most are all about removing any financial return on capital for the duration.
- bequanna 7y ago
  This is the (horrible) idea that just won’t die. What do you propose that the parties who are due rent/mortgage payments do? Those payments aren’t simply ‘return on capital’ they pay taxes, utilities, insurance, employees.
  - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
    A lot of people don’t realize that one person’s debt is another person’s income.
  - azernik 7y ago
    You cut down as much of those as possible (e.g. not making people pay utilities, as many countries/localities have done), treating nonessential employees as laid-off and needing government aid like anyone else, adding tax and insurance-premium holidays. Lots of places have approached this model very closely; there is almost always some little bit that falls through the cracks, but it's doable.
    - bequanna 7y ago
      ”Insurance-premium holidays“. You’ve got to be kidding, right? Shortly after that you can expect the insurance companies to institute a “claim paying holiday”. The payment holiday concept is such a poor solution and mainly seems be proposed by people aiming to ‘punish’ those that they perceive as having more than themselves (landlords, banks, etc.) or by ultra liberal governments trying to appease their constituents. I don’t think you really fathom how much damage this would cause in practice. Our whole economy only works if people/companies meet their obligations. The much, much simpler solution is bottom-up vs some never ending crazy patchwork of bailouts and payment forgiveness. Give the people money via direct payments and generous unemployment so they can meet their obligations.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  Sure, but its not free. In the best of cases that means that everyone elses capital/income is diminished in this grand-national subsidy from A to B. If you give income to a coffee shop that sells no coffee anymore you are spending your coffee money without getting coffee.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  What about landlords living off the rent money? Until now it was a nice way to earn a return.

bbatha 7y ago

I don't think what you're asking for has ever been done before in human history. But here are some practical problems: 1. We can't just shut off the economy we need enough to keep running build up medical supply production, keep farms and grocery stores running, etc. This isn't a shutdown but also a reshaping. Those amazon warehouse workers will probably stay their instead of going back to their retail jobs, which were already in jeopardy because of market factors against retail. 2. Independently, the financial system needs to keep cash flowing so businesses can afford the essentials. Being in cryo-stasis isn't free. 3. We may have already acted too slow businesses are already firing people and shutting down. Reopening and rehiring may be too expensive for many low-margin business already. Any delays in restarting one sector of the economy will ripple to others. 4. How long can government rack up the debt propping up the economy? How long will the surpluses last in the economy before we start seeing shortages of non-essential goods that aren't being manufactured right now. 5. Uncertainty. How soon after we get the all clear are people going to leave their houses and carry out their normal business? Even counties with no confirmed corona cases and no lock down orders are seeing decreased economic activity from people staying homes. The airline industry started its death spiral well before the rest of the economy. When do we hit the tipping point for enough people to leave their houses that a restaurant is profitable again? Will we have another wave of corona after we complete this round of lockdowns?

danpat 7y ago

The difficulty is in deciding what needs to "stop". Do you "stop" rent payments when those businesses aren't allowed to operate? If yes, do you "stop" loan payments for landlords who depend on rent to repay loans? What about landlords who only half depend on rent for loan payments? This is why it's an economic problem - it's easy enough to determine which physical activities need to stop to reduce disease spread. It's much much much harder to untangle the interrelated economic activity and decide where pauses should be made. There isn't a clear delineation between people whose economic activities are unaffected, and those who have been brought to a sudden stop.

vkou 7y ago
> The difficulty is in deciding what needs to "stop". Do you "stop" rent payments when those businesses aren't allowed to operate? If yes, do you "stop" loan payments for landlords who depend on rent to repay loans? What about landlords who only half depend on rent for loan payments? Someone's going to end up getting left holding the bag, and it's going to suck for them, and it's not going to be fair. Life isn't fair. There's going to be edge cases, and those edge cases won't be dealt with correctly, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think the ROI on letting shuttered businesses keep existing in limbo is better than the ROI on making sure lenders and landlord-owners get paid... Because the businesses, not the lenders are the engines of the economy. The current approach to bailouts/economic aid does little but funnel government money directly from taxpayers into the pockets of landlords and lenders. It's miles better than letting everyone starve to death, but it's the least good of the options that we have.
- eightysixfour 7y ago
  > Someone's going to end up getting left holding the bag, and it's going to suck for them, and it's not going to be fair. Life isn't fair. There's going to be edge cases, and those edge cases won't be dealt with correctly, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think you underestimate how big the edge case of "landlord" is and exactly how that would play out. There are more than 50 million commercial properties in the United States and most of the owners have loans against those properties. If we don't bail them out, those loans don't get paid, and then the bank doesn't get paid, if the banks don't get paid, they gain a bunch of assets that no one can afford and go belly up, which we already decided in 2008 is not an outcome the system can tolerate. There's no "buck stops here" that doesn't end with lenders because our system is built in such a way that debt is the leverage we use to build wealth. As long as that is the case, we either have to choose between unwinding the system and a hitting rock bottom that may not be recoverable or bailing people out and spreading the cost via taxes and inflation. Trying to target the pain to a specific class of people is nearly impossible in our system, it is giant and interconnected and someone will profit off of that, and it will almost never be the "little guy."

lordnacho 7y ago

Uncertainty: - People haven't eaten out for weeks. Will they now make up all those missed restuarant meals? - Expenses might be made up by intervention, might not. Does everyone get a rent break? What will landlords do? Production has got to be lost somewhere. Who eats the loss? - Will people and businesses change their minds about what they want to buy after the quarantine? For instance, how many people will decide that remote working is a good idea?

thedudeabides5 7y ago

Yes in theory. No in reality. Because of debt. Those forgone revenue cashflows were going to service debt. So a quarter of no business is existential. Now, could we try to plug that gap with printed money? Yes! Hence the SBA. Now whether it's possible to actually get than money with less than 30hrs of work filling out forms, I have yet to hear.

superhuzza 7y ago

I'm just going to address the economic impacts. Imagine a company that makes small plastic bits (like straws). Despite a crisis, they still have to pay their rent, and their loans. Because no restaurants are buying straws, revenue drops effectively to zero. The company can't stay afloat, and they have to shut down. Why aren't loans/rent/mortgages just put on pause? Well then the lenders suffer. Why doesn't the government reimburse the lenders? Well then the taxpayers suffer. It's all interconnected, and somewhere along the way someone is going to suffer somewhat. Back to the plastics company. Their machines are sold off at half price. Money is spent to remove equipment from the store. Employees who have been trained move on to unemployment or other jobs. All of those things represent an overall loss of capital that has been built up (it's not that black and white, but I'm hand-waving it). Once the economy gets going again, the economy is that much smaller. Those jobs don't exist anymore, and it will take a lot more capital to again build up a similar plastics company. If the owner decides to reopen that plastics company, he'll need new equipment, to train new staff etc etc. On the other hand, an enormous amount of capital is being built up in other ways. Many people are learning how to work remotely. Many processes are being made more efficient (unnecessary meetings).

greysphere 7y ago
If the government pays w/o raising taxes then then taxpayer doesn't suffer, the 'wealth holders' suffer (via inflation), which is exactly the correct thing to have happen. Their wealth 'value' was predicated on a smooth 5% annual growth rate. That isn't going to happen so it should just be worth less. No one really suffers in that case, the system is just corrected to match reality. Of course this isn't what will happen, the value of the wealthy will be protected at the cost of others sufferring. ("But what about my grandma who's CDs aren't going to be able to cover her retirement expenses, aren't they suffering?" Societal safety nets should cover her living expenses. The rest she's saved should go to luxuries, and yes those luxuries will go down, like everyone else's with excess wealth.)
- aaronblohowiak 7y ago
  If you get the injection amount right there won’t be inflation because the amount injected will match the amount usually spent. Under the regime of falling demand, we would expect prices to fall (deflation, ie why the stock market has taken a hit) but if you can inject money now and take it out later, there won’t be a rise in total volume of money shuffling around, so no inflationary pressure

ss2003 7y ago

Lots of industries will not be the same for many years. For example people will not be going back to restaurants like they did. Their habits have changed and many people's attitude to being out with large groups of people is going to be changed forever. Same with tourism. Many workers will drift into different jobs and for other reasons not return to their former employers. All of their institutional knowledge is gone. Supply lines are broken and will not all turn back on at the same time. Many businesses will not recover from that. Plenty of economic activity will not be covered by the bailouts and those parts of the economy are now dead forever.

paul7986 7y ago
Exactly, especially the cruise industry. It may not even exist anymore after this. Until there is a vaccine that has proven effective ... wherever there was business where people gather is either cut 50 to possibly 100%. Personally, I've stopped getting any carry out (food not prepared by me in which I wash hands many times throughout) and do not go into the grocery store rather pick it up, put it away and wash my hands afterwards. Hopefully I'm going overboard but at this point who knows.
- jedberg 7y ago
  FWIW, it's been shown that you can't transmit the virus through food. Your only risk with takeout is the packaging it comes in. When we get takeout, I unload it outside into our own containers, using one hand to open the takeout and the other hand to handle my own container. For things I can't transfer, I wipe them with a Clorox wipe. Then everything gets wiped down again inside, just in case. It's a bit much, but it's been nice supporting our favorite local restaurants in the hopes that they still exist when this is over.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    > it's been shown that you can't transmit the virus through food Link? I've seen several things saying that there's no evidence it's transmitted via food [1] but nothing that rules it out. [1] "Currently there is no evidence of food, food containers, or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19. Like other viruses, it is possible that the virus that causes COVID-19 can survive on surfaces or objects." https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-frequently-asked-questions https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...

HereBeBeasties 7y ago

I don't understand. Can't we just turn the fuel supply of a rocket off mid-flight and then turn it on six months later and it would just continue on the same trajectory as before?

SkyBelow 7y ago

Take toilet paper. There are shortages, so people are learning how to do more with less. Be it just being a bit less wasteful with the tp to ordering and installing a bidet. This creates long term changes that will result in an overall decrease consumption of TP. This has an impact on the market. Now, if that was all there is, then it wouldn't matter much except maybe a few toilet paper factories would got from operating 16 hours a day to 15 hours a day. But this is applying everywhere. People are having to stretch food. People are having to learn how to cook. People are learning the importance of having a bit more saved up and a bit more non-perishables stockpiled. These factors will result in less restaurant eating and more bulk buying (not even counting continued virus fears). People are learning how to socialize from within their homes without leaving. This is pushing more people into electronic conversations. People are having to get more indoors, or at least socially distanced, hobbies. More people are reading, playing games, and watching streaming tv. This will lead to long term changes in consuming patterns. People who have never ordered off amazon or the like are now doing so for the first time, and some of them will continue to do so. People are buying games digitally who would prefer physical, and in turn this will lead to more digital purchases even once physical purchases become an option again (well, more of an option, since you can still purchase and have delivered). Each and every one of these changes the economy. And yes, over time people should reorganize and we should continue to be on our merry way. But until that reorganization occurs, there will be people being let go and the equivalent reorganized position may not be open for a few months. Or it may require a different skill set and people aren't going to be able to adjust as easily.

Jommi 7y ago
You are vastly overestimating the human capacity for seeking comfort and getting back to normal.

vsareto 7y ago

People with a small amount of savings will be curtailing spending until that savings is back, so I doubt it. This adds a guaranteed lag time to returning economic activity. The only way to fix this is give a free month or two of rent or mortgage payments (and not tacking those onto the end) which is the same as giving them cash. Worst case would be that people feel the need to save more. This is after you get over any initial caution of going back to crowded places.

soneil 7y ago

There's a lot of very heavy stones that'd need to be moved to make that happen. For a good start, you'd need every single bank to just pause every single loan. And to pass that down the chain, every single landlord to stop charging rent. And between these two basically impossible feats, you've solved a grand total of one problem. I think we'd need to nationalise every single essential good, and the entire supply chain behind it, and then just .. turn off capitalism for a few months. Just go full on communism for a fixed term. Have the weirdest Christmas party ever, and then just start 2021 like 2020 never happened. I don't want to call it actually impossible. But I rate our chances of forming a single planetary republic - Star Trek style - in time to actually act against this infection, as more likely. And you can be as naive as you like, but I'm sure you can imagine how minuscule a number that is too.