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> shut down nearly all commerce That doesn't seem right. I got tacos from down the street last night. I got paid a week ago. I bought some home office relat

> shut down nearly all commerce That doesn't seem right. I got tacos from down the street last night. I got paid a week ago. I bought some home office related junk from Amazon yesterday. I need to go shopping tonight. That's the problem with not being specific, you find yourself spouting silly hyperbole instead of argument. No, "almost all commerce" isn't shutdown, that's not remotely true. We're looking, depending on how pessimistic you want to be, at like a 20-30% drop in GDP. And that's big, but it's simply not almost all. So I ask again: who do you want to go back to work before the virus case load drops? Be specific.

CPLX 7y ago
> That's the problem with not being specific, you find yourself spouting silly hyperbole instead of argument. No, "almost all commerce" isn't shutdown, that's not remotely true. We're looking, depending on how pessimistic you want to be, at like a 20-30% drop in GDP. And that's big, but it's simply not almost all. You're kidding right? The drop in GDP between 1929 and 1932 was about 15% or so. You're saying I'm the one being hyperbolic for calling a drop of twice that size in three months a total free fall? I apologize I forgot about Jeff Bezos and your local taco guy. I'll try to be more optimistic, like you are doing here, by predicting an instant drop of economic activity to twice the severity of the Great Depression. And sure I'll take your bait on specifics anyways. I think we should pick policies just restrictive enough to keep hospitalizations below system capacity and no more. There really isn't any other reasonable choice, the current policy is just delaying the inevitable for no clear reason and without any specific vision of what success looks like. You realize that if we have the same number of cases, and deaths, but with 3-4x the economic destruction, that's a spectacular policy failure right?
- noelherrick 7y ago
  > The drop in GDP between 1929 and 1932 was about 15% or so. I could be entirely wrong, but I just wonder whether GDP is a good measure or not for this situation. Think about childcare - it's not that children are not being cared for: in fact, they might be getting more attention from their parents or other family members. Yes, the daycare is shut down and not making money, but the work is still performed. Similar to restaurants vs. food made at home. I wonder if the loss of non-essential businesses is as detrimental to our economy as the loss of essential businesses. During the Depression, we were losing essential businesses like farms and then on top of that we had a dust bowl. The economy feels very squishy - as in, we're able to layoff and furlough an amazing percentage and people still get the basics like food, water, and shelter, and we still have luxury goods: Apple is still releasing new iPhones even though they're made in China, we still have craft beer flowing, and we can get tacos. Tied into this, though, is that we do have to keep money flowing not through labor, since that's illegal for a lot of folks, but start figuring out better unemployment insurance and small business aid.

CPLX 7y ago

> That's the problem with not being specific, you find yourself spouting silly hyperbole instead of argument. No, "almost all commerce" isn't shutdown, that's not remotely true. We're looking, depending on how pessimistic you want to be, at like a 20-30% drop in GDP. And that's big, but it's simply not almost all. You're kidding right? The drop in GDP between 1929 and 1932 was about 15% or so. You're saying I'm the one being hyperbolic for calling a drop of twice that size in three months a total free fall? I apologize I forgot about Jeff Bezos and your local taco guy. I'll try to be more optimistic, like you are doing here, by predicting an instant drop of economic activity to twice the severity of the Great Depression. And sure I'll take your bait on specifics anyways. I think we should pick policies just restrictive enough to keep hospitalizations below system capacity and no more. There really isn't any other reasonable choice, the current policy is just delaying the inevitable for no clear reason and without any specific vision of what success looks like. You realize that if we have the same number of cases, and deaths, but with 3-4x the economic destruction, that's a spectacular policy failure right?

noelherrick 7y ago
> The drop in GDP between 1929 and 1932 was about 15% or so. I could be entirely wrong, but I just wonder whether GDP is a good measure or not for this situation. Think about childcare - it's not that children are not being cared for: in fact, they might be getting more attention from their parents or other family members. Yes, the daycare is shut down and not making money, but the work is still performed. Similar to restaurants vs. food made at home. I wonder if the loss of non-essential businesses is as detrimental to our economy as the loss of essential businesses. During the Depression, we were losing essential businesses like farms and then on top of that we had a dust bowl. The economy feels very squishy - as in, we're able to layoff and furlough an amazing percentage and people still get the basics like food, water, and shelter, and we still have luxury goods: Apple is still releasing new iPhones even though they're made in China, we still have craft beer flowing, and we can get tacos. Tied into this, though, is that we do have to keep money flowing not through labor, since that's illegal for a lot of folks, but start figuring out better unemployment insurance and small business aid.