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>It would have been better to lay off people; many have money saved to survive a few months; others could have lend some money (and pay it back when employed ag

>It would have been better to lay off people; many have money saved to survive a few months; others could have lend some money (and pay it back when employed again). This would have been "mean" in the short-term, but good for the entire society in the mid- and long-term. This is completely wrong and trivial to research: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-savings-account-balance/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-savings-acc... Most Americans couldn't handle a $400 emergency. 56% have $5000 or less in savings. These people have no one to borrow money from. This is one of the most insidious forms of privilege: It's much easier to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" when you have a rich parent or uncle to loan you O(10000) to start a business or to give you food and shelter when you're down, but the VAST majority of people have no such resources.

imtringued 5y ago
The fun part about recessions is that demand for savings is going up and since the most popular savings vehicle is money it means demand for borrowers and debt is going up. The people who end up unemployed have absolutely zero capacity to borrow even though they are the ones who need it the most. Thanks to our moral frameworks we interpret strategies like Keynesian fiscal stimulus as some sort of bad drug that the economy is addicted to and should quit. There is a huge double standard here. People want money and they don't want anyone to go into debt. It's the height of hypocrisy. People demand debt and they vilify it at the same time. An amoral interpretation of Keynesian stimulus is that it effectively makes the debt market available to the unemployed. The unemployed are in debt in regards to the government which issues treasury bonds and the government is in debt in regards to the savers. In other words, it is decreasing market rigidity and decreasing overall market distortions. The reason why Keynesian stimulus is a bad idea has nothing to do with morals. Rather, the problem is that using the government to bypass market rigidities shows a deep underlying problem in the labor market that nobody wants to address. There are people who work more than they demand work and there are people who work less than they demand work. In a perfectly flexible market this should be impossible and you know what, it's impossible in a barter economy. People wouldn't work to pile up money that they don't intend to spend the same way a farmer wouldn't produce and pile up potatoes that they won't sell to the economy.
- qboltz 5y ago
  What's your broader economic framework for this analysis? From your comment history georgist/LVT adjacent. But the responses seem very well connected and elaborate beyond that with which I'm familiar with. On top of a name for the system, what books/wikipedia pages/journal articles would be available to read about it?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
These aren't Americans, though. These are Germans. I don't know if the same statistics apply to Germans, but you at least need a different source to cite.

imtringued 5y ago

The fun part about recessions is that demand for savings is going up and since the most popular savings vehicle is money it means demand for borrowers and debt is going up. The people who end up unemployed have absolutely zero capacity to borrow even though they are the ones who need it the most. Thanks to our moral frameworks we interpret strategies like Keynesian fiscal stimulus as some sort of bad drug that the economy is addicted to and should quit. There is a huge double standard here. People want money and they don't want anyone to go into debt. It's the height of hypocrisy. People demand debt and they vilify it at the same time. An amoral interpretation of Keynesian stimulus is that it effectively makes the debt market available to the unemployed. The unemployed are in debt in regards to the government which issues treasury bonds and the government is in debt in regards to the savers. In other words, it is decreasing market rigidity and decreasing overall market distortions. The reason why Keynesian stimulus is a bad idea has nothing to do with morals. Rather, the problem is that using the government to bypass market rigidities shows a deep underlying problem in the labor market that nobody wants to address. There are people who work more than they demand work and there are people who work less than they demand work. In a perfectly flexible market this should be impossible and you know what, it's impossible in a barter economy. People wouldn't work to pile up money that they don't intend to spend the same way a farmer wouldn't produce and pile up potatoes that they won't sell to the economy.

qboltz 5y ago
What's your broader economic framework for this analysis? From your comment history georgist/LVT adjacent. But the responses seem very well connected and elaborate beyond that with which I'm familiar with. On top of a name for the system, what books/wikipedia pages/journal articles would be available to read about it?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

These aren't Americans, though. These are Germans. I don't know if the same statistics apply to Germans, but you at least need a different source to cite.