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Actually as callous as it sounds extra deaths are good for the economy. More dead people means fewer competitors for all resources except labor. What that mean
by buscoquadnary 4y ago
Actually as callous as it sounds extra deaths are good for the economy.
More dead people means fewer competitors for all resources except labor. What that means is fewer people need stuff and there are fewer people to make stuff, so the stuff the dead people had is easy to obtain for the living while employers have to pay more for labor because there is less of it.
As evidence the black plague was considered one of the major events that ended the dark ages and the oppressions (relatively speaking) of the peasant class. Suddenly lord's needed to start giving their peasants rights and things to do or risk losing them to a lord that would give them those things.
It's horrible and callous but it is also a fact, especially when you consider many of those deaths were not among the most productive segments of society.
- muh_gradle 4y agoThis sounds almost like some version of the broken window fallacy. But there is no way that ~1 million dead Americans from COVID has helped this country economically. Supply chains have been hurt by COVID. Hospitalizations means unproductive workers. Deaths means unproductive workers. We are not thriving at all right now.
- beamatronic 4y agoMany tech workers were thriving (making and spending money) until their RSU’s crashed 75% or more
- imtringued 4y agoThat's the broken window fallacy. Abundant capital must be destroyed. In this case the abundant capital is people.
- johnsimer 4y agoA reduction in people in the economy is good for some subsegments but for the economy as a whole, no Think about the networks effects of an economy. An economy of one person has a size of zero units. An economy of two people has a size of one unit, an economy of n people has a max size of n^2 units, or more really nlogn, when you take into account the Gaussian distribution of value between each node of the network.
- wcfields 4y ago> fewer people need stuff and there are fewer people to make stuff But, that's the whole gist of our economy: lots of people needing stuff (consumers) and lots people making stuff (labor).