[deathgrips]

Are you sure about that? Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. These shortages can cascade throughout supply chains.

The big one that no one seriously considers is people running out of money, and then their governments running out of money. It's hard to tax people who can't work.

[vkou]

> Are you sure about that?

Yes, because plenty of economies that modern westerners would describe as grossly inefficient and half-functional, at best, have managed to provide all of those things over the past century.

> Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses.

This is false. Consider reading the lists of essential businesses enumerated in the shutdown orders. Businesses that produce goods consumed by essential businesses are essential.

> and then their governments running out of money.

This is also false. Sovereigns that control their currencies cannot run out of money. Especially in a recession, when they have a lot more headroom to inflate[1] by borrowing printed money.

A government is not a household, and its budget is not balanced like one.

[1] During a recession, wealth is destroyed, and the money supply deflates. Deflation is bad. Deflation is incredibly bad. You can combat deflation by having your central bank cause inflation, by printing money, and lending it out - to the government.

[deathgrips]

How much money can we print until people lose faith in the currency? How many months can we do it for? It may take up to 2 years to discover and distribute a working vaccine. Can we print money to pay everyone's food and rent for 2 years?

Why aren't we treating every workplace as essential, since they produce an income for their workers?

[vkou]

> How much money can we print until people lose faith in the currency?

How much money do you think the recession will destroy?

Take that amount, and add a few percentage points of the total money supply to it.

> Can we print money to pay everyone's food and rent for 2 years?

1. This is nonsense. Not everyone is out of work because of the shutdowns.

2. If you want more businesses to re-open, we should be working on better mitigation for the virus. The more testing, the more contact tracing, the more PPE, the better we comply with social distancing requirements, the better we can prevent spread in workplaces, the more non-essential businesses can re-open.

For some reason though, nobody who wants to re-open wants to talk about the work that has to be done, to allow for re-opening to take place.

There's no shortage of work that can be done, to improve the health of the economy. Why aren't we doing it? Could it be because the same political factions that are pushing for re-opening aren't interested in paying for it?

[deathgrips]

>How much money do you think the recession will destroy? Take that amount, and add a few percentage points of the total money supply to it.

I think we'd have to print more than we could assume is safe. We're in an unprecedented situation right now. This isn't a normal depression. We shouldn't stumble into a battlefield and expect the old skirmish tactics to save us. We're acting unbelievably foolhardy and cavalier about the serious threat this poses to the poor.

People on hacker news, the media, and in the CDC have no real fear of being evicted or going without food, so why would they seriously consider it? If you're a doctor or an epidemiologist, your work is essential so your main threat is the virus. You're optimizing national policy for one variable (disease spread and deaths) rather than multiple variables (disease spread and deaths, starvation, suicides due to job loss, increased homelessness, and general welfare of the country).

>If you want more businesses to re-open, we should be working on better mitigation for the virus. The more testing, the more contact tracing, the more PPE, the better we comply with social distancing requirements, the better we can prevent spread in workplaces, the more non-essential businesses can re-open.

I wholeheartedly agree and think that we all need to realize that we have a great responsibility to do our part to protect our loved ones from this disease. Funding testing and contact tracing is a life or death decision.

>Could it be because the same political factions that are pushing for re-opening aren't interested in paying for it?

I can't know for certain since I'm not in those political spheres. I can predict that the wealthy want their businesses to continue operating while they will personally self-isolate until they get a vaccine (social distancing for me, not for thee). Regardless of how our national policies change, I expect that the poor will get no significant financial support, as always. I predict that if we do print money, it will just go to businesses. About 80% of the financial assistance distributed so far has not gone to individuals. It has mostly bailed out businesses like hotels and airliners (because we desperately need hotels and airliners for the next two years!).

That's the main reason why I don't buy the notion that the government will bail out individuals. It never has. It's a carrot on a stick.

Anyways, I appreciate the insight on QE to offset deflation. Do you know of any interesting books on that topic I could check out?

[js8]

> Anyways, I appreciate the insight on QE to offset deflation. Do you know of any interesting books on that topic I could check out?

Anything from Steve Keen, he has a good endogenous theory of money. He had interesting models back during the financial crisis which showed that austerity was deepening debt deflation, QE to banks was somewhat OK, and QE to consumers (helicopter money) turned out to be the best solution.