I feel like you've lost the thread here. Real Life™ is the part of the economy that's being shut down; over a billion people are no longer allowed to go to a cafe or speak to friends or continue their day to day activities. The concern isn't that an extended shutdown will be bad for Goldman Sachs, but that it will make ongoing life intolerable and resuming normal life impossible.
The most infuriating part of the shutdown is the disconnect I see between comments on Twitter, where the shutdown is basically a game because everyone has a WFH-capable tech job, and in real life, where I have family members suddenly unemployed, with wild uncertainty about whether they'll get their job back (in a month? two? three?). It's incredibly stressful, and not a fun joke.
Like, independent of whether you think the shutdown is the right risk / reward tradeoff, please at least think about the 70% of the workforce that cannot work from home, because they work in restaurants or physical service jobs. If you are still working (or at least pulling a paycheck), you're incredibly lucky -- please don't act like you have the only voice of moral authority about when and how this should end, and the calculus that goes into that tradeoff.
FWIW, I will throw in my two cents. This shutdown needs to end immediately. This is absolutely crushing the middle class and the economy. I'd bet that many of the small shops and restaurants I used to go to will never reopen. These low-margin businesses cannot cope with a week long closure, let alone four. We are already looking at waves of rent/debt defaults followed by massive layoffs and then a deep recession if not a depression. And if the government's response is unlimited money creation (for the banks or for individuals, it does not matter) then we are looking at a potential monetary or dollar crisis.
This decision to shutdown the economy has been made on the misguided assumption that you can save the healthcare system in isolation from the rest of the system of production in which it resides. It is also assuming that saving lives supersedes any other consideration, especially money or economics. We are hearing this now from the media who already pre-attacking Trump for hinting he wants to end the shutdown -- that he is valuing billionaires or dollars over lives. This is shear non-sense and ignores the fact that people are not ghosts, we need to work in order to stay alive and live. I am reading on many forums about people who are about to lose their business that they spent 20 years building or their homes if they cannot get back to work soon. This is not just narrowly about lives lost to the virus but living for everyone. Of course we will do everything reasonable to help the afflicted but shutting down the economy should not be one of them.
If you want to still hold to the assumption that only lives matter in this decision then think about this. Think of how many alcoholics will be created or relapse from spending days on end with nothing to do, bored in their home. How many of those will eventually die of alcoholism or kill people with their car? What about anorexics who recover but under quarantine and the anxiety of virus scaremongering relapse and ultimately starve to death? If the economy goes into a recession or depression (a fait accompli in my view) then how many people are going commit suicide which always goes up in bad times? How many people will die in just these three examples 100K, 200K, 1M people?
These are not fantasy deaths, it will really happen but they will never be blamed on the shutdown. It is a real hidden cost, as real as those who die from CV19. There are real life-and-death altering consequences beyond just those unfortunate to get this virus.
Let me put it in simple word: you'll loose your job. Your friends and family will loose their jobs.
As a result, when your savings run out, you'll loose your appartement. And so will your friends and family.
You won't be able to afford food without government assistance.
And even if shutdown lasts only 30 days, it'll wreck the economy for a long time. Once a restaurant defaults and closes, it won't just re-open. Those jobs will be lost for a long time.
Now, maybe you're one of the lucky ones with enough savings to ride this out and this won't affect you. But it'll affect millions of others.
While everything is shut down? Including the food distribution network? What good will money do in that scenario?
Shutting everything down isn't an option. The economy isn't some nice-to-have thing you can turn on and off on a whim. It's an essential part of providing the basic necessities that people need to live—which includes much more than just food.
Every expense is income to someone else. If I stop paying my mortgage it means some pension fund doesn't have the income to pay their retirees.
There's no real way out of a months long shutdown. Our economic out put will be cut ~10% on an annual basis for every month. Thats real economic production gone forever. And theres no pause button on the economy. Stopping it means businesses fail and the relationships/organization that generates economic value will go away with them.
we could be sweeping something else under the rug: knock-on effects of the shutdown. people are somehow just starting to realize that there's worse impacts of shutting down the economy than lower share prices. people go hungry. people riot. cities burn. innocents get killed throughout the whole process. we're just getting started if the economy doesnt turn around quick.
> You're going to be telling 100 of millions they're going to lose on all that they've worked on for their entire lives etc.
Does it have to be this way? Why not put certain things like rent, utilities, mortgage payments on pause--even if just for those on furlough?
I realize those who are heavily leveraged may suffer, like airlines who bought back stocks instead of maintaining a war chest. And ultimately I agree that lockdown isn't practical in the long term.
I more or less agree with a temporary shut down however I see the quote all the time, and it is a stupid statement, because you equally can not have a life with out a livelihood
This the the doctors delima, that does not factor in quality of life in to the "life" equation, life with no quality is not much of a life.
Further I have big problems with the Governer or the government making that choice, it should not be the government choice of my livelihood over my life, in either direction. No only is it shocking how fast people willing toss the economy aside and expect government checks to save them, it is also shocking how fast people simply toss aside all civil liberties.
Last I checked, grocery stores and restruants are still open and planes are still in the sky. The remainder are people who are on the invisible end of society.
This isn't to say that the shutdown isn't a big deal but it should be grounded in the reality of who and what it actually affects.
The typical American could, at this point, realistically not notice anything is happening if it weren't for the news.
Because shutting down the economy will kill people, too. It will also decrease quality of life for everyone, and disrupt families, communities, cities and countries.
I don't even know what the best course of action is, but there are trade-offs that a lot of people here seem to be ignoring.
> Serious question for US members of HN: how do you tolerate these shutdowns?
> Overall it seems potentially damaging and disruptive for any organisation or individuals with dependencies on the government.
Most people do not have dependencies on the government. You could live through a shutdown without noticing it had happened if not for the news coverage.
I think it's instructive to set aside money for a minute and think about things in real terms: if we shut things down, then which parts of the economy won't be functioning and what is the cost of that.
For example: suppose hospitality workers are paid to stay at home. How is that paid for? Well actually it's entiely paid for by people having fewer of the hospitality experiences that they are used to. It is obvious when you take money out of the equation that hospitality workers staying at home will not cause there to be any less of essentials such as food and shelter to go around.
There are other sectors like manufacturing where there is a real cost to be paid. But that could be as small as delaying the purchase of the manufactured goods by period of lockdown. No so bad.
Whem you look at it like this way, QE seems entirely justified. All it really does is spread the effects accross the economy to people who can bear them, and avoids financially ruining people which will be a primaey cause of long term economic damage once things reopen.
I agree. Everyone is getting destroyed economically and the government is just bailing out wall street. This shut down is just insane and needs to come to an end. The cam just make masks mandatory!
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