
The economic devastation of the pandemic could kill more people than the virus - Reedx
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-11/more-than-a-billion-people-escaped-poverty-in-the-last-20-years-the-coronavirus-could-erase-those-gains
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thawaway1837
Not having a lockdown would not have avoided economic devastation.

As pretty much every data point shows, in the US, the drastic drop off of
economic activity happened well before the actual lockdowns. States saw drops
in economic activity in the days leading to lockdowns that was 80-90% as much
as the drop that happened during the lockdown.

So the trade off wasn’t COVID deaths and a better economy, vs fewer COVID
deaths and a worse economy. The trade off was a lot of COVID deaths,
potentially triggering devastating cliffs, and a terrible economy, or fewer
COVID deaths, and a slightly more terrible economy.

~~~
s1artibartfast
Do you have any sources for your numbers? The only values even close that that
that I have seen were specific to the restruant industry.

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rumanator
The hypothetic "economic devastation" has a very simple political solution.

An epidemic raging throughout the country doesn't.

The economic problem is only a problem if the political leadership decides to
do nothing at all.

~~~
kelchm
The economic devastation is hardly hypothetical at this point. It’s happening
and clearly observable even here in the US.

Claiming that there is a simple political solution to the current global
economic situation is beyond disingenuous.

~~~
mrgreenfur
I think he's alluding to the option of giving money to people instead of to
companies; this will alleviate personal devastation.

~~~
100ideas
On the eve of passing the first $2 trillion stimulus package, final
deliberations in the US Congress about the "best" way to use the funds devolve
into partisan deadlock:

One side insists that the only rational policy is for approximately 100% of
the funds to be used to prevent business failures, arguing that "1) citizens
need businesses to employ them so they can earn the monies they need to avoid
starvation and homelessness with enough leftover (or at least a line of
credit) for consumer consumption to collectively drive 70% of the economy; 2)
the economy is literally made out of businesses and if too many die, then by
definition so will economy; and 3) failed businesses take longer and are more
costly (in capital investments) to repair/replace than are the
jobs/homes/lives of the employees that must be sacrificed to save the company.

"On the contrary!", says the almost-equally-sized other half of the
legislature, "Approx 100% of the funds to be distributed directly to citizens,
$6000 each, thus 'cutting out the the middleman employers' and maximizing the
number of citizens saved from homelessness and starvation due to unemployment.
THIS is the optimal policy, both economically AND morally!"

To break the deadlock, Congress selects YOU as stimulus policy czar: your job
is to decide and justify how best to distribute the stimulus funds - primarily
distributed to businesses, primarily distributed directly to citizens, or some
compromise between?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's strange that nuclear devastation for small businesses was never been a
consideration during previous recessions.

Then the narrative was always "Cyclical recessions happen - deal with it."
Followed by "And how about some tax cuts?"

Beyond that, your question is a solved problem. The answer is called
Keynesianism, also known as the New Deal.

Handing out money for nothing is clearly madness. But there is a lot of work
that needs to be done, and isn't being done - including affordable health
care, infrastructure repair and expansion, more diverse food supplies and
farming, education at all levels, and so on.

None of this will happen with the current incumbent, but countries that don't
make the leap from a greed economy to a need economy are very likely to end up
as failed states within ten years at the outside, economically and
politically.

~~~
DuskStar
> The answer is called Keynesianism, also known as the New Deal.

Because _that_ worked out so well. Aren't there more and more economists
saying that the New Deal made the Great Depression longer?

~~~
ianai
No, Hoover’s austerity policies are viewed as having elongated the GD. Without
the ND the Hoover dam wouldn’t exist. LV, NV wouldn’t exist - pretty sure the
US would be much less developed all around and thus poorer. I’d posit the US
losing WWII without the ND.

~~~
DuskStar
Well, here's a few examples of people saying that the New Deal either had no
major effect on the Great Depression or even extended it:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123353276749137485](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123353276749137485)

[https://fee.org/articles/fdrs-folly-how-roosevelt-and-his-
ne...](https://fee.org/articles/fdrs-folly-how-roosevelt-and-his-new-deal-
prolonged-the-great-depression/)

[https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ask_a_scholar_did_the_new_...](https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ask_a_scholar_did_the_new_deal_end_the_great_depression)

(I basically googled "did the new deal extend the great depression" to find
these)

Now, you could say that these are all "conservative" sources, and thus
invalid. (Of course, you'd then have to throw out support for the New Deal
from "progressive" sources, which might also be painful) But either way, it
does show that "The New Deal didn't help" is a position held by people.

~~~
tsco77
"Although the central causes of the depression are still hotly con- tested,
there is a consensus that the "passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff exacerbated
the Great Depression."34 Vice President Albert Gore's assertion (in his NAFTA
debate with H. Ross Perot) of our consensus on this issue, has been
corroborated. On top of the profession's lack of agreement about the genesis
of the Great Depression, there is a disagreement about the effect of the New
Deal. In fact, the economists in the sample are almost evenly divided on the
question of whether or not when taken "as a whole, government policies of the
New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." The consensus
among historians is that the new Deal did not lengthen and deepen the
depression."

Whaples, Robert (March 1995). "Where Is There Consensus Among American
Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions" (PDF). The
Journal of Economic History. Cambridge University Press. 55 (1): 142–151.
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.482.4975. doi:10.1017/S0022050700040602. JSTOR 2123771.

~~~
ianai
Widely described as authoritative on the GD:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Crash,_1929](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Crash,_1929)

------
ncmncm
" _The economic devastation of the pandemic could kill more people than the
virus_ "?

Only if we are very, very lucky.

On a typical year in the US, something of the order of five million people
die. (Could be more, couldn't be much less.) A very large fraction of that is
accounted for by aging and age-related illnesses.

This year many of those who would die anyway will be taken by the virus.
Another notable number will be taken but might otherwise have lived one or a
few years longer.

But let us ignore that and look at the numbers. Suppose it takes 200,000,
which we all hope is on the high side. That's 4% of five million. Death from
virus is terrible. Death from economic ills is terrible. But regular death is
way, way worse than both combined.

A lot of US death happens for very preventable reasons, but Americans have
chosen, or have had chosen on their behalf, to tolerate overwhelmingly more
unnecessary (meaning unnecessarily early) deaths _every year_ than the
combined sum of both of those.

What are the chances that people will come out of this crisis committed to
preventing all those other unnecessary deaths?

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gnusty_gnurc
People act like government adding a zero to everyone's bank account will help
us weather the storm. News: it won't. The pandemic makes blindingly clear what
people only loosely have to countenance during prosperous times: any of the
things we enjoy are made. No magic! If people can't produce things (government
prohibition on work) - we won't have things!

~~~
nelaboras
For western countries there's no shortage of anything important. The argument
that the economic effects will kill more might count for the US with its
absurd policies (like link between healthcare and employment) or countries
like China and India with less developed social support systrms, but does not
make much sense in Western Europe. You will see a slight increase in suicides
from.unemployment, but health etc will not be impacted.

And there will be some other positive effects: decreased traffic means
decreased pollution (a key cause of heart and lung disease), less traffic
accidents, less stress linked to long commutes, etc. Not to mention lower
spread of other diseases like the common flu due to social distancing.

I don't mean to paint it all rosy, but the issue is not as black and white as
is suggested in articles like this.

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aaomidi
Okay maybe our economic system sucks?

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gautamcgoel
Keep getting a paywall... Any way to get around it?

~~~
clawedjird
Try a browser extension like "Bypass Paywalls" on Firefox and Chrome.

Link: [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)

