For example, in 2010 US unemployment briefly grew about 6% to a total of 10% in the US and there were 40,000 additional deaths from cancer alone[1]. When you consider heart disease, other indications, drug abuse, and suicide, the numbers are much greater. The often cited number of 40k for each percent unemployment may not be far off if these factors are taken together.
This trend also holds true in the OECD where social programs are more common because there are still budgetary constraints on centralized healthcare.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Edit: Here is a Meta-analysis showing that the risk of death was 63% higher among those who experienced unemployment in the US AND Europe
You are delusional to think it is possible to suspend payments without printing massive amounts of money that will certainly lead to more death.
Currency inflation kills. Look at venezuela. You cannot shrug this off. At least consider the effects.
> By March 2009, it held $1.75 trillion of bank debt, mortgage-backed securities, and Treasury notes; this amount reached a peak of $2.1 trillion in June 2010.
That feels like a lot of liquidity to me.
Liquidity expansion through loans and purchase of credit and equity instruments simply isn't very inflationary. It can only cause real price inflation if the money starts chasing a shortage of real goods and services - which are currently being dramatically underproduced. If it does start causing inflation, the Fed can and will simply raise interest rates from their current near-zero level. Or fiscal policy can be used.
Venezuela is under sanctions which are intended to exacerbate the situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...
What the fed is doing is printing money now that will be destroyed later, or held in reserve. Either way, it is backed by actual financial instruments (whatever equity or bonds or notes they're buying).
We've done a middling job at making sure people have air and water, less good with food and even worse with shelter and medicine. But liquidity? That should be last on the list of things to worry about. It should always be last.
We should believe that some economic curses last multiple lifetimes.
Death is not a problem, everyone dies, nobody knows when they will. Could be someone pressing a button, could be a bus, could be old age. You can die tomorrow. But suffering, that really matters. I wouldn't make someone suffer, but if it's quick painless death... way harder question.
I just really dislike the focus on living rather than focusing on the value of life. I mean this in a pre-pandemic sense. Hearing people talk about fear of death, and yet accept a lifetime of meaninglessness.. just irks me.
Paying rent and mortgage, on the other hand, isn't material. If you don't pay it nothing material changes - it's not an iron law of the world in the way that hunger is, evictions are a choice. Admittedly it transfers the problem to someone else, but if the solution to maintaining everyone fed includes them then they're not going to go hungry.
Financial conditions also have a time tradeoff. Reducing retirement funds affects material conditions in the future. Or the date at which people are able to retire.
If you had a button you could press which let you retire immediately, but (with probability P) took the life of some random person in the world, would you press it? With what value of P?