>Would you trade 9 million unemployed for 9 million dead?

No, I'm not advocating to abort a quarantine and have people return to work.

>It's a fantasy to assume people will just go back to work, the economy will get better, and everything will return to normal

Agreed. I'm advocating we stop believing in this fantasy and face reality that this is the start of a long term recession.

Gotcha, sorry, I read your comment as a "we all need to unpause and return to work" message, when it wasn't.

This is definitely the start of interesting times - we don't know how things are going to look at the end of all this. The best economics times have come on the tail end of adversity.

> The best economics times have come on the tail end of adversity.

That can be a long, long time too. The black plague was a boon for workers who survived it since the labor pool was small and consequently wages were higher. Plenty of free land, too. The downside was, you know, the black plague...

>If the economy bounced back to what it was on Feb 28th, what is your acceptable number of dead? Would you trade 9 million unemployed for 9 million dead? Do you think that wouldn't have an effect on the market as well?

The vast majority of those dead are going to be 65+. Maybe I'm just feeling salty this morning, but considering how much that generation has stuck it to my generation I'm not even a little bit interested in trading economic collapse for their lives.

Is this sort of framing not a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face?

I don't really see that analogy. The situation is more along the lines of choosing between losing my nose or my face.

Not to mention all the assets that would be freed up for younger generations.

Is that really freeing anything up, or just accelerating inheritance? It's not as though we'll find ourselves with a magical new land of free cash for all - it'll just get passed down as it was going to anyways. Boomers are already leaving the workforce in droves, I don't expect it'd be any sort of revolution.

It frees up all the homes they live in, cars they drive, etc. We won't have to provide them health care, food, clothing, and luxury items. Once you retire you're a drain on the economy because you are consuming stuff but not producing anything.

> We won't have to provide them health care, food, clothing, and luxury items.

With the exception of health care, aren't they buying that stuff from their own savings? Do we hand out luxury items? Am I saving for my retirement for no reason?

Are the immune compromised also simply drains?

>With the exception of health care, aren't they buying that stuff from their own savings?

How much wheat does your savings grow? How many pairs of pants does it make?

I guess it depend on where my bank currently has the savings invested. That seems to be a pretty common problem with all savings - stock investment at best being an abstraction of a companies value and in no ways actually linked to how much wheat is produced by said company.

Either way, you dodged my question about the immune compromised. If you're trying to sanitize this whole thing as simply economic numbers, where those who take should be removed for those who produce, you're forgetting about those people, as well as all the other producers who will die.

Boomers have fewer children. Many have none, so yes, many assets will be liquidated.