In no realistic permutation. Thanks for asking!

Hmm I'm not as sure, and I'm not sure why other people are so sure. People seem to generally respond 'of course not' and get offended that I've suggested it. I'm not really sure why.

On the off chance that you're saying this in good faith? Generally speaking it's because Just Asking Questions comes with motives that suck. Maybe you're the one whose don't and you are tragically caught up amidst the sewage flow of "screw 'em" types, but playing the percentages on bad-faith argumentation is pretty safe. Trolls and other turds make a point of wasting people's reserves of good faith as a tactic to dominate discourse--there's no reason to let them do so. Flat dismissal is the milder form of "block and move on".

I'm just as confused. It's prompted another strong reaction in you but I genuinely don't get why. I don't know what motives you think I have, or why I might be arguing in bad faith, or why you're talking about trolls and turds (?).

Why is it so wrong to ask 'are we sure we're going the right way - this way seems to have a lot of problems - are we sure the other way has more?' Some people literally kill themselves when they become unemployed. We have millions of new unemployed people.

You say it's not forbidden but you're comparing me to a turd for doing it. Why does it cause people to abuse me?

We are confident the other way has more problems and more outright destruction because the other way blows up our hospitals and everyday life becomes nonfunctional anyway.

This is my last message in this subthread because your misreading of my post to put on a hairshirt has convinced me that you are not here to discuss the topic in good faith. HAND.

Millions of people would have become newly unemployed regardless, as a result of the pandemic. The pandemic is an ongoing global catastrophe. Refusing to take efforts to mitigate it doesn't mean it's not still a catastrophe. Social distancing was always going to happen regardless of whether it was mandated. People are rational enough that they won't put themselves into close proximity with others if it could easily mean death (especially because of how overcrowded the hospitals would be).

There isn't a country on Earth right now that isn't doing social distancing of one form or another. It's an inevitable consequence of a pandemic; it's not some elective choice that we made.

I know next to no one who ever uses "Stocks" to pay for everyday costs of raising a family or just getting by. I am aware that, yes, retirees stand to lose a lot; which is tragic, and also why I downright disagree with the idea of privatized retirement accounts based on held and sold equity based on the assumption that growth will always occur. In fact, the architecture of such a system is the driving force in the propagation of cross-generational fiscal inequality, and will inevitably result in a slow inexorable trickle up without an active mechanism in place to ensure that wages grow by the same factor that technology obviate the need to have someone do a job. In a crisis, someone is inevitably left with the empty bag as things spiral.

That said; the economy taking a dive is preferential to the population doing the same. There will always be work to be done as long as we wake up every day; and the trick is figuring out how to adapt to new circumstances to get that done.

For instance, now would be a fantastic time to train additional medical personnel or build additional infrastructure for them. Research efforts into mitigating the pandemic are also highly desirable. Logistics solutions to enable financial compensation and product dispatch from community kitchens restauraunts, etc without necessitating physical congregation are sure bets, and just about anything that isn't dependent on getting a bunch of people all in the same place at the same time is also good.

The economy is perfectly fine if you don't assume there is an implicit guarantee that the same endeavors that were profitable yesterday must remain so always. What we're experiencing is an economic record scratch and pivot.

Perhaps for a while most actual economic transactions will be centered on "because it needed to be done, and the government is subsidizing everything until we can find a way to get private enterprise running freely again." Who cares? Life'll have to keep going. If a Jubilee has to happen to reset things... Oh well. It'll suck; but no one asked for this.

The type of work to have people thrown at it is what has changed, and the acceptable methods of execution have been altered. I doubt we'll see a wholesale collapse of civilization by a long shot. What'll be far more interesting to see is if we'll weather the transition to less globalised work smoothly or not. The predictability of life just took a hit; that's all. Time to show how to change. No?

Is ~20 million out of work people in the US alone not realistic? That's already happened, so you might want to become concerned.

Are widespread food shortages in six months realistic? I guess we'll see.

20m out of work is awful and can be dealt with without causing a public health crisis. Keynes won; we understand how to deal with this.

Food shortages don't appear to be realistic and hinge on assumptions that don't seem to hold water.

Just a few months into this thing, infections still accelerating, and food supply chains are showing signs of widespread stress and deterioration. Everything from harvest to logistics to stocking shelves is being fretted over by the people in charge of them.

I could be wrong, but I'm going to guess you have no idea what you're talking about on this particular topic.