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Re:Millions of credit-card customers can’t pay their bills by cortesoft on Saturday April 25, 2020 @03:53PM (#22980884)
Right, but our businesses produce way more than enough to sustain our people... normally, this is great, and the excess can go into luxuries for people.

We can still sustain people for a while without producing the extra that lets us have a luxurious life... we just need to make sacrifices for a bit.

We need to do a better job of spreading that sacrifice around, is the issue.

Re:Millions of credit-card customers can’t pay their bills by erik_seaberg on Saturday April 25, 2020 @04:34PM (#22981216)
The economy is too big to centrally plan what depends on what. We've stopped producing tools and supplies for essential jobs (and parts for those tools, and so on). Instead we're drawing down stockpiles that hadn't been sold yet. When those stalled pipelines fully drain it's going to get ugly.
Re:Millions of credit-card customers can’t pay their bills by cortesoft on Sunday April 26, 2020 @12:22AM (#22984381)
You don't have to central plan, and our food production and manufacturing have not stopped... we aren't drawing down stockpiles, the critical things are still being made.

What we have stopped are things like restaurants and entertainment... there aren't stockpiles involved with those things, we just aren't going out to eat and aren't going out for entertainment. They can start right back up when we end quarantine.

Re:Millions of credit-card customers can’t pay their bills by erik_seaberg on Sunday April 26, 2020 @11:34PM (#22992657)
The government does not have an exhaustive supply chain diagram of every essential business. Emergency orders have exempted certain obvious types of business, but their feedstocks and tools come from other businesses that weren't listed and cannot operate today.