By the way this is another reason why UBI is good in a crisis. It creates a floor for people to buy food etc. while we suspend rent payments and mortgages for a few months. And with no disincentive to work like we have now.

Anyway... so who do the retired people need to pay when everything is on pause? Social Security and Medicare cover a lot of the basics. If they have investments yielding enough for them to live on, then they have savings that they can use 0.5% of in three months.

Not to mention, the stock market is down, we can pause bond yields for the retirees for a few months also. The only thing I wouldn’t pause is sovereign debt, since we can print money to service it and confidence in that is paramount.

(Another reason why McConnell’s stance on letting states go bankrupt is dangerous. I would have liked to see states and cities have the ability to issue their own complementary currencies.)