Do you have an example of any economic system in any country in the world, past or present, that could survive the majority of able-bodied people not working for a long period of time?

How do you figure—where would the threat come from? We can certainly still produce necessary goods while the majority of the workforce stays home. In that light—every industrialized country, probably. Certainly other countries every where you look on every continent seem to be doing markedly better at this than the US, including countries that are opening back up. Our best parallels are the goddamn UK and Iran, the former of which is trying to hang itself and the latter we've been trying to choke out for 40+ years.

Anyway, I can't even guess how you think the economy works if you think we need to open up or something bad will happen that nobody ever names. Oh no, a U shaped recovery and not a V shaped recovery? How will my 401k ever recover in the next six months?!? Think about all that risk to my capital! :'( How can this country ever recover from such a critical loss of portfolio value?

Instead of actually ensuring people can survive this crisis, we've bought corporate debt and told people to get back to work. It's a goddamn joke of any understanding of economics. Honey, every person that's ever read adam smith could do better than that. "developing countries" are putting us to shame, and good for them, because we're on the bus in Speed.

> where would the threat come from?

GDP shrinkage leading to a major decline in level of economic development.

> We can certainly still produce necessary goods while the majority of the workforce stays home.

Sure, I'm not claiming that we will starve to death en masse -- though that might indeed be a problem in India, it won't be in the US.

> How will my 401k ever recover in the next six months?!? Think about all that risk to my capital!

Not sure why you keep bringing up this strawman. Are you aware that the economy and the stock market are not the same thing? And that economic downturns cause real misery for real people, especially poorer people who don't even have 401(k)s at all?

I’m not sure why the GDP is a concern, frankly. How does this affect citizens in a material way? That is why I keep bringing up the 401k—to illustrate the absurdity of using an abstract measurement (GDP) to justify material loss of life.

GDP per capita is one of the most strongly correlated metrics to quality of life.

If you think people are living better in Denmark or Ireland than in Mexico or Turkey, how do you explain this other than GDP per capita?

Again, this has nothing to do with 401ks or the stock market. Some countries have been rich and others have been poor since well before stock markets were invented.

If you don’t think life is better in richer countries than in poorer countries, I’m not sure I can convince you of anything.