> It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.
Is that actually true though? What resource are we low on? Do we not have enough nonperishable goods or public funds to pay for utilities and basic infrastructure?
We might have enough food etc stockpiled, but the servicing of debt (upon which everything is built) drives a certain modest urgency through the whole system.
The need to service crushing debt is a large part of what everybody is hoping will fall away. A primary economic concern right now is people losing their homes for failing to make rent, whether they rent from a landlord or "own". Businesses will go bankrupt for much the same reason - high burn rates that were mainly just going to the banks.
Debt has metastasized and spawned many industries, so its retraction is unlikely to be a peaceful event. But it is a cancer that will kill our society some time. The only question is if now is that time, or if some patching will get the system through this and we can go back to pumping the stock market as a false idol of productivity.
As a point of theory, in a highly deflationary scenario the correct response may be for the government to (controllably) print paper. Given the right distribution mechanism debt could be serviced on the freshly printed paper. The effectiveness of such a strategy is dependent on how efficient the mechanism to distribute paper to end debt holders as well as how well monitored the money supply is.
The worst case on such a scenario is that an economy sits on rationing for a period of time, followed by a strong and possibly inflationary demand spike, but businesses and people's balance sheets could be partially paused.
Is that actually true though? What resource are we low on? Do we not have enough nonperishable goods or public funds to pay for utilities and basic infrastructure?