IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression

You seem to think that being poor in a first world country is just skipping few vacations and luxury items but otherwise life can be wonderful. I think you severely underestimate how poor people can get even in countries with strong social security, like the nordic countries.

Also the idea that misery is mostly political decision sounds just silly. Most of Europe hardly recovered from 2008 financial crisis and are already cracking under the demographic shift, baby boomers retiring. Add a covid depression into the mix and things can get really bad. There's just not enough money in the economy to share for both the retirees and a large number of unemployed. This can cause a vicious cycle as the increasing social spending will increase taxes, increased taxes will go to increased labour cost, increased labour cost will drive down demand on European goods increasing the unemployment even more etc...

There's always a cynic to rain on your optimism :)

That's a take that is gained from reading two many doom and gloom writers and not looking at the data.

The data shows that economies - on average - expand and have done consistently, long term since the renaissance.

Once you look at that, you see recessions as mistakes. Most large ones since the start of the 20th century have been caused by errors in the capital markets (1929, 1987, 2008) or commodity price shocks (1970s).

Perhaps the run up in stock prices should have been corrected. But that would have been a recession caused by a financial market correction, so another 2001 "dot com crash" style thing. Nothing like this.

is there any merit towards my naive optimism

By most measurements this is the biggest economic shock since 1929 (and possibly larger). It's the first time we've have economic activity stop this quickly across so many industries all across the world ever (perhaps the black death in the 1300s was similar because many farms went unharvested because of the lack of labor - up to 80% of people died in some areas[1]).

It's possible this will turn around quickly. We certainly stopped things quicker than I would have believed was possible a 4 months ago.

But provided you understand that is an optimistic view and isn't really supported by history it's ok.

[1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-impact-of-the-black...

Our economic system is not nearly robust enough for these suddenly 5-10% unemployed and underemployed citizens. We can not "easily get through this if we want to".

Wow that is pretty out of touch with reality. If you have a household where two people were all of a sudden out of a job at the same time with absolutely no warning or preparation, having to pay for two kids, a mortgage and no prospect to find a job in the next few months then I'm afraid skipping a vacation or not buying a luxury item will not cut it! And this shit doesn't just happen to the poor. If you are a restaurant manager on a high salary but all of a sudden the restaurants are forced by the government to be closed and before they are allowed to open again might have gone bankrupt, and the other person is in a high paying office job (fashion buyer for a big brand) and has been sacked because the entire fashion industry is having a fucking heart attack now then both people might be out of work for nearly a whole year before they can get back to anything like what happened before our governments decided to completely shred our livelihoods to the grounds for some yet known overall good. These people will be fucked for years and can be lucky if they are not going to loose their homes, get divorced and become alcoholics.