r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	MildoShaggins
Comment	Counterpoint - we're staring down the barrel of another depression and we're being anaesthetised to it's effects due to government borrowing that will have to be repaid when this is all over. According to the OBR, unemployment is forecast to rise from 3.5% to at least 6.5% and that's without another wave of infection later in the year. As well as footing the bill for the furlough scheme, we're going to have to pay for these people who have been made jobless through no fault of their own. We're looking at a debt to GDP ratio similar to what we had at the end of the second world war and we're ultimately going to pay for this through significantly higher taxes and further austerity measures for a very long time. There goes proper funding for the NHS, policing, education and our already underfunded mental health services. Hundreds of thousands of people who were about to retire have just lost 25% of their retirement funds due to the market crashing. They'll now have to work long past retirement age crowding young people out of the job market and lowering the quality of life of our would be retirees. Even then, the public will still have to foot the bill for this lost income to minimise pension poverty. That means more borrowing, higher taxes and yet further austerity. Younger people who have already faced a decade of wage stagnation and competition from machines and pensioners for entry level jobs, not to mention a mental health crisis, will now have how to suffer through another decade of more of the same. We're talking about a generation who's career prospects are so thoroughly scarred that they'll have to work until they die. Too often we're painting this scenario as saving lives versus saving the economy. Unemployment is a killer - be it directly by suicide or indirectly via reduced life expectancy, higher mortality rates in preventable diseases. Those deaths are difficult to quantify but they're no less real than those caused by Coronavirus. At what point does keeping the country locked down kill more people than the virus?
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/g8twu2/daily_discussion_for_coronavirus_covid19_27_april/foqnuga/
Created	Mon 27th Apr 2020 3:25pm
Status	normal ()

Counterpoint - we're staring down the barrel of another depression and we're being anaesthetised to it's effects due to government borrowing that will have to be repaid when this is all over.

According to the OBR, unemployment is forecast to rise from 3.5% to at least 6.5% and that's without another wave of infection later in the year. As well as footing the bill for the furlough scheme, we're going to have to pay for these people who have been made jobless through no fault of their own. We're looking at a debt to GDP ratio similar to what we had at the end of the second world war and we're ultimately going to pay for this through significantly higher taxes and further austerity measures for a very long time. There goes proper funding for the NHS, policing, education and our already underfunded mental health services.

Hundreds of thousands of people who were about to retire have just lost 25% of their retirement funds due to the market crashing. They'll now have to work long past retirement age crowding young people out of the job market and lowering the quality of life of our would be retirees. Even then, the public will still have to foot the bill for this lost income to minimise pension poverty. That means more borrowing, higher taxes and yet further austerity.

Younger people who have already faced a decade of wage stagnation and competition from machines and pensioners for entry level jobs, not to mention a mental health crisis, will now have how to suffer through another decade of more of the same. We're talking about a generation who's career prospects are so thoroughly scarred that they'll have to work until they die.

Too often we're painting this scenario as saving lives versus saving the economy. Unemployment is a killer - be it directly by suicide or indirectly via reduced life expectancy, higher mortality rates in preventable diseases. Those deaths are difficult to quantify but they're no less real than those caused by Coronavirus. At what point does keeping the country locked down kill more people than the virus?