cadlin

This is very wrong.

Both of those numbers are wrong. It's more like 6% deficit and 8% GDP growth.

If you project the first three quarters of GDP growth, the US should end the year with $27.6 Trillion of GDP. The annualized rate is 8.5% without adjusting for inflation. Inflation adjusted, the annual rate of growth is 3.75% in the first three quarters.

In that case, the $1.7 Trillion deficit is 6.1% of GDP, so actually a half-percent lower than your calculations.

There's a saying in my country. "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

As a renter and voter, my preferred policy solution is to suspend rental evictions, let the foreclosures go forward as mortgages are a risky asset, then let the market sort it out at auction. That sounds like a more market-oriented solution to me.

The most expensive plan for my family (2 parents and a young child) is $367 a month. Equivalent coverage in the US would be thousands of dollars.

Every single one of the past five presidents?

Good systems would obviously be desirable, but this is basic executive competence. A US response to a potential pandemic brewing in China should have been a top White House priority since early January. When there are coordination problems, it's the responsibility of the person at the top to sort it out. They didn't even try and fail to fix the problem, they identified an entirely different concern: the threat to the stock market, which is where the response concentrated.

>To a very good approximation, the marginal impact of any hoarders on the scarcity of a product is zero.

This is pure ideology. Do you have any evidence that a single person buying 10,000 masks from every hardware store in an entire state has no marginal impact on the scarcity of a product? Basic math would suggest this is not the case.

On the other hand, if you buy a business entirely dependent on human capital, then proceed to instigate a mass resignation, there is no amount of spin that adds up to anything other than boneheaded decision making.