This is the show from Friday, May 8th, 2020
SUMMARY:
* List of 25 Ways a Recession Kills People: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart and Fred Williams list the ways that an economic downturn (from COVID-19 or otherwise) kills people...
- Suicide increases (typically, its the 10th leading cause of death; 2nd cause of death for young adults; see Utah Highway Patrol's 80% increase in quarantine mental health interventions; 1000% surge in contacts with the Federal Emotional Support Hotline)
increased disease, depression, and directly, death itself
- Starvation as recession could horrifically increase the nine million annual deaths worldwide
- Unemployment increases death rate by 50% from disease, accidents, etc. (so 30 million Americans apparently have dramatically increased death rates)
- Forego routine healthcare/early diagnosis (TB to kill a million due to quarantine; 80k Americans to miss cancer diagnoses through June)
- Forego known and needed medical treatment for known ailments
- Forego needed vehicle maintenance increasing crashes
- Forego recreational exertion and work-related physical exercise
- Forego equipment maintenance increasing workplace accidents
- Forego healthier foods to eat less nutritiously deteriorating health
- Extended disappointment can lead to depression, then to death
- Increasing family debt leads to increased stress (which kills, see above)
- Increase in polluted water and air not tolerated by prosperous societies
- Farmers may produce less for various economic reasons
- Manufacturers may cut corners producing less safe and satisfactory products
- Increased crime including because less money is spent on security
- Failed businesses bring enormous stress to owners and employees
- Career employment is replaced by poorly paying jobs
- Marriages fail leading to depression in adults and children
- Raised by a mom alone is the primary indicator of kids ending up on welfare, as criminals, addicts, and early death
- Increased loneliness from fewer family visits leading to death by broken heart
- Increased marijuana and other drug use (drug overdose deaths up 50% in 2020 in Franklin County, Ohio, for ex.)
- Increased alcohol abuse
- Increased abortion
- Government leaders who don't understand godly principles of government introduce additional socialist measures which overtime lead to increased societal dysfunction, depression, and death.
Two final points. First, the coronavirus shutdown also kills people in other ways such as government orders stopping elective surgery, much of which the patients themselves do not consider elective. And secondly, for every one person who dies as a consequence of the shutdown or any economic recession, many many more people grieve and have an increase in stress, unhappiness, failure, depression, disease, and divorce.
* Call for Memes or Other Artwork: To help spread this list generally to improve the chance that this argument will reach governing officials, if you'd like to create a meme or other form of promotion for this page, please include something along the lines of: rsr.org/ways for 25 ways the shutdown kills people.
Offsetting Factors: Recession consequences that may actually save lives include...
- people, friends, families and church members relying more on one another
- some social government services being curtailed
- more kids liberated from public school as an unintentional return to single-income households gives a parent the opportunity to homeschool
- the emotional fulfillment from increased economization
- the economic benefit of an increase in preparedness for future hard times
- reduced traffic
- reduced respiratory illness from temporarily reduced traffic pollution
- recognition of our dependence upon and need for Jesus may result not only in more conversions to Christ but in more godly wisdom to light and salt society.
* Rejected Ways: We've rejected a decrease in blood donations and an increase in the orphaning of children and in domestic violence as factors on our above list. And please don't hesitate to email Bob@rsr.org to suggest additions or arguments for deletions from either of the above to lists. Thanks!
* rsr.org/ways: You can easily access this page and share it on social media with its abbreviated URL rsr.org/ways. Our classic rsr.org/lists include today's program and our List of Ways to Reduce Crime.
* This Above is Actually our List of Ways a Recession Kills People: (It's just that for now, shutdown communicates more clearly and of course a prolonged shutdown causes a recession, that is, an economic downturn.) The opposite of a nationally-improving standard of living is an increase in dying. Bob and Fred first ask the question, What makes an economy function? And answer that it is not money but its when we do as the Bible commands and "serve one another." Then they mention that so much economic calculation, including many of these ways that increase death, often happen "on the margins", to people and in circumstances where events could go one way or another, and a "tipping point" otherwise avoided is reached because of economic stress.
* Thought Experiments: Items in the above list not sourced to actual scientific studies can be evaluated by simple thought experiments. As we discuss at rsr.org/math thought experiments are incredibly effective and have led to many amazing discoveries even in the hard sciences, including:
- Virtually all of Albert Einstein's discoveries
- The LaGrange point parking spaces for our space satellites discovered in 1736
- Paul Dirac's discovery of antimatter including its positrons
- Max Planck's discovery of the Planck constant
- Peter Higgs of the Higgs boson
- James Clerk Maxwell's 1859 discovery that Saturn's rings were made of disconnected particles, a discovery not confirmed by observation until 122 years later by NASA's Voyager 2 mission.
So on today's program Bob and Fred briefly discuss thought experiments, a methodology within economics and the broader science of praxeology, as strongly recommended by Ludwig von Mises in one of Bob's favorite books, Mises' magnum opus, Human Action.
