Economist-blogger Matt Yglesias made the accusation. Don replies:
The economy is people – people producing, trading, cooperating, and consuming. Yet your wording conveys the impression that lockdown opponents wish to sacrifice lives to a non-sentient entity that is separate from people. In fact, however, to worry about the condition of the economy is to worry about the ability of people – actual flesh-and-blood-and-bone human beings – to continue to meet their basic needs, including putting food on their tables, roofs over their heads, winter coats on their backs, and knowledge into their children’s minds.
To worry about the economy is also to understand that people are not provided for simply by being handed government checks. And it is further to realize that economic output – output of real goods and services – is not miraculously maintained by “stimulus” funds if workers are locked out of their places of employment.
Government pumping of funds is at issue here, but it’s also a commentary on the wisdom or lack of it in locking an economy down, as if opposing it were to value commerce over human beings.
Blithe Spirit 