The economy is made up of real people

[pmb]

It turns out that unemployment is not funemployment for most people. For every percent increase in unemployment, 47,000 people die [1]. This is very very bad. This means that the increase from the 2006 low of 4.6 percent[2] to the current rate of 8.1 percent [3] our economy has killed more than 150,000 people. And the most optimistic economists

Comments

[bonboard]

I have reason to doubt the "unemployment causes increases in crime" claim. The "unemployment is correlated to increased serious health issues" I find easier to swallow, but Brenner himself noted that that the causation isn't clear.

As far as deaths due to decreasing unemployment, I wasn't confining my thought experiment to workplace accidents. I meant that, for example, until we are powering our economy by burning unicorn dung that produces no combustion by-products, an increase in the rates of production necessarily increases rates of cancers, heart disease, silicosis, more people being killed on roads and in trains and on planes, potential acceleration of global warming booking God-knows-how-many fatalities, whatever -- all of which intuitively ought to be on the same order as increased deaths due to these health effects due to economic downturn.

The deaths might occur in Pakistani tanneries or Brazilian grain fields far from the prying eye instead, and granted the increased deaths at least "get" you something (economic progress, GDP growth, and improved longevity for some, maybe?), but deaths are deaths, and lots of things have killed more people than Osama bin Laden, as the article likes to phrase it.

Anyway, I hope this isn't taken as criticism of pmb's original point, which I think is a good one. There are bad actors being compensated by the public for having made imprudent decisions, and the public should be entitled to some upside.