What we need to think about is the relationship between wealth and "gross product". It's generally believed that these are tightly related. Intuitively, aggregate wealth is the integral of "gross product", and dimensionally that works, but nobody actually believes that.

For example, if I sell you a drug that is not suitable for your medical needs and does you more harm than good, aggregate well-being goes down. I have your money and you don't, your health declines and mine doesn't improve. So in net, negative wealth, positive product.

A great deal of wealth-destruction goes on. Snake oil type wealth-destruction is relatively small, but extraction of value from the commons is immense.

All fossil fuel extraction has arguably become net-wealth-destructive. If not yet, it will be soon.

We're in a situation where much "gross product" is on hold, and a lot of damage to various individuals is in practice occurring economically (other than the direct damage by the virus itself).

So what puzzles me is the idea that the shutdown, not the virus, is impoverishing us.

The renters can't pay the landlords, the landlords can't pay the bank, the bank fails in some way.

But the apartment is still there. It seems to me that the tenant should stay there under the circumstances.

A lot of activity is shut down. Some of that activity actually adds value.

I mean, a nice hotel, a nice meal, an interesting concert, of course these are valuable and we can't have them now.

But that's adding value. Its absence doesn't subtract value.

If I don't spend $200 to see Diana Krall, I am $200 richer as well as a concert experience poorer. I am not poorer on net, unless I thought $200 for a concert was an easy stretch. (note: I don't.)

We are losing people. Human beings. Tragedies and traumas are unfolding all around us.

But we aren't losing *stuff*. The stuff all still exists.

Where is this "poverty" coming from?

This has bothered me for over 50 years, since when I first heard about the stock market crash of 1929 as the "cause" of the depression. It's confusing.

Whether or not a certain document has market value doesn't affect the availability of eggs or lumber unless we let it.