A point I think I should have 'splained earlier; coronavirus isn't normal economic recession. In this case we *want* much lower consumption for a short period. We want to make sure we can bring it back in as intact a state as possible when we want consumption back.
That means the normal policy - concentrate your support on people with lower incomes because they have higher marginal propensity to consume - isn't right for this situation.
What we want to preserve is *employment*, because there is huge deadweight loss when a worker is fired or a company is wound up. Usually in a Keynesian recession you do that by demand management. But we don't want demand to go up - we want people to stay at home!
That's why I think government assistance needs to be targeted to the corporate sector, unusually. companies are in a position where doing the right thing for public health is not consistent with continued economic viability.
(my timeline seems to understand this conflict of incentives with respect to hourly paid hospitality workers, but government sick pay isn't enough - we don't want the bar to be closed down when the workers are well again).
And on top of all of this it is just sooo much more efficient to keep people in employment than to try and process them quickly through the benefits system. Policy needs to be focused on employers.
