#I need to put my 89% in economics into anime worldbuilding otherwise what's the point

[floof-ghostie]

See, I was thinking of this all throughout today, and I remembered articles and posts I read about prison labour and how it aids in the economy. I also remember a lot of economics class from last semester, so I did some research, and apparently the forced labour in American prisons produces about $11 billion in goods and services (mainly prison maintenance). It's safe to assume that in America at least, the prison system, while not a major cash cow, still makes up a good chunk of the country's economy.

We know that Light didn't just kill people that were let out of jail/prison, or people who didn't go to prison bc loopholes, red tape, etc like the murderer of Misa's parents (Beyond Birthday is the prime example of this, he was locked up for about a year or so when Light killed him). So that all begs the question, how many people in jail did he kill, and how much would the economy have contracted?? At least in the States? Because during a recession, wages decrease, businesses can't take on as many workers, and therefore there's fewer demands for goods and services so it's safe to assume that a lot more people would have suffered, which, you guessed it! Would have made them commit more poverty related crimes, which makes up the 3-6% of reported crimes since the Kira case began.

This also brings to mind that scene where Near releases all those dollar bills in New York so the SPK could escape safely during the Kira protests. I know that nobody can resist free money being thrown out, (and you are lying to yourself if you say that you wouldn't be out there scooping money off the ground in that situation) but it makes you wonder, could this have been Near's way of monopolizing the "economic recession" brought on by Kira?

Obviously, I didn't expect any of this kind of stuff to be covered in canon, because we aren't here to see the economy suffer, we're here to watch a twink with a god complex and straight A's play God and Sherlock at the same time.

I hate to sound like a boring old geezer who does taxes for fun but does anyone want to talk about how fucked the economy in Death Note must have been during the Kira murders? Because I have been thinking about this longer than I would like to admit.