Why cant the government just simply halt rent, mortgage, and?
I was going to ask how old you are, but I see you are old enough to know the answer to your question. The reason the government cant halt these payments (other than the already provided answer that they have no authority to do so) is that these are all revenue for businesses or people who make their living receiving such payments. I know lots of people who own rental properties and this is their only income. How do you suppose they would pay their employees or buy their own food and other necessities without this income? Same with lenders and utility companies. This is their revenue that they use to pay their employees (maybe even folks like you) and manage their companies so that there is the ability to lend money to someone who needs it, or to provide utilities to those in their area. Our global and local economy is very interdependent. One cannot just remove a piece of it without serious and painful consequences. You know this already the Chinese were diverted while they battled a pandemic in China. Even in a dictatorial country, the best they could do was to keep people home and prevent them from traveling and spreading the virus. Unfortunately, with their population, a lot of folks were already sick and infected even more, meaning that they had to shut down entire businesses (keeping people at home), which then cascaded to the US and other countries who use China as their supply chain, and suddenly no one is truly able to conduct business as usual because we do not inventory stocks of anything these days. I would venture a guess that the worst thing about COVID-19 will be its impact on the worlds economy in general, and individual countries in particular. Millions of people will end up unemployed, and since this is a pandemic, no one can say for how long. Governments will have to put out a safety net to feed and help house people during this event, but even then it is going to be unbelievably unpleasant if not deadly for a lot of folks.