Jersey Girl wrote:What's the thing about giving every American (I think?) 1K dollars? Is that going to be a thing and how would they do that--use the tax records? Our SSN?
We don't need money. I'm just asking if that is feasible, how they'd do it and would that be a one time deal?
Would that stimulate the economy? Would it be a false effect in some way?
I think there are 2 different tasks: Stimulate the economy and support people. And there are both short term and long term tracks for both. In the short term, I think supporting people will be more important than stimulating the economy. And by short term, I mean the period that Americans will be sheltering in place.
Because while Americans are sheltering in place, I don't think consumers are going to rush out and spend. I don't know about you, but I'm not looking at the ads for power boats in the next 8 weeks. There are certain kinds of discretionary spending that most people will be reluctant to do right now, regardless if they are in a comfortable position. Put some money in increased unemployment benefits. That's money that will more likely be spent in the short term.
I'm in the Tourism industry, and our company, one of the larger ones, has simply shut down. What happens to the lease payments on all of the equipment we use during this down time? I think you are going to see some forms of debt relief/and/or restructuring for certain sectors of industry.
The $1,000 per person solution sounds like a scattershot method of priming the economic engine. We don't know how long this economic slowdown will last, because we don't know how long the SARS-CoV-2 will hang around. But things will not start to recover until it's safe for people to interact, and we don't know when that will be. Spending a lot of money on a short term jolt may not be a great long term strategy.