Stimulus Payments We Received

[ZiprHead]

What good this money and the pandemic may have done is shine a bit of light on the benefit of and need for a universal basic income.

This is a good point. My wife is bookkeeper/business office manager for a four store dollar store company. During the time of the stimulus checks/UIA stimulus the stores were doing gangbuster business. A local seafood take out place that closes at 6pm literally told me that they were doing so much business if you didn't have your order in by noon you weren't getting your order.

Just a little extra money in regular people's pockets provided massive stimulation to business.

 

[TV and credit cards]

What good this money and the pandemic may have done is shine a bit of light on the benefit of and need for a universal basic income.

This is a good point. My wife is bookkeeper/business office manager for a four store dollar store company. During the time of the stimulus checks/UIA stimulus the stores were doing gangbuster business. A local seafood take out place that closes at 6pm literally told me that they were doing so much business if you didn't have your order in by noon you weren't getting your order.

Just a little extra money in regular people's pockets provided massive stimulation to business.

I recall news about the bump in consumer spending.

Also, I don't buy the "they'll just sit home on their asses if you give them free money" assumption. I think many will see that a monthly check plus a fifteen dollar an hour job just might bring them into a life they can enjoy. But what do I know. All my econ classes were at Tri-C.

 

[Bronzeage]

Certain people hate Donald Trump but they should remember something. Trump gave us $1,200 stimulus payments, plus $500 per child. That money has helped a lot of good people during this horrible and terrifying pandemic. The money sure helped me and I'm grateful for it.

I realize that Trump isn't the greatest President we've ever had. He has some flaws but so do all people. He who is without flaws can cast the first stone. Trump has some flaws but I do believe that he cares about America.

If the President expects to get my vote, $1200 is not nearly enough. At this point, he wants to be President much more than I want him to be President, so I have all the bargaining power. I won't settle for less than $4000 this time, and I expect the payments to keep coming on the first of the month.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I'm impressed that Trump opened his wallet and helped you in a tough spot. And you say he did this for other families as well? So maybe I'm wrong about him?

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

What good this money and the pandemic may have done is shine a bit of light on the benefit of and need for a universal basic income.

This is a good point. My wife is bookkeeper/business office manager for a four store dollar store company. During the time of the stimulus checks/UIA stimulus the stores were doing gangbuster business. A local seafood take out place that closes at 6pm literally told me that they were doing so much business if you didn't have your order in by noon you weren't getting your order.

Just a little extra money in regular people's pockets provided massive stimulation to business.

I recall news about the bump in consumer spending.

Also, I don't buy the "they'll just sit home on their asses if you give them free money" assumption. I think many will see that a monthly check plus a fifteen dollar an hour job just might bring them into a life they can enjoy. But what do I know. All my econ classes were at Tri-C.

It wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing if a certain percentage of the population chose not to work. While there may be some labour shortages in certain areas which need to be addressed, on balance we don't need as many people employed for the number of hours we have people seeking employment. We might be better off if some businesses or industries tapered off or in some cases potentially disappeared.

 

[SimpleDon]

What good this money and the pandemic may have done is shine a bit of light on the benefit of and need for a universal basic income.

This is a good point. My wife is a bookkeeper/business office manager for a four-store dollar store company. During the time of the stimulus checks/UIA stimulus, the stores were doing gangbuster business. A local seafood takeout place that closes at 6 pm told me that they were doing so much business if you didn't have your order in by noon, you weren't getting your order.

Just a little extra money in regular people's pockets provided massive stimulation to business.

I recall news about the bump in consumer spending.

Also, I don't buy the "they'll just sit home on their asses if you give them free money" assumption. I think many will see that a monthly check plus a fifteen dollar an hour job just might bring them into a life they can enjoy. But what do I know? All my econ classes were at Tri-C.

Poverty isn't a problem of character flaws of the poor or of the somehow mystical labor market assigned low value wages for the work that they do. It is much simpler than those explanations. The poor aren't paid enough for the work that they already do.

We don't need anything as complicated or as controversial as a universal basic income. Just start by increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and index it to the consumer price index. This should push up not only the minimum wage earners but also the wages of those who earn slightly more than twice the minimum wage.

The Donald has taken credit for the slight easing of income inequality that we have seen recently. It is much more likely that it is due to the cities that raised their own minimum wages. The only thing that "The Donald" has done is to lower the corporate income tax rate from an effective rate of 12% to about 9%. This would have increased income inequality, not decreased it.

The 15 dollar minimum wage might even be enough to eliminate poverty among the working poor, without having to resort to eliminating the so-called right-to-work provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act or incorporating the majority card certifying an union as the proper bargaining representative without an election, for example.

It wouldn't have helped you to have taken economics courses in undergraduate study at almost any university in the US. Very little time is spent in the study of macroeconomics, the economics of the overall economy. The macroeconomics taught is from the perspective of neoclassical synthesis economics, the bastardization of Keynesian economics with neoclassical economics developed in the nineteenth century to justify the continued pursuit of the ever-elusive self-regulating and self-organizing free market.

 

[SimpleDon]

I recall news about the bump in consumer spending.

Also, I don't buy the "they'll just sit home on their asses if you give them free money" assumption. I think many will see that a monthly check plus a fifteen dollar an hour job just might bring them into a life they can enjoy. But what do I know. All my econ classes were at Tri-C.

It wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing if a certain percentage of the population chose not to work. While there may be some labour shortages in certain areas that need to be addressed, on balance we don't need as many people employed for the number of hours we have people seeking employment. We might be better off if some businesses or industries tapered off or in some cases potentially disappeared.

The answer to increased automation is to reduce the hours in a workweek, the same as we did in the far greater threat of too many workers than jobs we faced when farms were mechanized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

[SimpleDon]

If you want to call attention to a Trump accomplishment that is both far-reaching and under-reported you should look to the Middle East pact between Israel and two Arab Middle Eastern countries with Saudia Arabia rumored to be the next country to sign on. This is massive and if it had been done by another president it would have dominated the news for days.