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This really isn't helpful to the discussion. The US has unemployment benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, and many other programs. And it seems to be pretty prematu

This really isn't helpful to the discussion. The US has unemployment benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, and many other programs. And it seems to be pretty premature to declare which country is or isn't going to come out of this with the least amount of damage. It is a bit of a mystery to me why Congress isn't just providing better funding/financing for all the existing programs. I'm not sure why there should be new types of programs to help individuals. I'm deeply suspicious of efforts to prop up businesses, I'd rather have the focus be on individuals and let businesses figure out the best way forward. For some businesses bankruptcy might be the best solution because the business model has completely changed.

standardUser 7y ago
The comment pointed out that the US seems to be tackling the economic impact more aggressively than other nations. That is only partially true to begin with since many other nations are discussing or have already passed large-scale stimulus measures for their national economies. But the urgency and focus on economic measures in the US does have justification. Here in the US, we need things like free testing (already the case in most nations) and to handle the surge in unemployment (we have a system, is is just less robust than most wealthy nations, hence the very urgent need to dramatically expand it). I made no mention of "which country is or isn't going to come out of this with the least amount of damage", only reiterated the well-known fact that the US has one of the meekest welfare states of any wealthy nation. That had not yet been mentioned in the thread and seemed extremely relevant.