It’s very likely that the majority of that cash is being used to pay rent and pay off credit cards, while a percentage is being held as cushion for the very unc

It’s very likely that the majority of that cash is being used to pay rent and pay off credit cards, while a percentage is being held as cushion for the very uncertain near future. You can get angry about it, but I don’t know how productive that is when the majority of this money was sent in equal payments to everyone below a fairly generous cutoff level. Lastly, it’s hard to see a stimulus effect in consumer spending when stores are closed and there are supply side constraints. The truth is most households spend almost exactly as much as they make every month, and the fear of the virus combined with the lockdowns basically blew a gaping hole in many people’s income with no easy way to fix it. The cash transfers are basically the government applying pressure to that wound to prevent it bleeding out. It buys some time. Whether or not we’ve used that time well and are prepared to handle what comes next is a very different question.