The OP and the discussions here keep referring to people or companies getting money, and then spending it, or perhaps saving it, as if that were the end of that

The OP and the discussions here keep referring to people or companies getting money, and then spending it, or perhaps saving it, as if that were the end of that money. That's not how the economy works. Savings should be the most obvious. You're not going to save your money by hiding it under your mattress. You're going to at least put it into a bank, of not invest in equity or debt instruments. In all of these cases, the money is going right back into the economy to be used productively. If you put it into a bank, they'll loan it back out to someone in a mortgage or such. Equity investment directly fund businesses. And so on. So when you're saving, you're really redirecting the money to someone who believes he has a use for it -- and who believes strongly enough that they're willing to pay for the right to try it. And this is actually what the OP wanted in the first place, but the current system has better controls for ensuring that the money is used productively. If I spend the money -- say, on a leaky roof, as you suggest -- then that money is going to the roofing contractor, and thence to his employees and the producers of the shingles and other materials. Again, it's being used productively. Less obvious is if I spend the money on a TV, for example. Some of that money goes to the retailer. But much of it is going to, say, a Chinese company that makes it. This gets into more economic theory like "comparative advantage", which I'm not going to explain here, but simply state that in the bottom line it still makes us better off. People will protest that this contributes to the so-called "trade deficit". In the case of this discussion (at the very least), that trade deficit is a good thing. If we (collectively, somehow, for the sake of simplicity) owe a Chinese company some money, that is precisely the same thing as them pumping stimulus money into our economy! Perhaps you buy a Japanese car; that "trade deficit" is actually executed by, say, Toyota using the "owed" money to build a factory in America, and that again is exactly what we want.