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> flush with stimulus checks This notion of people just balling because their stimulus checks is increasingly tiresome, has always been disconnected from reali

• alangibson 4y ago
  So very this. Anyone making this argument is secretly moralizing about economics. They can't stand the fact that "the government just gave away money to a bunch freeloaders."
  • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I agree with GP, but people should be able to make an argument without others second-guessing their intentions.
    • giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Why?
      • pffft8888 4y ago
        Precisely.
  • Aunche 4y ago
    The only people secretly moralizing about economics is this chain of comments. The article never claimed that people were "bailing" or "freeloading" because of stimulus checks. It said that they were increasing consumer spending, which is objectively true and literally the entire point of them.
  • reedjosh 4y ago
    > ... can't stand the fact that "the government just gave away money to a bunch freeloaders." I kind of feel this way, but about the free money given to corporations that didn't really need it -- not individuals.
  • yucky 4y ago
    This argument assumes the resulting inflation hasn't helped the rich and hurt the poor. But it has.
• newaccount2021 4y ago
  [dead]
• JonChesterfield 4y ago
  Search claims that was $1800 back in 2020. Hard to see that registering at significant at the time, let alone years afterwards.
  • Izkata 4y ago
    This (and OP) is confusing two different things. There were individual stimulus checks, but there was also a separate boost to unemployment such that around 20% of people who ended up on unemployment were making more than they had with the job they lost. I'm pretty sure that has stopped by now too, though. Edit: https://www.investopedia.com/federal-pandemic-unemployment-programs-how-they-worked-4801925 https://www.investopedia.com/federal-pandemic-unemployment-p... - ended Sept 2021 There were plenty of posts about small businesses being unable to compete with unemployment because of this back when it was active. In past experience, this is usually what they're referring to.
    • analyte123 4y ago
      Pandemic unemployment was $2400 a month plus whatever you would normally get from your state. Combined with student loan forbearance and the stimulus checks, this could add up to a lot.
  • xienze 4y ago
    It was a little bit more than that depending on circumstances. First check was $1200 per adult, $500 per kid. Second one was $600 per adult/kid. So for a family of four that's $3400+$2400 = $5800 in freebies. There's more people than you would think who see that as a pretty sizeable windfall, and start leveraging up accordingly (new car, lots of consumer goods).
• dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >This notion of people just balling because their stimulus checks is increasingly tiresome, has always been disconnected from reality What's mind mindbogglingly disconnected from reality not understanding that people will absolutely spend a $1k (or whatever) stimmy payment the just like they would a tax return or bonus. That said, the stimulus bucks disbursed to individuals were absolutely not enough to matter to the macroeconomic picture. It was basically like having a year with two tax return seasons. The PPP loans, the changes in unemployment benefits, the people using home equity to buy garbage they don't need, all had a much bigger impact.
• mupuff1234 4y ago
  And for some reason you don't see those same people complaining about the stock market skyrocketing and creating a much larger feeling of wealth (and actual wealth).
• wlesieutre 4y ago
  You hear a lot about these employees who quit and haven't been working since 2 years ago when they got $1800, but not so much about companies that are still hiring because they got millions of dollars of free money from forgiven PPP loans. Funny how that works.
• hestefisk 4y ago
  Agree. I think the bigger contributor was just insanely low cash rates on mortgages in most countries.
• hvs 4y ago
  Economists from the St. Louis Federal Reserve estimated that the stimulus contributed about 2.3 percentage points to inflation. The idea that pumping ~$800 billion into the economy wouldn't affect inflation and the economy in general seems unlikely. https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2023/01/20/demand-supply-imbalance-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-the-role-of-fiscal-policy.pdf https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/revie...
  • ck2 4y ago
    In the 20 years after 9/11 the US spent $8 TRILLION on war Not $800 Billion, rather $8000 Billion What did that do to the economy/prices/inflation and why isn't that headline news every day for 20 years? https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar
    • hvs 4y ago
      I agree. But "whatabout" isn't argument to keep doing it.
      • gumby 4y ago
        I didn't interpret the comment that way. It seems likely the blood and treasure squandered on those unnecessary wars held back growth by misdirecting investment money into war rather than being traditionally inflationary (as it was, say, in Viet Nam or WWII). Now the US is spending on the order of $0 on the UKR war for an enormous IRR, and that's controversial.
    • mc32 4y ago
      Moreover those wars add to the count of people unable to work as a consequence of injuries from being sent off to war. The people in Washington don’t blink at sending the military out to fight their ideology for them.
    • UncleEntity 4y ago
      Probably because that money wasn’t pumped directly into the US economy for the purpose of keeping the economic engine moving. You build a bomb, you blow up the bomb, that’s money that’s just gone for good. You give people money, along with negative interest rates so they don’t just hold on to the money, and that money spread out into the whole economy causing the price of goods to increase because of more competition for a finite amount of resources needed to produce said goods. That being said, that 8 trillion dollars could have undoubtedly been spent in a more productive manner but that’s not the world we currently find ourselves in.
• phphphphp 4y ago
  I agree with your broader message (stimulus checks were important to a lot of people's survival and they weren't just "free money" for people to play with) but consider that the American population is huge and even a minority of stimulus check receivers could have had an influence on certain aspects of the economy if their behaviour was similar. For every person struggling (and for whom the stimulus was necessary to their survival) there's a person who was getting by just fine and thousands of dollars is a windfall that could radically change their short-term financial behaviour.
• sam0x17 4y ago
  Yeah it's about 1-2 months rent for most people, at a time when many of them were laid off. That's just break-even shit. No one is flush with cash from that certainly
• mberning 4y ago
  Maybe they put it poorly, but COVID was a huge windfall for many people. Aside from the stimulus checks (which for many people totaled more than $1800) you had people taking advantage of PPP "loans", extended and expansive unemployment benefits, eviction moratoriums, student loan forbearance, etc. I personally know people that got laid off due to COVID and made more money sitting on the couch for a year than they ever made in their day job. This glut of money takes time to cycle through the economy, and now the party is over.
  • mistrial9 4y ago
    the lower-middle class job loss in retail and hospitality from COVID are massive. People who depend on that kind of job, have no backup systems generally.
    • carlosjobim 4y ago
      Hopefully most of them moved on to better sectors. All jobs that require less skill than retail and hospitality pay better and have better career opportunities.
• xwdv 4y ago
  Some foreigners believed the stimulus checks the US gave out were equivalent to one or two years of salary with the way people talk about them.
• mywittyname 4y ago
  You can lookup how much businesses received in PPP "loans." It's staggering. This is an anecdote, but I feel like it holds true for many small businesses. I personally know a person whose business received $160k in PPP loans and after it became clear that this was not a "loan" but a "cash payout", he went out and bought two new cars and a nice new house. His business was never really at risk due to COVID, since most of his workers work solo in the field where they never have to interact with others (I used to work for him). The whole PPP process was a shame. There was very little oversight and it's becoming clear now that it was designed up front to be a giveaway to business owners. Businesses should have been forced to pay those loans back.
  • electrondood 4y ago
    Report him for fraud. That's our money. https://sbax.sba.gov/oigcss/ https://sbax.sba.gov/oigcss/
    • ndriscoll 4y ago
      As long as that person had eligible expenses to have the "loan" forgiven, it doesn't look like fraud to me. It looks like the program doesn't care that you would have spent that money on payroll anyway, so by paying part of your expenses, the money you would've spent becomes pure profit. For reference, the documentation requirements that I see talk about demonstrating your expenses, but I don't see anything about demonstrating you actually needed that money and couldn't pay those expenses yourself. Was that a requirement? https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program/ppp-loan-forgiveness https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-o...
    • berkle4455 4y ago
      I'm not sure you understand how PPP worked. It was a forgivable loan in exchange for keeping people on payroll. What the company did with the loaned funds was not part of the agreement, as long as they met the payroll/expense requirements.
    • mywittyname 4y ago
• fatnoah 4y ago
  I can only speak for myself, but as an employee of "big tech" from 2016-2021, my own personal inflation resulted from the massive pay those companies offered. My startup was acquired in 2016. Net result of my 1% of stock was $0, but the comp package at the new company, while below average for that role, still represented a 130% pay increase. Over the next two years, stock appreciation alone added another 30% on top of that. Moving to a FAANG ended up being a lateral move, but that companies stock doubled. The net result was that between 2016 and 2021, my compensation increased a whopping 460%. I know I'm far from alone in that as well. If anyone was ballin', it was (IMHO) far more related to the bull market than anything else.
  • Goladus 4y ago
    I think it was the bull market combined with specifically a "hiring bubble" caused by aggressive, competitive hiring and acquisition practices as a risk-mitigation strategy to prevent disruptive competition
• thwayunion 4y ago
  > How far do you think those things went? Not everyone lives on the coasts and makes SWE money. Those stimulus checks ALONE were a TON of money for most people. For the average American just the checks were an entire extra month of net income (avg household = $71K and has two earners). Over 24 months it's $75 of additional spending per consumer per month, which when I was making $30K would have doubled my disposable income per month. Double spending. For two years. AND stimulus checks weren't even half the of the amount that went out. AND the other half was even more disproportionately allocated to marginal consumers. Enhanced UI, in particular, played a huge role. Combine that with stimulus checks and a lot of under the table untaxed work (done under the table to keep EUI eligibility), and people were doubling or tripling their net income for a year or more. The general asset bubble and explosion of retail investing didn't help. It all adds up to a shitload of money in many parts of the country. I know a good number of people in rural WV who are still living off of savings accrued during 52 or so weeks from 2021 to 2022. I'm willing to bet a much much larger number of people spent the last 2 years returning to the labor force but spending beyond their going-forward means.
  • Supermancho 4y ago
    > Those stimulus checks ALONE were a TON of money for most people I don't understand how you think it's reasonable to compare "a ton", as a large amount of weight, to checks that did not cover a month of living expenses. PPP loans were a nontrivial amount for businesses. > a lot of under the table untaxed work (done under the table to keep EUI eligibility), and people were doubling or tripling their net income for a year or more Which could be done before and after. Suggesting that no new conditions somehow tripled income makes no sense. > I know a good number of people in rural WV who are still living off of savings accrued during 52 or so weeks from 2021 to 2022. Probably not.
    • thwayunion 4y ago
      > I don't understand how you think it's reasonable to compare "a ton", as a large amount of weight, to checks that did not cover a month of living expenses. Literally impossible. US median individual income is $44,000, net $30K, monthly net $2.8K; stimulus checks were $3.2K. For the Average American, your assertion is mathematically impossible, which means that for a third of America your claim is outrageous. If you're making $30K/yr, and depending on how you define "living expenses" vs "other expenses", the stimulus checks covered several months of living expenses. (eg: I now consider a car loan a "living expense" but when I made $30K the paid-off beater car was definitely a luxury expense and there were months when I left it parked and relied on a bad bus system because I couldn't afford the registration fees or an oil change.) > PPP loans were a nontrivial amount for businesses. Agreed. Nothing about Stimulus and EUI should detract from the massive handout that was PPP. Particularly because Stimulus and EUI at least went to people who weren't already doing very well. > Which could be done before and after. Suggesting that no new conditions somehow tripled income makes no sense. No. This totally misunderstands a few really important changes. 1. UI is hard to get, TEMPORARY, and not a lot of money. The additional $ and time from EUI changes the calculus pretty substantially. 2. lots of people already lost their job; picking up under-the-table work when you're already unemployed is different from making the choice to leave a job for UI and under-the-table work. 3. there was a definite social contagion effect. 4. huge parts of the economy shut down but a lot of that economic activity didn't stop. The government shutdowns created a huge black market for entertainment-related services. >> I know a good number of people in rural WV who are still living off of savings accrued during 52 or so weeks from 2021 to 2022. > Probably not. EUI + continuing to work + some gambling wins = you can double your income for a year. If you own a home and a car in good condition in rural WV, you can keep living expenses below $10K. So if you were making $50K and double that for a year, you're in a place where you can take a year or three off. Or blow a shitload of cash on Amazon or whatever.
• trashface 4y ago
  Its one of those cockroach ideas that is just too good of a story in some circles for it to ever die. We'll be hearing it for decades, along with the "fact" that people don't want to work due to "enhanced unemployment benefits" (which expired long ago).
  • threadweaver34 4y ago
    Student loan payments are still being deferred, and unemployment has been low for at least a year and a half.
• vkou 4y ago
  Normal people didn't do stupid things with the stimulus check, but there's always a few morons who live hand-to-mouth who got them and immediately blew that money on something stupid.
  • threadweaver34 4y ago
    Someone was buying all those bored apes with money from somewhere. Perhaps they were also bored apes.
  • llampx 4y ago
    Pretty much the entirety of the US economy is driven by consumers who live paycheck to paycheck and even have credit to finance bigger purchases.
• dangwhy 4y ago
  > How far do you think those things went? You know, for normal people? I only ever see this comment from folks (mostly Republican politicians until now) with zero understanding of the subject What is the answer to these questions from people who have understanding of the subject?
• nradov 4y ago
  People were balling because evictions were suspended so they quit paying rent.