It's obvious that simply printing money and handing it out won't solve anything. If it did, let's just give every individual $10 million via direct deposit. Coo

It's obvious that simply printing money and handing it out won't solve anything. If it did, let's just give every individual $10 million via direct deposit. Cool now we're all rich and can retire, right? But, if that money (which is a claim against future economic output) was diverted from somewhere else, it could have an effect. The total US GDP is $25T and the total population is 330 million, meaning if it were cut and divided equally we'd each get... $75k per year. So I guess in a hand-wavey sense it's true we generate enough economic activity to have everyone capable of living a decent middle-class lifestyle. Of course that level of redistribution would require some extreme form of socialism / communism which just wouldn't work out.