Yes, this. Send every household $1200/adult, $500/child and if you want means testing (and sure, that seems reasonable - lord knows I don’t need the money at this point), do it on the 2020 1040 form (which has the advantage of listing someone’s actual income from this year).
I’m not aware of anyone who believes there should never be deficit spending. The standard fiscal conservative position from previous generations would have been that in good times, when the economy is growing and nothing majorly terrible is happening, spending should be cut and a surplus should be run, so that the deficit goes down. Then when a crisis does happen, the federal government can spend as necessary without destroying the country’s financial future. During this century both parties have completely ignored that idea.
Presently, the government has banned millions of small businesses from operating and put tens of millions of people out of work. (Right now we’re at almost exactly 10 million newly unemployed, but that number will grow.) If the government is going to do that, self-evidently the government needs to provide some help, though that necessarily means expanding the deficit from enormous to double-plus-gargantuan with no end in sight. Eventually the national debt will wreck the country and force Americans to live with a lower standard of living. The present crisis has surely advanced that day of reckoning several years closer, though it’s impossible to know exactly when it will happen.
From libertarian, closer to anarchist. Most everything I’ve seen come out of federal, state, and local governments has been laughable, counterproductive, or downright destructive. The first federal bailout law (with more promised) just cost each American taxpayer $15,000. For most, that’s an entire year’s mortgage payments.
Just what are people getting back for that chunk of change? In the macro, they’re just detonating the debt bomb that much quicker. And that’s a force so powerful it’ll make this virus drama laughable in comparison, completely ignoring the fact that every living American’s share of the federal government’s unfunded liability debt bill already tops $400,000.
But have you changed your views? Sounds like no, but perhaps you could answer the OPs questions.
My personal beliefs haven’t changed much so far, but I am still waiting to see how this shakes out in the end. I’m open to re-evaluating things once we can look back and see how everything worked out. But I already thought that Trump was a buffoon, that governments were not capable, that international institutions tend to fail when stressed, etc.
So far, most of what has happened has just confirmed what I always thought. Saying that, I’m also aware that confirmation bias and selection bias could be coloring my thinking, and I try to be aware of that as well.
That’s a fair answer, thank you for the followup.
Which government did that?
Thanks for clarifying.
Yep, it’s a shit show. Renters going on rent strike (and many with no income and no savings), owners who are leveraged and then default to the banks, banks stuck with mass unperforming loans, Uncle Sugar needing to bail out the banks yet again to ensure the financial system does not collapse and take civilization with it.
Actually a lot of these numbers are explained in that countries with UHC are much better at early diagnosis and treatment, the US is better at ICU care and have more ICU facilities because they are worse at early diagnosis and treatment.
Also ICU is incredibly profitable so why not do more of it?