The purpose of a stimulus isn’t to replace income. It’s to encourage spending. I don’t necessarily agree with the specifics, but retired people can spend just as well as the younger generations.
If they were getting unemployment, your OP might make sense.
Hey OP – My best friend, who is on Social Security, is going to give the $1200 to her son that lost his job due to this mess. Is that ok, non-boomer?
I hate to break this to you, but the unemployed get this too… Actually I don’t hate it.
OP, are you aware that most of the people on Social Security are senior citizens, many of whom couldn’t work if they wanted to, and they paid into that fund for many decades? If anyone deserves it, it’s them!
And SSI/SSDI is not always easy to get. They deserve it, too.
I’m currently dealing with a high school classmate on Facebook who’s distressed that he had to apply for unemployment for the first time in his life (a movie theater manager in Florida, in his late 50s) and I’m not the only one who told him that he won’t be a leech; his employers paid into that fund and the government only administers it. Yesterday, he posted that he applied 3 weeks ago and his application still hasn’t been processed; I told him that when it finally is processed, he should get a check or deposit retroactive to the day he became eligible. Someone like him also deserves that money.
Now I am, now that we’re in the Pit. It’s so hard to resist a good moment to hold the mirror up to a Boomer’s face and point out all their narcissistic flaws, then watch them flail about trying to make excuses like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar.
But I really want to know what defense there is for sending checks to people who haven’t actually suffered any problems.
Oh bullshit. I just listened to a 65 year old brag about how much money she’s saving by not going to bars and restaurants, not buying gas, and how she’s hoping to get laid off so she can retire but collect unemployment for 6 months first. Y’know, typical Boomer stuff.
But yeah, they need $1200 because they can’t comparison shop. Maybe they can put that money toward classes in using Amazon?
I’m aware you didn’t pay enough money into the fund, yes, and I’m aware that those tiny little checks will be even tinier when it’s my turn, if it ever is my turn. I don’t want you to give it all back, I want you to go back in time and raise the social security tax so you could actually pay a sufficient amount while you worked, instead of what actually happened was you coasting your way through your working years, bankrupting the system. But SS is a past sin, covered many times. I’m talking about CARES stimulus checks.
But y’know what, this thread was a bad idea. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Boomer entitlement is too strong to penetrate with reason, and it’s not good for any young person’s mental health.
Do it. You paid into it and it’s not like you not taking it makes anyone else’s situation better. Get your money and donate it somewhere if you don’t want to keep it.
There’s some discussion going on about whether people should buy goods and services, or pay down debts. Guess what? Paying down debts also stimulates the economy, by enabling people who work for those companies for whom the money is owed to buy G&S themselves.
Hey OP fucknut - you don’t understand shit. $1,200 isn’t to make up for lost income. No young workers are applying to the Paycheck Protection Program.
You’re a misinformed arrogant little bitch (emphasis on the little) who gives millennials a bad name.
Got it. You’re trolling. Well isn’t that special. Go clean your belly button lint instead of being a punk on the board.
Australia gave everyone $900 at the start of the GFC and this measure alone was reputed to have prevented us going into recession unlike the many other countries who suffered considerable economic pain.
Hey. We Boomers saved the whales! We saved the redwoods! We marched for peace and protested the Viet Nam war until Nixon was forced to end it! We created the Civil Rights Act!
What have you kids done? All you can do now is wait for the annual flooding of the Nile.
Well, we’re here to fight ignorance, although in your case, it’s probably an exercise in futility.
DOLE??? WTF?
Did you get that? We PAID INTO THIS FUND, and btw, we’ll never get back all the money we put into it.
I plan to give away my check, if I ever get it, but not to a sorry s.o.b. like you.
Ha ha, suck it loser. You know what we’re gonna do for an encore? Re-elect Trump for another 4 years and then have yet another round of TAX CUTS! That’s right loser, we’re gonna take more of your money and spend it on dumb shit like artisanal waffle makers. And there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.
Bwahahahahahahahah. Sucks to be you, Mr. Virtuosity.
I think the “rich boomers” the OP is talking about is his own parents, who have disowned him. For good reason.
Nm
What an odd response to me saying that giving retirees unemployment might be something to complain about.
If I need to clarify, I support the stimulus package. I also, separately, consider it distinct from unemployment, and have no objection to anyone on unemployment also receiving a stimulus. After all, their money spends the same as people who are fortunate enough to still be working.
No defense required, this was an offensive move intended to help alter the course of the economy. You think things are bad now?
Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting a check. Once again, the self employed will get fucked over. I’d hoped to continue working, but at 62 I’m not going to bust my ass keeping barely afloat, so I’ll likely close down in 2020.
That wasn’t clear. Thank you for clarifying.
Although an insane number of people have been laid off, the VAST majority of people that had a job in February are still working or drawing a paycheck.
Some if them are still employed due to the Paycheck Protection Program. Those that have been laid off are eligible for enhanced unemployment benefits, which gives them an extra $2400 a month above standard unemployment. This will make most low wage worakers whole and go a long way towards helping the rest of them.
THESE are the programs geared towards the 15%, maybe ultimately 20-25% of the workforce that lost their jobs. Which is a VERY small portion of the entire population.
The $1200 is intended as stimulus, which is different from economic relief although there is considerable overlap. Because when the economy contracts and unemployment rises, people have less money and can’t spend as much. When people have less to spend, the places where they spend money get less money, and more businesses fail. It’s a strategy designed to inject money into the economy and it’s way better than the conservative methods of stimulus, which consist of giving a lot of money to rich people and nicely asking them to share.
And you know why older people have more political clout than you? Because we VOTE. We reliably show up on Election Day and hold our noses and vote for the least objectionable candidate. Because it’s our fucking civic duty. And sometimes it pays off, I guess.
I’m a social security recipient. Not on my own record yet, I’m currently collecting spousal benefits on my wife’s account so I can hold off until seventy and collect increased benefits. Not so much for me, as you need to live until 84 to make that bet pay off, but to increase the widow’s benefits my wife will collect after my unfortunate demise. I chose my grandparents poorly, I’m already more than ten years older than any of them lived to.
Anyway, I have no intention of stimulating anything with my check, so I guess it’s wasted on me. Even before they were talking about it coming I’d already made a pretty good contribution to my local food bank. Not huge, mind you, around a third of my income for the month, but pretty good, and I stepped up again when a local school had to stop delivering free lunches when too many of the staff came down with COVID-19.
So yeah, I’m a guy that doesn’t need it, and I almost feel bad about taking it, but there’s around 170 billion dollars in pass through losses that benefits 43,000 of the richest families in the United States, and I don’t see them crying about it. Christ, it even makes these pass through loss deductions retroactive to 2018, which will benefit taxpayers with incomes greater than one million dollars. I don’t know how a 2020 pandemic affects 2018 taxes, but I guess I don’t understand big business.
I’m also a little concerned about the airline bailouts. When they were cramming my wide ass into narrow seats I don’t remember being told “no charge for the carry-on” but all of a sudden it’s “we’re all in this together.”
How come when poor people lose their jobs and try to get help they’re told “You should have had six months expenses in a savings account.” but when a corporation stubs its toe and shows up three weeks later with a bushel basket looking for money the government can’t fill it fast enough? What did Delta airlines do with the 4.77 billion dollars net profi it made last year? There’s not enough hookers and blow to piss that much away, is there?