Should people who lost no income or show a loss during Covid get "relief" money?

I'm going to play the class warfare card. Trigger warning!

Spoiler

What about people who get their private debts bailed out by Mommy and Daddy?? Should only the rich get this benefit?

 

Yeah, maybe they should just send their chauffeurs, maids, or butlers out to get the free welfare food for them, so they don't have to be inconvenienced....

Think: you put free food in one end of these parasites, and what comes out the other end...?

 

The idea is to stimulate the economy, not give people money back, though that's not really a bad idea either.

 

People aren't parasites. Even less are stupid metphors real

 

They have no loss of income. They have a far more stressful job with a real risk to their lives that they did not have, for the same income - at least until they get their covid shots. This is an english study but the rationale is the same everywhere . What caregivers do in their day is a very different interaction than a store clerk or McDonalds employee. . https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ar...kely-to-have-severe-covid-19-as-other-workers

 

Bluesguy, Think of it this way, these are the people that are our 'first responders' to this pandemic, not cops, not firefighters. Its those people who are taking care of people in the most intimate of ways before they got sick, while they are asymptomatic but about to get sick, while they are sick, and yes they even clean up the body before the mortuary service arrives.

They were not hired to be heroes, and never thought they would need a lot of personal courage to do this job. Well now they are, and they do. They should be compensated.

 

Trust me, I get it. I have run into folks who are small in thought my whole life.

You are the guy who will not give a drug addict $20 for H but will give them your left over sandwich and think you are victorious.

You literally don't even understand where I am coming from.

It is what it is.

 

Take a good look at those who queue up for HOURS to get free food, burning who knows how much gasoline to keep warm and comfortable in their nice, relatively late-model vehicles (lots of which are/were pricey SUV's).

Is it true that hardly anybody ever saves money "for a rainy day" -- let alone when it's pouring a flood of "biblical proportion" like it has been during this whole 'virus' thing...? To be clear, I don't CARE what other people do so long as it is legal and doesn't unfairly disturb my own right to peace, quiet, and personal happiness. They can blow every cent they have, year after year -- but if they do, they shouldn't expect to 'poor-mouth', whine, and have society support them because they were so unthinking and irresponsible! And you claim that I'M the one who is "small in thought"...?

What I'm saying is that we wouldn't have nearly so many people 'going over the edge' into extreme poverty and financial ruin if only they had learned SOME degree of responsibility for THEMSELVES. If growing up quite poor for a number of years in my childhood taught me nothing else, it taught me to be damn sure to SAVE some money every time I got my hands on ANY of it....

Now I'll surprise you -- for the rest of 2021, we should have the government (which, of course, means the Federal Reserve central bank) front the money to supplement the income of every American citizen (not illegal aliens) -- and levy a heavy tax on stock market gamblers to pay for it! We should make it a condition that Americans SAVE 10% of all the handout welfare money they get starting right now, and if they don't, they have to pay it all back.

Nobody's going to DO that, naturally, because nobody in EITHER political party is ever going to do anything to hurt the 'almighty-god' stock market in any way!

 

Fairness would say that a government advantage given to one citizen should be given to all citizens. Our government, funded by our tax dollars, should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, and giving to some at the expense of others. Unless we are desirous of "From each according to ability, to each according to what he needs."

When a central authority takes our money, and then doles it out disproportionately, it creates a system that is ripe for corruption and favoritism, and indeed that is what we have. "General Welfare" has become "give plenty to our pet groups and cronies, and screw the others."

Massive federal taxation gives way too much power to the central authority. The federal budget and federal taxation needs to be cut drastically to remove some power from the central authority. The money that is taken from central authority should stay at the local level. The local authorities can solve their local problems. As it is now, the central authority decides which local authorities get money, and which don't. And that isn't the way it is supposed to be.

Again, when the government gets to pick winners and losers, that is when you know the system is totally rigged. Instead of being a free people, we become subjects of the central authority's whims.

 

Thread winner. Thank you sir for your thoughts above. Self responsibility is a wonderful thing, unfortunately it has become "government takes care of everyone at taxpayer expense."

 

You are correct, of course, and the situation you describe is essentially the same one we've been stuck with ever since the onset of the so-called "Great Recession" in the summer of 2007. That "recession" was proclaimed by all the experts to have ENDED in June 2009, shortly after the arrival of the wonder-worker "Messiah" Obama, and his laughably-failed "Stimulus", but it kept the 'cattle' from kicking down the 'corral', and it left the Federal Reserve central bank empire in complete control of the U. S. economy -- and it remains so TO THIS VERY DAY....

Indeed, the "Fed" insiders have been picking those 'winners-and-losers' for over 13 years now, and now, to top it all off, they've got one of their former Chairmen (Chairpersons, Chair-creatures, whatever) appointed as Treasury Secretary by witless, senile ol' Joe Biden.

. "After all, I'm a WOMAN... so that's all you need to know about ME...."

 

We can all stipulate people work hard jobs. But this is RELIEF money. What relief when they have not lost any income and in fact probably have made more with their OT? Same with government workers they have been getting paid.

 

The problem is that our good numbers are being propped up by trillions of dollars of borrowing. If we immediately cut that off, there is going to be major trouble.

 

On a much more enormous scale, this unending series of 'government giveaways' is essentially the same kind of thing that was tried during the "W" Bush years when they just gave everybody six hundred dollars and told everybody to just go SPEND it. The idea was just SPEND MONEY... make money circulate six or seven times before it ends up in the bank accounts of big-rich people. That brain-fart was dreamed up early in 2008, and was no doubt timed to help Republicans during the election that November... but it didn't.

Today, it's still essentially the same ploy. Stuff money in people's pockets and tell them to spend it. The funny thing is that I can still remember how we used to laugh and jeer at communist countries for their clumsy attempts to throw together economic 'plans' on-the-fly. And now it's those former, hard-core communist countries, like Russia and China, who are improving their economic outlooks much more effectively than we are -- and without using 'welfare-shoveling' methods like we've resorted to in the United States. When did we become this stupid...?

 

You are so right! And our situation is made even far worse when we confront the fact -- today -- that our national debt-to-GDP ratio is 107%. . Ask any economist who knows what he's talking about and he'll tell you that the much-dreaded 'tipping point' is generally acknowledged to be 77% -- and it's sure to be really BAD if the Debt-to-GDP deteriorates beyond that. BTW, our chief opponents in the world, Russia and China, have ratios that are significantly below that 77% 'tipping point'.

It has been suggested that national debt versus GDP only matters when contrasting one country's currency against that of another, but that doesn't make any real sense. A nation's debt is THAT nation's debt, period. And, yes, it definitely does heavily influence the VALUE of that nation's currency versus the money of other countries, and it heavily influences the price of treasuries, bonds, commodities, and a nation's ability to PAY its debts, at home, and abroad.

 

Yeah, the debt is a huge problem. Unfortunately we still have to borrow to prevent another downturn, but we should gradually reduce our borrowing. I don't think either party has the discipline for that.

 

I agree about what a bunch of spineless sluts both political parties are when it comes to borrowing, and debt, but we must also consider the monstrous thing that has already been created over the past 13 years that threatens everything and everyone in this country, no matter what we do in the short-term because of the 'virus'.

I'm talking about a grotesquely overvalued STOCK MARKET. Everything the Federal Reserve did with all those "QE's", "Operation Twist", crushing interest rates even though demand for CASH was high, and other economic 'magic tricks' beginning in August 2007 and continuing to this day, was to keep the big 'fraud balloon' airborne.

This was true under Obama (who never understood anything at all about "economies"), but it was made even worse under Trump! Everything he did for four years was always focused on jacking up the stock market prices -- even if it meant going WAY beyond anything that made mathematical sense or realistic VALUATION!

So, now, on top of all our other troubles (and, yes, there are others, too, that nobody even talks about), we've got a Dow Jones average that, at this moment, is 31,139! How much longer can that fantasy last? And, what will happen when 'reality' sets in and everybody tries to 'get out' at the same time...?

 

My finger is hovering over the "sell" button as we speak.

 

The Bush "prebate" of $600 in 2001 was an advance on the tax return for the next year. In fact some complained on their taxes "where's my tax cut", it had to be paid back at filing. And correct it did little if anything. It was the one of two things he got wrong during the 2001 recession. The other was phasing in the tax rate cuts through 2006. By 2003 they realized they should have been fully impliment from the getgo and passed legislation to do just that. 2008 was a Democrat bill and they didn't learn or rather didn't want to learn from the previous such handouts because they were using it to buy votes just as they are now.

And people aren't spending the money they are putting it in savings or investing it they don't need it for day to day spending. We are as of today at 6.3% unemployment nationally, down from the peak 14.8% just 8 months ago. Biden said today that without his plan it would be 2025 before we reach full employment. Full employment is considered 5.5% and below due to normal job changes and closings. So he is saying it will take 48 months get it below 5.5%, .8% lower, unless we pass this "plan"????

But then it took him 53 months under the policies he is advocating now to take it from 10% down to 6.3% in the worst recovery in modern history. WHY do we want a repeat of that? And I don't recall that every few months we were sending out $2000 per household person this almost 5 years.

 

We need to cut the spending and people who are refusing to go back to work need to be forced to go back to work by cutting off the spigot. More taxpayers, more tax revenue and less government expense, supply-side economics.

 

If we cut spending, that means job losses, which results in further consumer spending decline. The problem with just supply is that companies won't produce if there isn't any demand. You need demand too.

 

they need to get the essentials workers a raise too, time to raise the min wage

 

Raising the minimum wage will destroy jobs and services in rural America. Then what? Rural Americans will be even poorer.

Please think outside your own personal perspective.

 

No. Its not called a relief check and it is not called a relief bill. Its called a stimulus check in a stimulus bill. We can stipulate that some folks don't give a crap about first responders to crisis who see extraordinary mental or physical or risks for the rest of us, whether they are cops or firemen or health care workers or our men and women in uniform responding under fire, other than to note they are among the folks in this country who work hard at their jobs.

So lets stop treating first responders with any more respect than a sales clerk and lets get those wages and benefits down to that 13.00 to 16.00 an hour. andLet's lose those benefits too. Just a waste of money and it gives them a big ego.

Enough of this 'thanking them for their service' garbage while we are at it. Just a bunch of prima donnas.

 

Equal pay for every job? A neurosurgeon should make the same as a janitor?