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from the a-billion-here-a-billion-there-pretty-soon-you're-talking-about-real-money dept.
Biden signs $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, making $1,400 checks and child tax credit official:
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which includes a third stimulus check, for up to $1,400, and an expanded child tax credit. The IRS and Treasury will begin to send the new stimulus checks as soon as this weekend, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday at a press briefing.
The bill signing comes just one day after the amended bill passed in the House by a vote of 220-211. The House initially passed the bill on Feb. 26, and the Senate approved it last week, albeit with some changes.
[...] Democrats had been pushing to get the stimulus package signed into law before current unemployment benefits expire March 14. Biden was originally scheduled to sign the bill on Friday, but it got moved forward after Congress sent the final bill to the president more quickly than anticipated, Psaki said on Thursday.
The stimulus package, called the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, includes changes made by the Senate last week, such as reducing income limits for the third stimulus payment and lowering proposed weekly unemployment benefits from $400 a week to $300 a week (though they'd extend through Sept. 6 rather than the end of August). The Senate also dropped a federal minimum wage increase from the legislation, but proponents say they'll reintroduce that at a later date.
How to watch President Biden's national address tonight.
House passes $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, sends it to Biden to sign:
[...] Here are the proposal's major pieces:
- It extends a $300 per week jobless aid supplement and programs making millions more people eligible for unemployment insurance until Sept. 6. The plan also makes an individual's first $10,200 in jobless benefits tax-free.
- The bill sends $1,400 direct payments to most Americans and their dependents. The checks start to phase out at $75,000 in income for individuals and are capped at people who make $80,000. The thresholds for joint filers are double those limits. The government will base eligibility on Americans' most recent filed tax return.
- It expands the child tax credit for one year. It will increase to $3,600 for children under 6 and to $3,000 for kids between 6 and 17.
- The plan puts about $20 billion into Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing and distribution, along with roughly $50 billion into testing and contact tracing.
- It adds $25 billion in rental and utility assistance and about $10 billion for mortgage aid.
- The plan offers $350 billion in relief to state, local and tribal governments.
- The proposal directs more than $120 billion to K-12 schools.
- It increases the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit by 15% through September.
- The bill includes an expansion of subsidies and other provisions to help Americans afford health insurance.
- It offers nearly $30 billion in aid to restaurants.
- The legislation expands an employee retention tax credit designed to allow companies to keep workers on payroll.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @11:28PM (3 children)
Also, happy birthday to the Pandemic, you are one years old today!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 11 2021, @11:49PM (2 children)
How are you measuring time for that birthday? From the time the WHO publicly decided that it might be a problem?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 11 2021, @11:59PM (1 child)
Jews and other progressives think destroying the middle-class for their corporate masters with a manufactured scam is totally fine as long as it makes Orange Man Bad look, well, bad. I have no idea why those folk consider themselves populist champions, they voted in a bunch of Jewish Neocons and spent all of last summer terrorizing the populace on behalf of their corporate masters and international crime syndicates laundering money to the DNC. But that's what Jews do, destroy societies. In this case helping weaken America so that it won't pose a threat to their Chinese buddies.
There could be some silver lining, though. States such as Idaho can (and are) passing legislation to tell the feds to go fuck themselves. Kinda the original point, though both sides are to blame for the federal overreach of the past few decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @05:27PM
I love the taste of fresh oranges, the deep blue of a clear sky, the countless stars of the night and dandling grand-babies on my knee.
--
No one can take this from me.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Snotnose on Friday March 12 2021, @12:55AM (31 children)
Biden wanted to spend 1.9 trillion $$$ before he even came into office. The bill is maybe 10% Covid related. You get a $1400 check? Guess what, you, rather your kids, are going to pay much more than that on this chunk 'o pork.
It's really too bad the GOP turned into the complete assholes they've turned into in the past 4-12 years.
I'm in that boat where I agree with the GOP 90% of the time, yet can't stand the party. And I seriously hope Trump gets to spend some jail time before 2024 cuz that's where he belongs.
Someone tell me who to vote for. The GOP, who is morally corrupt to it's core; or the Dems, who can't resist spending money they don't have and make stupid assed laws (Political Correctness, Woke, etc) that seriously fail the "you kidding me?" Fark headline.
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday March 12 2021, @01:19AM (21 children)
If you really agree with the GOP 90% of the time then you must be in favour of budget deficits, because that's been republican policy since at least Reagan.
The democrats are spending money now because that is how you go about stimulating the economy. This has been agreed upon as the best solution to prevent depressions since the great one hit in 1929 and Hoover made it worse by trying to balance the books.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @02:20AM (14 children)
In addition, for some reason the "deficit hawks" all worried about spending money the federal government doesn't have never raise the issue when the Republicans vote in tax giveaways, almost all to people who have been getting incredibly rich without them, that cost the federal government even more than the Democrats' allegedly irresponsible spending.
And about those Republican deficits, it's worth noting that the long-term plan the GOP has been trying for since at least 1980 is as follows:
1. Whenever a Republican is president, cut taxes, running up massive deficits. This is popular, because most people don't like paying taxes.
2. Whenever Democrats are both president and controls Congress, complain about the deficit endlessly.
3. Whenever a Democrat is president and Republicans control at least one house of Congress, use the federal budget to force the Democratic president to agree to social spending cuts.
4. Blame any cuts that occurred as a result of step 3 on that Democratic president.
A key part of this plan is that the Republicans get to keep the poor elderly voting for them in the mistaken belief that the Democrats are the ones taking away their Social Security and Medicare.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Acabatag on Friday March 12 2021, @02:54AM (1 child)
That's like calling it a 'giveaway' when a generous thief doesn't steal your wallet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @03:25AM
The truly rich are getting extensive government services, most notably the violent-if-necessary protection of their persons, assets, and businesses. When they're getting those services, and not paying for them, that's a giveaway.
Now, I'm well aware the libertarian or anarcho-capitalist view of taxes is that the proper rate of all taxes is 0%, but that's actually not what the Republicans are about. They're totally fine with your taxes and my taxes being somewhere in the 20-35% range, they just want to make sure that a handful of rich people's taxes are as close to 0% as they can get away with because those rich people are bribing them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @03:14AM (9 children)
They have no principles. Understand this: the entire GOP (and a fair chunk of the Dems, mostly the DNC) are sociopaths by any working definition of the term. They're not functioning humans. They don't have your or my interests at heart. The *least* dysfunctional of them, like Mitt Romney, are straight-up Lawful Evil with a slightly above-normal IQ and an ability to think medium-term about their own stock portfolios and assets. It's all downhill from there.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @06:04AM
Sounds like you're a temporarily embarrassed GOPer. Call me back when your principles are more important than vilifying people you disagree with.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by qzm on Friday March 12 2021, @06:55AM (7 children)
You understand how this money is supposed to work?
Since you are so (correctly..) against making the rich richer.
So, the Democrats are handing out a ton of money - this should result in a massive inflationary bubble, which is desperately bad for the poor, so lets give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there is some thinking/plan for how that can not happen.
Now, the only actual way that cannot happen is if the money quickly gets 'frozen' - ie: leaves the day to day transactional economy.
If the money is in the hands of the lower/working/middle class (not so many of them left now.. downward mobility has been rather effective) then it will be very active, and highly inflationary - so it is likely the Democrats do not intend it to rest there.
The only places t can sit non-active would be the government (who could reduce debit with it, but that would seem odd.. since they just made the debt), or the rich - and I dont mean the 1% here, I mean the 0.0001%.
Now those very rich (lets just call them the Elites) DO sit on huge piles of cash that they do not spend - so if the vast majority of this money ends up in their hands quickly enough - little or no inflation.
So, you have two possible outcomes.
Either the Elites are about to get richer by around 1.9T over the next 6/12 months, or the rest of us are about to be destroyed in an inflationary bubble that is unlikely to leave and working/middle class.
Its pretty simple economics, really.
Just wondering, which outcome do you prefer?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday March 12 2021, @08:31AM (6 children)
The most idiotic argumentation I heard later.
"This is how the money works: either you give them to the rich, who will sit on them; or you give to the poor which will create rampant inflation and the rich will collect the after a while t sit on them"
A thing that is contradicted by the experience of heaps of other countries, where proper managed fiscal policies don't produce boom/bust cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @12:14PM (1 child)
Money is just a tool, it works however we want it to. All money problems are inherently political, which is why people in the US always freak out about even potential inflation, because it would mean we are losing grip on global hegemony. It's not gonna happen, inflation has been low despite every attempt to increase it to target levels, this is due to declining birthrates and stagnant wages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @11:11PM
This of course depends massively on which inflation measure you use. It even changes from time to time. But, for example, produce price index isn't the same as consumer price index, and the chain CPI is different again (and arguably a fraud).
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by qzm on Friday March 12 2021, @10:45PM (3 children)
Lolz, good to see your well thought out response.
Care to name those 'heaps of other countries'? Or even one of them?
Or say why boom/bust cycles are even slightly relevant to my position?
I am guessing not, since i suspect you know almost nothing about economic theory..
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Friday March 12 2021, @11:28PM (2 children)
Australia - where I live - injected $1.3T between June and December into population. The inflation dropped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @12:00AM (1 child)
Before we leap to conclusions, how was the velocity of money? How were discretionary purchases? How much was sunk into financial assets?
There's a lot more that goes into it than just how much a chancellor decides to print.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday March 13 2021, @12:26AM
Hence my "proper managed fiscal policies don't produce boom/bust cycles.".
In opposition to the "simpleton theory of money printing" tabled [soylentnews.org] by qzm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:18AM (1 child)
Speak for yourself. I worry, and I do raise it.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 14 2021, @10:30PM
Sure you do. As soon as the republicans lose power you're very worried. Just like last time.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday March 12 2021, @06:07PM (1 child)
Does the economy need more stimulus or does it just need to be opened back up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:36PM
I've seen that porno.
This being the internet, I'm sure we've all seen that porno.
Many, many times.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 15 2021, @03:57AM (3 children)
What again is the point of "stimulating" the economy? I find it remarkable how we've been doing Keynesian economics for near a century and we still don't have evidence that it does anything positive for us.
What's the point of agreement that's not based on reality? The dirty secret to Keynesian economics is that it's a cargo cult, based solidly on confirmation bias. A recession hits, the Keynesian rituals are performed, and the recession goes away. It has been assumed for 90 years that's because Keynesian economics works. But historically, recessions have always gone away, even when we don't do anything about them. What's the difference between with and without?
Instead, the key to why Keynesian economics is in the last part of your sentence: "trying to balance the books". Funny how almost no one does actual Keynesian strategy - paying down debt when the economy is doing well. Instead, they borrow when times are bad, and borrow when times are good. The Keynesian approach provides ideological cover to the parties who want to spend the wealth of future generations. I think that's the real reason there is so much "agreement" on how well it's supposed to work. All the pigs at the trough agree that it works really well.
And most of the people who will pay for these consequences haven't even been born yet.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 15 2021, @08:04PM (2 children)
Every government I have lived under has done exactly that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 16 2021, @12:45AM (1 child)
You've already established you don't live under the US government and we're discussing US government policy. So that's one strike right there. Second, I granted with my phrase "almost no one" that there are governments that implement Keynesian economics more or less "properly" - the Scandinavian countries, for example.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 16 2021, @01:21AM
Good lord. What happens at strike three?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @01:30AM (5 children)
This bill might be more popular if they sent out the $2,000 checks they promised. No, not $600 plus $1,400.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:17AM (4 children)
Did you fail math like most republicans? Hint 600 + 1400 = 2000. And it was Moscow Mitch and his gang that broke it into only 600 in the first place.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:26AM
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/14/after-biden-vowed-2000-checks-will-go-out-door-ahead-georgia-wins-relief-plan [commondreams.org]
Stop gaslighting for your lying politicians.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:23AM (1 child)
You fail at optics just like the Democrats. Many people - Democrats included - believed that they would get $2,000 in addition to the $600. Now, given that, which is the better option: Sending out $2,000 and not disappointing anyone and pleasantly surprising people who thought they would get $1,400, or sending out $1,400 and angering some voters? Well, if you're looking to increase the chances that you win future elections, the answer is obviously the former.
Plus, $2,000 was always a pathetically small amount, as many people are thousands and thousands behind on rent. We should've had monthly stimulus checks to begin with. Instead, we're pinching pennies and trying to find the absolute minimum we can give people, while the Republicans vote against even these pathetic crumbs in lockstep. Not a good look for Democrats' chances in the midterms.
More importantly, they changed the income thresholds for the checks such that millions of people who received the $600 checks won't receive the $1,400 checks. Those people were straight up betrayed and lied to. And to make matters worse, the people in that income range also helped Democrats win states like Georgia.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @05:21PM
The thing is that even at $2600 for the total, that's still woefully insufficient. Most other developed countries were handing out that kind of money on a monthly basis as compensation for the need to shut businesses down. The Democrats deliberately took advantage of the "ambiguity" to cut down the checks and even under the most generous of interpretations they still lied when they promised $2k checks out the door immediately. They didn't even start the reconciliation process for weeks and the checks were just $1400, not $2k, and considering they got no GOP votes, they should have whipped their own caucus to make it happen. The voters of Arizona and W. Virginia were hardly opposed to the extra money.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:09PM
Biden promised $2k checks out the door immediately. They chose to break b those promises. This is why the democrats keep losing elections, they had to use budget reconciliation anyways, might as well keep one of the promise.
But, even if you think that $1400 is $2000, there are people that had received previous checks that won't get this one. And they opted not to provide for essential workers now that they have control of everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @01:37AM
Voodoo Economics and the 2 Santa Claus theory started us down the path to ruin.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:48AM (1 child)
I vote 3rd party because they're the only ones who can make a dent in this mess. The Ds are bringing back earmarks (both parties stopped doing it around 2011), meaning attaching personal pork projects to important bills so that the pork is forced to be passed. This is basically bribery which congress critters like to call negotiating: "If you support us on X we'll send $$ to your favorite company by adding it to that bill." Remember that Alaskan multi-million dollar bridge to nowhere (an island of 50 people who didn't want the bridge)? That was an earmark.
They're bringing earmarks back because they have a majority, so if they're able to bribe all the Ds to vote to toe the line then whatever they say goes. Expect a lot of bad laws this term. Congress is incredibly corrupt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @05:25PM
The only way that I'll be voting for either Democrats or Republicans again is if there's no 3rd party candidate and I can vote against the incumbent. It's beyond fucked up that they could find trillions for the rich and powerful and give so much money to the unemployed, but no hazard pay to the essential workers. I got to work for minimum wage around the public, getting my hours cut at various points, and they didn't do a damned thing to help me out. Eventually, the city council decided to do something, but seriously, the only reason I wound up making more money than those on unemployment was that they failed spectacularly to handle unemployment benefits after they delayed making plans.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Friday March 12 2021, @12:57AM (5 children)
Question: Where is this money coming from?
(Score: 5, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Friday March 12 2021, @01:08AM (3 children)
The money is coming from the same place that your military industrial complex gets its funds from. Nobody really cares about that money though.
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Friday March 12 2021, @02:57AM (2 children)
In the same speech where the phrase 'military industrial complex' was coined, Eisenhower spoke of the danger of the rising 'scientific technological elite.'
It's worth pondering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @06:34PM (1 child)
Only if you're a total fucking moron. We have learned that phrase just means billionaires, and yiur phrasing us just more divisive crap for rightwing religious nutbags and paranoid conspuracy qultists to latch on to. Talk about the issues, not your pet scare rhetoric.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @11:17PM
Not really wrong, though.
A bureaucratic elite, empowered by generations of congressional delegation and a revolving door between industry and the government, really has driven a lot of policy away from visible management, and often that top-down policymaking has had negative, or at least self-serving effects.
You don't have to believe in the almighty NyQuil to see that going on.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:39AM
Answer: It comes from the bankers behind the Federal Reserve who create it out of thin air on a computer with the proviso that Government uses the threat of force to steal your wealth on their behalf. Enjoy your indentured servitude.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday March 12 2021, @01:07AM (21 children)
My neighbors had a hard time, I think, understanding why I wasn't that excited about the payments. I'm thinking that over time I'll end up losing far more via inflation than I'm getting in the here and now. I might be a bit of a gloomy Gus though.
There's a school of thought that spreads far and wide on the Internet that runs with the theme that "the dollar is dying" and "we're headed for Weimar" so you should "buy gold" or the new flavor which is "HODL BTC" and that kind of stuff.
So what are the numbers? You can spot people that haven't really thought about it too much, because they'll just give you the raw debt which is something like $30 trillion now or some other ungodly number that I forget because it's the wrong number to use.
For people that claim to know a lot about inflation, they should realize that you need to normalize that number against something and one way to do that is debt-to-GDP. This doesn't paint a rosy picture exactly--our ratio was already over 100%, and the pandemic has caused it to soar past 130. These are levels not seen since shortly after WW2. That would seem to lend credence to the notion that we're headed for severe inflation. However, now that you've normalized debt to GDP you need to compare it to other countries.
It's all over the map (no pun intended) and the example that will really stymie people who think we're headed for severe inflation is Japan. Their ratio is over 200, and has been that way for quite some time. If you really want to go down the rabbit-hole, google "liquidity trap".
That doesn't mean the USA won't have inflation. It just means that it's not a guarantee. I experienced the late 70s stagflation as a boy. I watched my candy bars go from $0.25 to $0.50, with a lot of uncertainty in between, and had one experience with a clerk who took pity on me for being a penny short when they were moving up in price. Then we had slow inflation after that, and I don't even know what a candy bar costs now because... you get to a point where you can't eat junk; but I digress.
We're just going to have to keep an eye on it, and make sure that we don't get in to the kinds of spirals that other countries have, which really do lead to hyperinflation. This can be runaway attempts at "social justice" as was seen in Zimbabwe, or attempts to sustain social programs while revenue declines as was seen in Venezuela, or something milder like the external shocks we saw during the aforementioned late 70s inflation which was largely the result of oil prices.
The 70s inflation was ended when the late Paul Volcker raised interest rates to double-digits. An independent central bank saved the US Dollar. I was too young to know what the politics were of all that, and how much threat there was against such moves. I don't know how it compared to the "End the Fed" cries that you hear from the political fringe these days. Hopefully we can stand up against that, because if the Bank isn't allowed to perform its function, the result can be sadly predictable--the currency becomes entirely beholden to politics, and populist moves such as inflating away student debt seem liberating at first, but are ultimately destructive to the entire society. Ironically, hyperinflation tends to end with a currency board, ie, they go right back to doing what central banks do in order to restore order.
Like I said. I can be a gloomy Gus sometimes. I don't think it'll happen. Really, I hope it won't. That's all you can do sometimes.
Disclaimer: Not financial advice.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @02:34AM (18 children)
As a general rule: Inflation doesn't increase heavily when governments spend into a recession, and if they do see excessive inflation the Fed raises interest rates or sells T-bills to prevent it going up too much. Stagflation is the exception, not the rule, and the 1970's stagflation had a lot to do with the oil commodities markets.
The other thing I can't help but take note of is that prices on key necessities like food, housing, and medicine have been going up steadily for about 40 years, while wages have been essentially flat adjusted for inflation. And the result has been millions of people unable to afford those things, and doing without. As in, in the USA, something like 1 in 10 people are experiencing at least one of those shortages, right now. When it comes to very real ongoing harms versus the potential for some other kind of harm, you solve the ongoing problem and worry about the potential problem later.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday March 12 2021, @07:57AM (5 children)
Yes, Keynes recommended spending in a recession. A lot of fiscal conservatives like to blame Keynes for deficit spending, but they ignore the fact that he had two sides to his policy prescription. The other side was to raise revenue (taxes) during expansions so that the debt wouldn't get out of control. The USA is suffering from what you might call a Keynesian asymmetry. It's politically possible to spend, but it's not politically possible to raise taxes enough to pay for it when things are going well. Instead the Fed ends up raising rates when things get "over heated", and we're right back to square-1.
Agreed about the decline in real wages. I think the consensus is also that wealth and/or income distribution is badly skewed towards the rich, similar to the 1920s. A fiscal stimulus to the lower tiers is really not a bad idea to address that, and the minimum wage increase may help too; but what we really need IMHO is to tax capital gains as ordinary income, and return top marginal tax rates to where they were earlier... I don't think I'd return them to pre-Reagan levels, repealing the Bush (43) tax cuts might be all we need. None of this even gets discussed in Congress though. It seems like a political non-starter; they're afraid to piss off the GOP even though they have control now. Why?
To clarify though--now is not quite the time to raise taxes. We need solid recovery first, or perhaps even to make the tax rates contingent on expansion. That's really what I think Keynes was advocating. It really wouldn't take any kind of crazy confiscatory tax rate. Remember when the economy boomed under Clinton and the debt actually started to look controllable?
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(Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday March 12 2021, @10:47AM (1 child)
Congress controls the purse strings. And that's when Newt was running things...
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday March 12 2021, @05:08PM
True, but IMHO the Fed has more impact on the economy than either. The POTUS doesn't spend the money, but has veto power and a "bully pulpit" to advocate for policy. You can't discount that.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @11:50AM (2 children)
Part of the reason for this is the "Norquist Pledge", which most Republicans have agreed to for decades. (This amounts to US public policy being controlled by somebody nobody elected, but hey, there's lots of money involved, we can't have mere voters deciding what should happen in a democracy, right?) The Norquist Pledge amounts to: The legislator in question will never agree to raise or create any tax under any circumstances. And every single Republican knows that breaking that rule will result in a primary challenge where they will be outspent about 15 to 1.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Friday March 12 2021, @05:06PM
I'd forgotten about that turd. Thank-you for spoiling my breakfast.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 13 2021, @12:23AM
Grover Norquist ought to be executed. By drowning. In his own bathtub.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @02:52PM (11 children)
When was the last time a government printed $1.9 trillion for arbitrary spending? Of course inflation adjusted is fine. I'm also probably understating the issue there because that $1.9 trillion is just for this latest bill, in total we're upwards of $4 trillion. But to my knowledge this scale of spending is pretty deep into uncharted waters, the closest coming from the other recent bail outs which did not have exactly what I'd call a positive impact on society or our economic stability.
And beyond the scale there's perhaps something even more dangerous happening right now. Even Milton Friedman was quick to acknowledge that "helicopter money" could benefit an economy. But it came with a specific little asterisk - so long as people don't come to expect it. You run not only into moral hazards, but also simply the devaluation of the perception of your currency, which is one of the main sources for potential catastrophe. The government has shown they have the power to print arbitrary amounts of money, and the people have seen that. Now we expect them to go back to earning typical hourly wages for hard work after this is all over? Guess we'll see.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @03:25PM (10 children)
2017 [wikipedia.org], since they cut taxes without cutting spending, and thus put $2.3 trillion or so into the economy pulled from thin air.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @04:01PM (7 children)
Letting people keep their own money is obviously not the same as injecting nonexistent money, out of thin air, into the economy.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @04:27PM (6 children)
Explain to me the economic difference between these two scenarios, especially since we're in tax season:
1. I get a check in the mail for $1400 from the government.
2. I get a $1400 tax cut from the government. For the sake of simplicity, let's say I worked out withholding perfectly and owe nothing more for 2020 right now. So I file, and therefor get a refund check in the mail of $1400 from the government.
In either case, I have $1400 more in the bank than I would have without either law being passed, and I have no reason to make any different decisions about where it's going after I get it.
And if, as in both these cases, there was no accompanying spending cut in some area of the government to pay for it, the impact on the federal budget looks pretty similar to me too:
1. Everybody gets paid $1400. Ergo, spending increases by $1400 * the population, an amount we'll call $X, and the deficit goes up by $X.
2. Everybody has their taxes go down by $1400. Ergo, revenue decreases by $X, and since spending didn't change the deficit goes up by $X.
How similar are these scenarios? Well, when I did my taxes this year, I was specifically asked how much I'd gotten in stimulus money, and any amount I hadn't gotten would lower my tax payments. So if you'd like, burn your $1400 check, tell the IRS you didn't get it when you file your 2021 taxes, and you'll now have a tax cut!
I'm pretty sure your real objection doesn't have to do with how the money goes from the government to my bank account, and everything to do with whose bank accounts are getting the money.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @04:45PM (4 children)
See below for my somewhat spastic responses. To sum it up - you're only considering yourself, and not the actual economy.
Money you have received, even if the government takes it, is money in circulation. Money that the government prints is money that was not in circulation and is now added to it. Very different issues.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @05:05PM (3 children)
Yes I am considering the actual economy: The two scenarios I described work out to be completely identical at the micro-economic level, for every transaction. Ergo, their macro-economic impact is also identical, and the only difference is whether we add a +X-X to the record books somewhere.
As for your "money in circulation" argument: All that deficit spending (whether the result of unfunded tax cuts or unfunded spending) was paid for by issuing US Treasury bonds, which means investors coughed up the money to buy those bonds, which means the money was spent / not taxed was money that was previously in circulation barring action from the Federal Reserve. You seem to be confusing federal government spending with the Federal Reserve creating money either by changing interest rates or open market actions.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @06:27PM (2 children)
Again, these things have the exact same impact, since treasuries are actively traded in a way not meaningfully different than any other commodity or even currency itself. You can actually see the overall impact of all of this by simply observing the monetary supply. [stlouisfed.org]
February 2020: $15.5 trillion
January 2021: $19.4 trillion
And that obviously does not yet account for the $2 trillion more we've just dumped. This is a completely unprecedented experiment. One meta-data I also find interesting is the behaviors of the super-rich as all of this is happening. For instance Bill Gates has silently become the largest farmland owner in America after buying hundreds of thousands of acres through shell companies in a failed effort to mask the fact that it was him.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @09:22PM (1 child)
No, it isn't: We spent double that on WWII. And in the aftermath, we had the largest and longest economic boom in the history of the US. Now, there might be other factors involved there, but a large fiscal dump does not necessarily lead to disaster.
Also, I should point out that the 2020-1 effect on monetary supply was with the tax cuts I mentioned at the start of this thread in effect, but without the stimulus package that was just passed in place.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @10:42PM
Hahah, come on buddy, you're turning this into [ArguingOnTheInternet.jpg]. You literally just tried to compare the sum cost of 4 years of WW2 against a single money-printing bill and argue that 'Well, it worked out after WW2.' Go back to the top of this thread. I'm not even arguing about what will happen (though of course my own biases there are obvious), but rather simply that doing anything on the scale we're doing for simple stimulus is deep into uncharted waters. It's large enough that it can practically be considered a test of Magic Money Theory.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Friday March 12 2021, @06:26PM
2017 money went mainly to wealthy people who pumped it into equities, not into the real economy. This means that inflation prices didn't increase, instead the stock market did. This is great for people who have income from the stockmarket and expenses in the real economy (old and wealthy people), but not good for those who have income from the real economy and want to buy into the stock market (young and poor)
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @04:09PM
Actually I feel the above deserves more of an explanation because it's [presumably] obvious you considered this, but decided it to be untrue. One of the most important factors in economics is the circulation of money. Money that is taxed not only exists but is already in active circulation. So imagine there is a total of $100 in the economy and each year you take $40 from that and then put it back into circulation the next year. That's quite a lot different than creating $40 out of thin air and then adding it to the economy, because in the latter scenario you've now permanently increased the amount of money in circulation.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday March 12 2021, @04:14PM
Also, the most obvious point here is that that was the estimated cost of the value of the tax break was over 10 years. I'm unsure of exactly what the exact numbers ended up as, but that ends up comparing something like $0.23 trillion/year to $1.9 trillion, or ~$4 trillion if we consider all stimulus throughout this year.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday March 12 2021, @02:38AM
We are arguably already in a spiral and have no escape. Debtors are clinging to the cliff's edge and creditors are clinging to the debtors' feet. Raise interest rates and the debtors default and they all tumble into the abyss. Stop printing money and you get a credit freeze and they all tumble into the abyss. Keep printing money and stuffing it in the creditors' pockets and they just get that much heavier. Cut the creditors loose by forgiving the debts and then markets crash, pensions evaporate, and plutocrats turn vengeful.
Money would have to be redirected from waste, fraud, kickbacks, and corporate welfare to investment in honest, productive enterprise and infrastructure to have any hope of turning things around.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @06:07AM
Japan isn't that serious a stymie. Their economy is a wreck, particularly compared to the powerhouse it was in the 1980s. Inflation is not the only failure mode. Stagnation is another.
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Friday March 12 2021, @01:34AM (5 children)
because Trump proposed $2000.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 12 2021, @03:10AM (4 children)
Yes, actually. I just love how it's suddenly a terrible idea that's going to explode the economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:50AM (1 child)
Unfortunately, that goes both ways.
2020: Trump's gonna send us all to fiscal hell!
2021: oh, wait, this actually ain't all that bad, let's get in on the Trumpination, guys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:44AM
Liar, no one said that and he even got praise from the likes of DM and Azuma.
All you assholes do is lie lie and lie some more.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday March 12 2021, @01:34PM
Let's not forget the horrible Chinese border taxes.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:37PM
If you strip out all the crap in this bill and just send $2000 to every single man woman and child in this country, even illegal immigrants - it'd cost less than 35% of what's being spent on this bill.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:00AM (1 child)
The Bidet abides.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @03:12AM
A rush of clean, fresh, pure water at high force to clear out the stagnant shit and force the filthy assholes to clean up their act? Sounds good to me. More abiding, please. That one kinda backfired on you =P
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday March 12 2021, @03:31AM
I'm going to spend my money on more vaseline and pickles!
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @06:16AM (3 children)
I'm glad that got removed. Sorry, I remain in strong opposition to minimum wage. It's a shoddy solution to a problem that's already been solved. There's already a natural market-driven minimum wage.
My take is that people worried about things like a "living wage" should be concerned about the systemic flaws of developed world societies that drive up cost of living and reduce demand for workers, both which, if reversed, can address their real concerns much more effectively than a minimum wage can.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:40AM (2 children)
Minimum wage just destroy small businesses, making near monopolies into total monopolies. These companies can just print stock till all the competitors go out of business, then jack up the prices to cover the few wages for the workers that were not replaced by automation.
Only thing that will follow this fiasco is probably some sort of law that forbits the owner from not paying themselves or family a minimum wage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:47AM (1 child)
Real fucking dumb.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @01:22PM