Every country on earth has to move the goalposts during a pandemic — this is a sign the system is still working.
That's not to mention that many places in rural America have no capacity to deal with a pandemic - just think about the hospital in the Netflix Pandemic documentary ...
The one-off $1,200 in the US is fairly unique.
> France, Germany, Denmark, Britain and others have decided to take over the payrolls of struggling companies, so that workers don’t get laid off. The hope is that by paying people to stay home, governments can slow the virus’s spread while also averting an economic depression.
> Since many European countries had similar social safety net programs already, albeit in far more limited form, the salary supports were relatively easy to expand, almost literally overnight in many places, amid widespread consensus. When they imposed their economically devastating lockdowns, countries were thus able to signal to workers that their livelihoods would remain intact and to businesses that they wouldn’t immediately implode.
Didn't the US largely do this too, via a forgivable loan to companies?