I am not really sure what do you suggest as an alternative solution to the sudden demand decrease, that some people simply die of hunger being unemployed? Inflation is IMHO less harmful than real wage decrease or unemployment.
2. Just because there is an emergency doesn't mean everyone needs to sit around twiddling their thumbs. There was more work that needed doing in the pandemic, not less. That could have been parleyed into a job, leading to money for food.
For minimum wage workers and in general unskilled labor, this is just not true. Minimum wage workers can't afford to hedge against inflation by buying assets, and their income is artificially kept high by a price floor (minimum wage + legally mandatory benefits). When you inflate the USD their real income will drop to its true market value since the price floor doesn't move with inflation. Low paid workers also don't benefit from their debt reducing in real value because their nominal wage won't increase as fast as inflation due to the price floor I just talked about.
Government checks made sense in the beginning of the pandemic but the 2nd round of stimulus passed later on by reconciliation did not. At that point there was a vaccine and a strong economic rebound. You need only look at the popularity of Dogecoin, WSB, etc. to see that people did not actually need that extra round of stimulus.
thats exactly what they want
Government enforced shutdowns and regulations caused this, people should have been allowed to exercise their personal freedoms to stay home if they were at risk rather than required to at gunpoint.
BTW, I am not an anti-masker / anti-vaxxer. I have the vaccine and booster and wear a mask. I just think the government reaction has been worse than the pandemic itself.