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“I mean it did make everyone better. The COVID pandemic could have really wiped out a lot of people and we printed money and it helped.”

Well, let’s see:

1. I got maybe $3k from the government due to all that printing.

2. The price level is easily up 25% for things I need to buy, like food, fuel, computing equipment, and vehicles.

3. And I still got Covid, as did literally everyone else I know. My brother still can’t taste anything and a guy I work with died.

If that’s what you guys with economics degrees call a win, I will update my priors from “you guys are idiots” to “you guys are a cult that uses math to further the work of Satan.”

I did, in fact, laugh out loud at this. Did you think those personal checks were meant to prevent you from getting COVID?

Do you have so little respect of your fellow man that you think they are incapable of thinking? A big part of the spending was designed to float businesses during lockdowns to “flatten the curve”. The idea being that paying people to stay home would reduce risk of infection. They are pointing out this outcome did not happen.

>Do you have so little respect of your fellow man that you think they are incapable of thinking?

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about the above comment I was replying to.

>They are pointing out this outcome did not happen.

Flattening the curve absolutely does not mean preventing people from getting COVID; it's about lengthening the time horizon in which the population gets infected to reduce strain on the health care system.

Moreover, a personal anecdote about getting COVID doesn't imply an overall policy failure. Just because someone let sick people cough in their face doesn't mean they should wax intellectual about macroeconomics.

No, but the guy who made the comment I responded to does. I’m explaining why he is wrong.

> I mean it did make everyone better. The COVID pandemic could have really wiped out a lot of people and we printed money and it helped.

Yeah, Helped transfer wealth to the wealthy!

> we printed money and it helped.

I mean, did it? What evidence do you have for this claim?

Vaccines absolutely helped. But now everyone's wages are going down -- it was basically ~$3k stimulus checks that were actually loans with a 400% interest rate.

Real workers wages are falling. Inflation fundamentally increases inequality, i.e. people who own assets watch the value of those assets increase while people who work for income watch their income fall.

> What evidence do you have for this claim

A tight job market

> now everyone's wages are going down

Not the people that just got jobs

> Inflation fundamentally increases inequality

Not nearly as much as unemployment does

> Right now the labor market is good for workers

It is good _nominally_. Real wages are basically flat. Meanwhile, for everyone who didn't get a raise or can't currently find a new job for whatever reason, they're losing purchasing power. On top of that, the housing market has been completely destroyed by the Fed printing money and shoving it into mortgage backed securities. In many nicer areas of Southern California you used to be able to get a starter home for $600k (manageable for someone in a working class profession like a nurse or mechanic), now nothing on the market is less than $1.2M.

Also you forget that a big reason the labor market is so tight is because a couple million Boomers retired early during the pandemic.

Seems to me if real wages are flat or mildly increasing and it’s WAY easier to get a job that’s a way better world to live in for the kind of people who apply for jobs.

Compared to a Great Depression type cycle in the middle of the pandemic, what is the other alternative?

Well I think a big contributor to the current inflation problem was the last round of stimulus passed right as the pandemic was starting to wind down. At that point unemployment numbers had almost gotten back to normal and most revenue numbers for things like restaurants, travel, etc. had recovered to at least 70% of pre-pandemic levels. And then some states like California dumped even more money into the economy through multi-round state funded stimulus checks over a year after the pandemic started. The unemployment programs also should have started winding down the moment vaccines were widely available rather than 6 months after the fact.

I personally know a lot of people that just dumped their stimulus checks on memecoins or wasted it buying spurious goods. I'm sure the used car and electronics market also was greatly affected by stimulus as well.

The Fed also should have limited its stimulus to buying Treasuries rather than MBS. It makes no sense for the government to buy mortgage backed securities (basically a freebie to homeowners/homebuyers who are already wealthy).

I expect it's years of money printing to avoid a dip in the middle of the largest demand drop we've had in a very long time, following by a resurgence in demand as folks get out and try to get moving again (resulting in them spending a bunch of that money all the sudden).

It's pretty predictable IMO.

Either we'd have to drop the economy during the demand slackening during COVID (which would have caused a severe recession, because it WAS a recession in activity, and then there would be a bunch of panicked people in the middle of a pandemic who also lost all their income running around and maybe setting even MORE things on fire), or inflate our way out of it.

Hopefully we don't see some crazy 25% inflation like the 80's, but I wouldn't rule it out.

I'd expect that in a few years it'll flatten out though.

> a lot of people that just dumped their stimulus checks on memecoins or wasted it buying spurious goods

By contrast, when the Bush tax cuts were passed all that money was used for tasteful, ethical spending

Never said TCJA or the Bush era tax cuts were used for good purposes :) but it's probably better for the country in the long run to have excess money flowing into tech VC funds rather than being spent on memecoins and shitty electronics. That way maybe 1% of the funds will have positive returns rather than all of it being set on fire.

> better for the country in the long run to have excess money flowing into tech VC funds rather than being spent on memecoins and shitty electronics

Why

I'm just saying in the absence of any alternatives (which I'm sure there are), it's better to have 1% of trillions of dollars going towards advancing humanity and technology than 0%. I am fully aware that 99% of that money is going to be burned on WeWorks and the like.

Pretty sure at least 1% of the random shitcoin/memelord stuff went to advancing humanity too. Probably more.

Link to tech VC firm that has advanced humanity?

At least those tax cuts were on income, by definition money earned through productive activity.

Oh good. I was worried that there were still people earning income from exploitation, rent seeking, monopoly, cronyism, and leveraging principal-agent conflicts of interest but looks like that’s all over now.

Don't forget that nobody has had to pay student loans for two years.

Also a lot of rent forgiveness too!

I haven't seen the actual data, but a Stanford economist compared the stimulus payments with actual consumption and it's pretty apparent most stimulus dollars were not spent, but rather used to pay down debt or invest (hello r/WSB!).

MMT is a bunch of emergent identities that get dubbed gospel which depend on the US dollar being a reserve currency backed by global economic imperialism. MMT died the day the US and EU froze Russia's reserves.