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Comment by wussboy | Hacker News Reader

I would argue the second instance (pandemic) was much more nearly what a good government should do than the first one

Exact opposite. We are in the midst of the COVID hangover.

So that govt money went to the wealthy to buy up houses (Californians bought real estate in the Midwest as investments and it drove up housing prices along with small immigration to these states)

Farmers etc benefited from bailouts when they were doing very well. It was a large blunder.

All that money directly led to housing inflation that still hasn't settled. The PPP loans were all forgiven (which massively favored business owners and upper class).

Meanwhile student loan forgiveness was overruled by the supreme court.

It's really hard to ignore the implication that it ended up being more like a wealth transfer than anything else.

It may be what they should have done, but the effect was still inflationary. There is no free lunch.

It was inflationary but would spread out the pain over the recovery period after the crisis, the other option was to allow 100% of the pain to be felt immediately: economy shutting down, people losing their jobs, diminished household spending, less money circulating in the economy, businesses still running having fewer orders/customers, more people being laid off, all the way until the crisis passed.

Between the latter and the former I believe the former was a much smarter choice in the medium to long term.

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