Yeah this bill gave the vast majority of money away to corporations, only like 15% cash payments to people, fucked over the poors the most, had zero actualy restrictions on corporations taking the bailouts. It was a fucking horrible bill, the republicans had some of you fooled.
That said due to trumps recent tweets, its clear he wants people to go back to work ASAP, so there is zero chance Republicans will pass anything that helps people enough that they’re allowed to stay home. They’re going to force people back to work in two weeks for the economy.
I’d love to believe they are going to do something better man but these are the same people who rubberstamped the defense spending like 2 days before the impeachment vote.
Cliffs: because we’ve spent the last two decades cutting staff @ the IRS and because the agency still uses tech from the 1960’s, just cutting the checks to every American could take months.
There has been a lot of discussion about how to best help people through the difficult economic times being caused by the pandemic. Some economists have suggested keeping things simple and quick by sending lump-sum checks to all Americans. Other economists are concerned that such an approach is expensive if the checks are generous and not sufficiently targeted on those who are hardest hit. But targeting takes time, is hard because it requires identifying who most needs the money, and, if imperfectly done, may miss some people who are truly needy.
So here is an idea: Don’t target ex ante . Target ex post .
Let’s send every person a check for X dollars every month for the next N months. In addition, levy a surtax in 2020 (due in April 2021) equal to NX(Y2020/Y2019), where Y2020 is a person’s earnings in 2020 and Y2019 is a person’s earnings in 2019.
Under this plan, a person whose earnings fall to zero this year returns none of the social insurance payments. A person whose earnings fall by half keeps half of the payments. A person whose earnings remain the same returns everything: They will have just gotten a short-term loan. And those lucky few whose earnings rise this year will return more than they got.
Democrats arguing for means testing are appealing to approximately no one. It is a complete own goal.
But the point is that the net payouts can be the same if you apply the means test on the back end, which is what Mankiw is suggesting, plus it’s far easier and more effective! (I recognize that you probably realize this already.)
This is a fucking stupid idea. This means people who make the least money are the ones most likely to have to pay this money back. Just give people the damn money and increase the top tax rate or print the money to pay for it.
This is typical conservative lizard brain thinking and how they get people to buy into their ideas that sound simple until you actually look at who would be most impacted by his added tax.
How do you get this interpretation? The general idea is that everyone gets the same amount now, and then the people experiencing the worst outcomes right now don’t have to pay it back, while those with the ability to pay it back do.
You can play around with numbers and say that no one earning under, say, $200k has to pay it back. But yes the general idea would be that people doing relatively worse (losing their jobs) would get more assistance than people doing relatively better (doubling income).
