My country's government is throwing huge amounts of non-means tested stimulus at businesses and workers to make sure that most people are no worse off (and many are better off) even if they do lose their jobs.
I call that a bail-out. I believe in putting in some measures to soften the blow of job losses but they should be proportional and means tested.
P.S. I've never received a cent of stimulus in my life neither this year nor after the GFC.
Ok, so you are looking at this through the lens of what is happening in Australia. That wasn't clear.
It does seem like you begrudge any support others might receive, particularly with your ending statement that "I've never received a cent of stimulus in my life".
Means-testing can be effective in some instances, but not others. As has been discussed here many times, a core challenge has always been what to include with means-testing. On the asset-side of hte equation there's salary and positions, all of which are problematic (i.e, what timeframe are we considering? Do we consider the value of the primary residence, and if so do we make an allotment for those who are renters?) THen there's the expense side of he ledger, which might include everything from the number of dependents, household income, debt-load etc.
Going by last years' tax returns doesn't reflect who might need stimulus now. There's also the inherent bias involved in saying this group of people deserves support to soften the blow, while these people do not.
I don't begrudge any and all stimulus but I do begrudge "stimulus" that's handed out to people who don't need it. If you've had a high income in prior years then you can make do with your savings. That's the whole point of forward planning. If you have an asset base like a paid off house you can reverse mortgage it. Handing out stimulus which then goes into people's mortgages is neither effective nor necessary and just blows out the budget deficit. If you must hand out stimulus, give it only to the genuinely poor, who will spend it all. The middle class can wait a little while and spend their savings first.
Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to provide a social safety net for people who are hit by the economic downturn, that is far and away the best way to do it. But if your goal is to spur the economy, then the most effective way to do so is to spread as much money as you can as quickly and widely as you can. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sure, there is some point at which that extra $1200 or whatever is meaningless; I mean, if you're a billionaire, that barely even qualifies as a drop in the bucket, so it's not going to change your behavior. But there are many people below that level who may have income and assets to fall back on, who many not "need" a stimulus check, but who are likely to use it to stimulate the economy if it's provided. If you have assets to fall back on, you likely obtained those assets by being fiscally prudent and not spending all of your income. So if your income dives 25%, are you going to take out a reverse mortgage so you can sustain your prior lifestyle and go out to eat and continue buying clothes and toys and planning vacations? Or are you going to cut all your excess spending, so that you can survive on your 25% paycut for as long as possible? People who got where they are by fiscal prudence are going to continue to be fiscally prudent. And when they cut back their discretionary purchases, those decisions do hurt the economy, and a lot of people who make a lot less end up losing their jobs as a result.* And if you wait to better determine who will spend it and who will pocket it, then those jobs are already gone, because we have at-will employment, and employers can move much faster than the government can. So if stimulus-for-all can help persuade many people to buy some of that stuff they'd otherwise cut, it is worth it, even if not everyone "needs" it as a social safety net. And FWIW, in my area and amongst the people I know, there was a very strong push for those of us who could afford to do so to donate the stimulus to local charities or to intentionally spend it on local businesses that were struggling. Because we knew that we were very fortunate to have jobs and be safe, and trying to support those who didn't and weren't was all we could do.
*Call it the corollary of the "trickle down" theory, a/k/a the "shit flows downhill" theory. IMO, throwing some money along the entire slope is the quickest way to try to slow down the avalanche of shit at least a little. Note also that I am not a fan of the trickle down theory; IMO, the second corollary of that theory is that shit flows downhill much faster and easier than good things "trickle," because when things do start to recover, those rich and powerful people at the top of the hill have tremendous power to hold tight to those extra benefits until their cup is filled up again. At least this time we threw the money up and down the hill, instead of just funneling it to the top as we've done before.
