I wonder what would happen if the government just sent $10,000 to every person who has a Social Security number. Yes, it would be a tremendously expensive bill, but is it possible that it could actually fix the economy? I picked an arbitrary number, but presumably we can come up with an estimate of how much money needs to be put into people’s hands to create the missing demand businesses need to make new hires. We should also be able to estimate how much of that money would come right back to the government in the form of payroll taxes, income taxes, etc. If you offer the money to everybody, it’d be hard to oppose politically. Yet, it might make better sense to have a cut off for people who are already awash with cash. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the reason businesses aren’t hiring is that everyone is broke and therefore cannot buy enough of what those businesses make. Forget tax cuts. Just give everyone a significant amount of cash and the problem is solved. Obviously, you have to be sensible about it. You have to look carefully at the budget ramifications. You have to consider inflation as a possible byproduct. You don’t want to throw more money at the problem than you need to.
But, basically, I see no better solution than to just give people a bunch of cash. Frankly, the way we’ve been fleeced over the last thirty years, we deserve it. Call it reparations.
