The Government Should Give You Money (Script & Sources)
Added 2021-05-12 18:49:06 +0000 UTCGood morning, good news! No, it's actually good news this time!
The effects of sending out $1,400 stimulus checks have finally been tallied, and consumer spending in retail sales is up nearly 10% which is 4% higher than economists predicted. Simultaneously, the number of people filing for unemployment fell by nearly 200,000 claims - the lowest number since the start of the pandemic.
Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the GDP, and in 2019 we spent 13.2 trillion dollars - so a 10% bump in a single month from just one round of stimulus checks is a huge benefit to the real economy - the economy that WE live, not the one that’s measured by how much money is in the stock market that is 84% owned by the richest 10%.
And the money generated by consumer spending goes directly to companies in the form of revenue, which they can use to hire more people, which lowers unemployment.
And it actually feels really stupid to be surprised by this, or for this to even be news, but it IS because for the last 40 years, Congress has been passing laws that lead to lower wages, fewer benefits, weaker unions, and higher taxes for the middle class to benefit billionaires because billionaires claim that it’s good for the economy.
And it’s actually outrageous that it took a global pandemic, an economic collapse and mass unemployment to be able to see that giving even a couple hundred bucks to normal people is way better for the economy than giving a couple hundred billionaires trillions of dollars in tax breaks, bailouts, and subsidies. Because rich people hoard their money, and normal people spend it.
