In a big enough depression, even "the one percent" might not produce enough to cover that sort of expense. Where else where you go? This has a global reach, so you can't really borrow from the next country over. Can't really sell bonds to Americans, because that reduces liquidity further. Inflate and you'll kill what savings Americans have left and risk stagflation. So, how do you pay for it? Forget taxing certain people more or less, past a certain point, the money simply doesn't exist; there's no bottomless pit of money on which the gov't can draw in a second great depression.
I’ve been avoiding the news. How much will each American get? Will it be per individual, or only adults? Will people with children get more? Will it be more for more children? How many months worth of expenses should it cover?
It's a maximum of $1,200 per individual plus an additional $500 per child. The amount is based on your 2018 AGI. The amount you receive begins to decrease at $75,000 and if you made more than $99,000 in 2018 you don't receive any money.
This is also not just the government cutting a check, it's a rebate from your 2018 taxes. You won't get back more than you paid in taxes, unless you're part of a carve out meant to protect low income seniors, which still requires a minimum income of $2,500 in 2018 (including social security).
So it's something of a mixed bag. It won't help the truly destitute, and it won't help people who had a good year in 2018 but recently lost their job due to the virus (though those should qualify for unemployment benefits). The means testing is also not normalized by any kind of cost of living metric, so people in low cost of living areas will probably qualify disproportionately, even though the areas worst affected by the virus directly are urban, high cost of living.
This is Mao-esqe nonsense. You can't turn off the economy the imagine government is going to divvy up whatever stuff needs dispersing. The Soviet Union tried that.