[sbelskie]

Were there countries that did a better job than the US in regards to the economic response the pandemic, particularly with respect to fiscal stimulus? Is any other country as close the the US to prepandemic GDP trendlines?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are but I’m honestly not aware of them.

[therealdrag0]

The posts article says,

> European countries did better: governments encouraged struggling employers to keep workers on their payrolls with reduced hours, and then made up some or all of the pay gap. Unlike the ppp, such programmes were usually aimed only at struggling firms that needed to cut salaries (though they were not always well targeted: a share of beneficiaries in Britain continued to pay dividends). Yet despite the flaws in America’s programme, the study’s authors argue that Congress was incapable of doing better. Crafting a targeted policy would have been hard, expensive and slow. Many countries that kept workers in jobs had programmes in place already: some of the most successful—including France, Japan and Germany—simply increased coverage and benefits at the onset of the pandemic. If America hopes to waste less money in future crises, it should plan ahead.

[kortilla]

How is that better though? They punished companies that were doing well going in. The end result could easily be worse for the whole economy.

[mikea1]

On the one hand, the S&P 500 has outperformed the FTSE for just about any period in the last five years.

But that’s not necessarily due to the PPP. Stimulus checks and unemployment insurance were the majority of the $2.2 billion effort. European countries were more efficient with their version of PPP (and perhaps general pandemic assistance programs) because they leveraged existing programs that touched payrolls.

From the article:

> Many countries that kept workers in jobs had programmes in place already: some of the most successful—including France, Japan and Germany—simply increased coverage and benefits at the onset of the pandemic.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm curious too. But I would suggest that the U.S. has very deep pockets and can throw a lot of money at a problem. That doesn't mean it was a "smart" response by the U.S.

[sbelskie]

I think it’s totally fair to criticize the response and suggest it could have been better, I meant it more in terms of the people complaining never seem to entertain the counterfactual of how bad things could have ended up with no/poor fiscal response.

[mikea1]

Well said! In hindsight, it is easy to forget that there was a lot of FUD at the time.

These programs were created quickly - some countries had better infrastructure to handle this than the US - but the alternative could have been an underwhelming response to an even larger problem.