[buscoquadnary]

I hate it when people make it seem like the economy and the people are two different things.

The economy is the aggregate capability of a society to provide goods and services to people, if the economy collapses the goods and services that are being provided cease to be as well and people are worse off.

Short sighted statements like "people are more important than the economy" is a feel good virtue signaling that is indicative of an inability to think clearly about the consequences of actions and a substitution of emotional reasoning over rational thought.

[jelliclesfarm]

I wasn’t virtue signalling. Over supply of money will make inflation worse, but constriction would bring down spending.

A labourer making daily wages and supplemented by govt dollars will spend all of it. A millionaire with a few millions in the bank is not going to spend any of it. Especially during an overheated inflationary period. It’s better spent to the most vulnerable to pay for their food, gas and utilities.

This is exactly what needs to be done to keep spending going. It’s spending from a healthy and happy middle class that keeps the economy going. Can’t freeze them out. Not implementing measures like this would collapse the economy.

An economy with hopeless disenfranchised hungry poor majority is exactly the first ingredient in the recipe for revolts and revolutions.

Also..it’s heartless to not share a surplus to people who are suffering. We are a rich country. No one died because someone else got a little extra money to pay their electricity bill or gas.

[californical]

But you just explained why this causes more inflation. In your words, it was money in the banks of wealthy people, meaning not being spent. Money that isn’t spent doesn’t cause inflation because it’s not competing for goods and services.

By redistributing to poor people, that previously stationary money is now being used to compete for goods, since poor people generally spend all of their money. So more money is now chasing after the same goods, prices have to go up.

It might make people feel good in the short term, but continuing inflation also hurts the poor, and could potentially widen wealth gaps even further since the wealthy are mostly invested in assets which can keep up with inflation, but poor people’s salaries do not keep up very well.

Short term looks like a good move, but it just kicks the can and continues widening the divide of rich and poor

[jelliclesfarm]

Non wealthy people and poor people spend on necessities. You want the money to be spent on commodity goods and generally traded goods like grain, cotton, utilities etc.

We need healthy enough money supply and sufficient money supply in circulation to keep the economy alive. If anything, this isn’t ‘charity’…it is to ensure minimum money supply to keep the economy healthy and prevent it from collapsing. But not too much to cause inflation. To deal with this, interest rates will go up.

It is more like electrolytes needed to keep the economy upright. It is not a lavish meal at a Michelin starred restaurant.

Also helpful to understand Phillips Curve and relationship between unemployment and inflation.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-macr... : here is a good tutorial.

The govt is trying to bring down inflation to cool the economy after all the excess money supply during pandemic. That was necessary too.

So expect unemployment rates to rise in the short term. This money will help poor people and those looking at unemployment in the coming short term to survive. This is necessary. We still want them to be able to buy food and pay for gas and electricity as the correction goes underway.

[KptMarchewa]

>In your words, it was money in the banks of wealthy people, meaning not being spent.

It is spend on overpriced assets.

[RichEO]

This use of the word “economy” in this expression means, “the economy, as commonly measured by GDP”.

The economy might be the aggregate production of society, but the distribution of the fruits of that production are not meaningless.

Nobody is proposing a return to subsistence farming, but some of us are willing to trade off a higher GDP for more equal distribution.

[diordiderot]

"The economy" means stock prices and executive pay