[logicfiction]

> If you do it by taxing the rich, you wind up hobbling and punishing your most productive citizens

We may have different definitions of "rich" here. I don't think you can call them the most productive citizens. I think most extractive would be the more accurate label.

And the stimulus checks were short lived, not universally distributed, and came in under $1T. The majority of the money spent was on other sources, even if you want to include the boosts to unemployment in the "UBI" category. As others mentioned it's also conflated with other factors like supply chain failures and massive business loan fraud.