Don’t Take Away Scraps From Starving Dogs
Our political leaders have a false sense of confidence because voters aren’t critical of a government giving out money.
On September 4th, 2021, The Biden Administration will stop sending unemployment checks to almost 9 million Americans. The blunder? Believing anecdotal evidence that they’ll find work. What if they don’t? We’re talking 5% of our working population. That’s one out of every 20 Americans who had a job in 2019.
Like the Afghanistan withdrawal, I doubt the Biden Administration is listening to policy experts asking hard questions.
What if Delta keeps everyone home during Thanksgiving and Christmas? Even if it doesn’t, what businesses hire full-time employees with real salaries between the holidays? What happens when tens of millions have the worst Christmas of their life? How does the government walk that back?
Many argued that the 1929 depression was caused by an over tightening of the money supply. Might not the same happen from the opposite approach, too much money?
What does 9 million people look like? Look at the stadium below. Imagine 120 of these stadium across the country, filled with people experiencing a real fear of homelessness.
Maybe they get a job. They deal with it. (The last time the media was this certain of an outcome was Hillary Clinton winning in 2016).
Why all the complacency? Because we’re used to the success of the stimulus giving, to the successful rent forbearance giving, to the successful pandemic unemployment assistance giving, to the successful business subsidies giving…and so on.
Giving makes happy voters. Politicians believe they have everything under control.
We haven’t survived the pandemic because of good government. We’ve survived it because politicians have given money to everyone with little effort given to where it’s needed and not where it isn’t.
Politicians and economists will re-learn why most politicians in history do NOT take money away.
A whole new ballgame.
