Fl proved that not true.
1 Like
How many lives were saved by PPP loans?
How many businesses you mean?
Look at this list of countries and teir inflation rates
Now ask yourself which of the following are true
- COVID caused inflation. . . . The rate of COVID infection was higher in countiries with hgher inflation rates.
- Printing excessive amounts of money prevented death.
- Printing excessive amounts of money does not help with COVID, it is not a responsible policy even during COVID, but it does cause rampant inflation.
1 Like
That list of countries is just a bizarre thing to bring when trying to make a point.
Let me reframe what I am saying.
In no world would you have hundreds of thousands of people per day getting sick and thousands of people dying per day and it not have a detrimental effect on the economy.
We had it pretty bad with the barest of minimum of lockdowns, restrictions and mandates. One could argue that this country handled it the worst.
Doing nothing would have meant more sick people, more dead people and even a greater strain on the healthcare system… like imagine how things would have shaken out if the Government didn’t pick up the tab for treating Covid… that would not have happened in the do nothing version of this scenario.
The economy would have cratered no matter what. That is what happens when there are all of a suddenly a whole bunch of sick and dying people.
Doing nothing would have made things a lot worse.
The point of the list is to show the simple truth that COVID did not cause inflation.
Throughout the world the current inflation rate does not correlate with COVID it correlates as it always has, with print-and-spend.
$800 billion in unnecessary and harmful PPP spending is $800 billion in unnecessary and harmful PPP spending that fact that COVID was going on in the background does not make it necessary and does not make it unharmful.
1 Like
But there would have been a rapid economic decline anyway… which would have brought on stimulus.
There is seriously no real world scenario of a global pandemic of a novel vitiate that doesn’t end in a government bailout.
What we are seeing is money chasing fewer goods because supply chains broke because of the pandemic.
We are seeing higher prices in petrol because in part because of the collapse in prices in 2020 because of the pandemic… but the current price can’t be blamed on the pandemic alone.
We are seeing a massive labor shortage which is driving up costs. Part of that labor shortage is related to the pandemic… but the shortage building years before that.
There is no world where a pandemic doesn’t cause a massive economic downturn and there is no world where government doesn’t spend money into that downturn.
What gets people is for once the spending was proactive instead of reactive.
1 Like
Sri Lanka inflation is 110%
Colombian inflation is 39%
Polish inflation is 15.7%
German inflation is 10.7%
US Inflation is 8.3%
Australian inflation is 7%
Saudi inflation ios 1.1%
Japanese inflation is 0.6%
Do these number correspond to
a.) COVID infection rates, or
b.) the harshness of the shut down requirement, or
c.) print-and-spend rates
World wide inflation is being driven in part by too much money chasing too few products
The reasons for too few products can be written up in the break down of the supply chain and the massive labor shortage.
The breakdown of the supply chain is because of the pandemic.
The labor shortage is in part because of the pandemic.
These are lasting effects.
To point to spending alone is fallacious in my opinion because in no reality does a pandemic of a novel virus not pass without an massive economic hit and in no reality does a massive economic hit happen without increased government spending as a response
You understand that point. Right?
1 Like
This isn’t entirely true. In the face of the pandemic, even had governments not gone as far as they did, the economy would still have suffered, and supply chain breaks still would have happened.
Indeed, the pandemic revealed huge vulnerabilities in our worldwide just in time supply web that yes, governments exacerbated, but still would have happened regardless.
Absolutely. The economy was going to suffer regardless. If we just let covid rip through the country, people would have stopped going out and spending money out of fear of catching the virus and dying. Probably with 3 million more dead people and countless closed businesses that couldn’t survive without government’s help.
Of course I understand that especially the too much money part.
print-and-spend IS too much money chasing too few products.
You understand that right?
Hence
Always and everywhere, when governments did more print-and-spend inflation is today higher.
Always and everywhere, when governments did less print-and-spend inflation is today lower.
Funny . . . COVID was worldwide, shut downs were worldwide, masks were
worldwide yet always and everywhere post COVID inflation, stock market spires etc.
- have a direct correspondence to print-and-spend
- have zero correspondence to COVID infection rates
- have zero correspondence to shoe fashion.
We essentially did let COVID rip through the country, save for a couple early months.
China, on the other hand, upon which so much of global supply chains depend…THEY went full shutdown mode…and that caused damage that will take time to repair.
1 Like
Print and spend is fine, if the economy has the capacity to absorb it.
We were printing and spending like crazy up until the moment COVID hit. Had COVID not hit, we would still be merrily doing that.
1 Like
In the list that you provided like half of them are pariah states and a few of them are active war zones.
If you want to make the point that the states that didn’t spend did better with inflation then I think that it would make your argument better if there was data from comparable nations.
1 Like
Keep an open mind.
You’ll get eventually.
Even lefty economists like Nobel Laureate and NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman can say the left went too far this time.
You don’t have to become a conservative to say that. In fact it increases your credibility to say “once in a while I can admit we went to far too the left on something.”
That’s what Dr Krugman did.
You are making an assumption about how I feel about Krugman.
Spending would have happened regardless because government intervention into the pandemic or not there would have been a massive economic downturn.
I don’t see why that is such a wild statement to make.
MAGA was a 2-3 year period in a historically stable time where the world’s biggest problem was toyotas in Iraq.
The instant it was tested by turbulent times, it collapsed into stimulus spending and rent moratoriums.
It’s as relevant as the time Shaq shot 100% from deep in a discussion about the NBA’s greatest shooters. A cute novelty–that’s it.
And $800 B in PPP?
And Trump increasing the 3rd stimulus payment to $2,000?
Are those examples of the right economic approach?
There was an economic collapse.
Government is going to spend during an economic collapse no matter who is in charge.
The countries that do austerity fare far worse at recovery.
