Fat hurts wrote:
Racket wrote:
That's basically just a prompt for a freshmen ethics paper on Kantian vs utilitarian ethics. Seems to me that with the number of people reporting making more on unemployment than at work and the $1200 stimulus that lower class got fulfilled to a nontrivial degree. So the real question is regarding how much they should get and for how long, and when does that in and off itself become unethical.
Yes, it's not a bad prompt for such a paper.
The idea behind the $1200 payments was that Americans needed emergency cash and this was the fastest way to get it to them. It turned out that it was not all that fast. And it was quite wasteful as it went to a lot of people who didn't need it, including the deceased.
The idea behind the $600 extra unemployment payments was to make people on unemployment earn about the same as they would if they were working. A flat cash payment was a very imprecise way to do that. Some made more than while working. Some made less.
So now congress is trying to decide if these programs should continue or if they should try something else or if they should do nothing at all.
Whether you are a Kantian or a utilitarian or even a sophist, "do nothing at all" is probably the wrong move.
I'm actually under the impression that the actions taken by congress, WH and Fed Reserve were outstanding and did the job pretty well. Not sure why you think otherwise.
Inevitably you will send money to dead people...people die and records are not updated. My understanding is that it was lile 0.001% of the number of checks.
We'll see next year when/if the Dems get the accounting books how much of the business loans was stolen by fraud.
But I'm not so sure the programs were bad. I think they will be remembered as strong policy strokes.