Not to get too political on main, but personally I think the 600$ stimulus is perfectly fine.

Maybe we can raise it a bit before next week's cheque, though.

It is weekly, right? And it's gonna roll over all the retroactive weeks we didn't get one?

I enjoy the absurdity of anti stimulus arguments, btw.
"We can't just give every American Xty thousand a month, that's unsustainable! We'll go into tons of debt!"

Yep!

We're not planning to have this pandemic last forever, though.
At some point it will end.
The shutdown orders will be lifted. Businesses will reopen, people will return to work, hospitals will not be full.

The economy will recover, and you know what we can do then?

PAY BACK ALL THE LOANS WE TOOK OUT FOR THE STIMULUS, IDIOTS.

Something that'll be a lot easier to do if a lot less of your workforce isn't DEAD (or permanently disabled by lingering side effects)

Though they sometimes are known to vote, dead people traditionally don't pay many taxes.

So making sure as many taxpayers survive this pandemic is possible is good economic sense in the long run, even if it means going into the red for now.

I dunno. I just get mad when arguments are made during this pandemic that act like this is the new permanent normal. It's not. It can't be.

Yes, some things will permanently change because of this, but we're not going to be in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic every single year.

If we are, then we need to reconsider a lot more things about how our society works than just if we should get 600$ a week.

It's like... I dunno. Drinking a ton of Gatorade and your friend being like "I'm not sure that's good for you, man. There's a lot of salt and sugar in that, it's bad for your weight and blood pressure!"

And you reply "good point Steve, but I don't plan on doing this everyday, so maybe we can talk about my long term diet plans after we finish running this marathon?"

Sometimes you have to do things that would be bad to do everyday and forever, but it's okay because you're not in normal circumstances, and this is a rare situation that demands it. You'll make up for it later.

Like spending 1000$ to fix my car is clearly not sustainable. I can't afford doing that every week!

Yeah, but my car doesn't break every week.

And we don't expect to have this kind of pandemic disaster every year. Hopefully.

(and again, if we ARE, then we need to do a lot more planning than just giving everyone some cash to make it to the end of the month.)

People are spreading this virus because they have to interact with strangers , because they are at work, because they can't afford to stay home.

If people could stay home, they would. The virus transmission rate would drop to nearly nothing.

But foone, not everyone can stay home! Clearly someone has to cook food and deliver packages and such!

Yep. And you'll just have to pay those few people a lot more to make it worth their time and money and safety.

But isn't it unsustainable to pay every chef and Amazon delivery person 30$ an hour?

Yep. But again, who cares? Do you expect this pandemic to last forever?

Those businesses will have greater costs and may lose money and THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED, BECAUSE A THERE'S A FUCKING PANDEMIC HAPPENING.

It's not like they're gonna get fired because their earnings for 2020 were lower than expected. They kinda have a really good excuse:

There was a once in a lifetime pandemic and the economy shut off.

And hey, we can always help them by giving them loans which they can pay back when the pandemic ends, because their customer base will still be alive