 I want to go over the various things in the stimulus and maybe comment on them. I want to specifically talk about the checks to individuals and give you like a little bit of the left critique of the checks to individuals and the whole approach that the left has towards these kind of things. So let's quickly go run down, give you a sense of how these stimulus packages work. Thank you. One, $1,400 per person just to check every person I guess who makes less than a certain amount. I'm sure if you make over $100,000 you're not going to get $2,000 but you know every person who makes less than a certain amount of money is going to get $2,000, $400 in additional unemployment benefits and an extension of the unemployment benefits until December. Many of the unemployment benefits were going to expire in March, an extension of it all until December and an increase above and beyond the regular unemployment benefits that people get from the state to an extra $400 over that. In many cases unemployment benefits or in some cases unemployment benefits would be actually higher than what people actually were making. Let's say rental assistance and eviction moratorium. So $25 billion in rental assistance for low and moderate income households who have lost jobs during the pandemic. So if you lost a job you get an additional amount of money above and beyond the unemployment insurance and above and beyond the $2,000 check that you're going to get. You're going to get some more money, right? And this is by the way $25 billion in addition to $25 billion that was already approved in December. So it's $50 billion to renters who are having a hard time paying rent because of all these things. All these things. $5 billion is for struggling renters to pay their utility bills, right? And $5 billion to help states and localities assist those at risk of experiencing homelessness. So $25 billion, $25 billion, $5 billion, $5 billion. I mean the billions are just flowing here. How about $1 billion to Iran Book Show? Imagine what we could do with $1 billion. We change the world. And then of course the federal eviction moratorium which Trump, the capitalist, co-markets, you know, you have Pal, Donald Trump, the great capitalist, put in place an eviction moratorium where you could not evict tenants until January. Well, Joe Biden is going to do him one socialist better than another socialist once every leftist has to undo the previous leftist in office. And he's extending the rent moratorium until, you know, September 30th. But this means, right, so people with federally guaranteed mortgages, they cannot pay their mortgages. This is in addition, sorry, people with federally guaranteed mortgages do not have to pay their mortgages until September 30th. And people who just can't pay their rent cannot be evicted. Why are we paying $25 billion people in rental assistance when they don't even have to pay rent to begin with? Because they can't be evicted if they don't pay rent. What's the downside if not paying rent? How much maintenance do you think landlords are going to do in 2021 on their buildings given that they're getting very little rent? I know people who've told me that they're the only person in the building paying rent, that it turns out none of their neighbors are paying rent. Okay, in addition, we're going to see a 15% increase in food stamp benefits through September, right? They're expiring in June, they're extending into September, $3 billion to help women, infants and children secure food. I don't know how you secure food, but I guess they're hungry and they get food. I thought that's what the food stamps were, but to hell with it, why not create another program? Let's call it the food security program. What the hell? And then US territories are going to get $1 billion in nutrition assistance. Cool. That means Puerto Rico gets some of the money. All right. Puerto Rico gets some of the money. So of course I'm for it because that means, you know, I guess less homeless people in Puerto Rico, less beggars on the street, maybe, you know, the handing out checks, handing out checks. If you're needy, we're going to, if there's no program for you, we're going to create a program for you. Shay asks, do men not eat? You're absolutely right. This is a sexist program, but it's really social justice because of the fact that men have exploited women for thousands of years, you know, this is a means to balance out the equation over millennia, you know, all these millennia of discrimination. I'm kidding people. I know this is going to be a quote from Iran tomorrow on somebody's Facebook page. All right. We're then going to boost the child tax credit to $3,600 for child, under $6,000 for 6 to 17. We're going to propose to raise the maximum income tax credit for a year to close to 1,500 for childless adults, increase the income limit for credit to about $21,000 and expand the age, the range of eligible to cover older workers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's just, whoa. Then we're going to have subsidies for health insurance premiums, which used to be in the Affordable Care Act and were taken out. So if you have to pay more than 8.5% of your income for coverage, we're going to subsidize it on and on. He also wants Congress to provide $4 billion for mental health and substance use because you know, mental health problems have gone up dramatically during the COVID. And then $20 billion to meet health care needs for veterans because we don't have a lot of money already put aside to take care of veterans. We add, what the hell, $20 billion. We're spending billions and billions of, we're spending trillions of dollars. What's 20 billion among friends? Okay, restoration of emergency paid leave. The plan would reinstate the paid sick and family leave benefits that expired the end of December and extends it until September. Also tells you that they don't expect to have people vaccinated until September 30th because that's kind of the deadline that they're including on all of this. Now note that this is a way, this doesn't cost the government anything. This is a way to shift the burden to corporations, to businesses, small businesses, larger businesses, which basically means a tax increase for those businesses. They're now forced to pay sick and family leave benefits that are higher than existed before. Assistance to small businesses, $15 billion to create a new grants program for small business owners separate from the paycheck protection program because you have already a program, you probably have 25 different programs to help small businesses, but wouldn't it be so much better and so much more stimulating, stimulating if you could create an additional program and stick $15 billion in it? It also proposes making a $35 billion investment in some state, local, tribal and non-profit financial programs that make low interest loans and provide venture capital to entrepreneurs. That's the problem we have in this country. Absolutely. There's just not enough venture capitalists, there's just not enough people willing to invest in entrepreneurs, so we need the government now to become a venture capitalist. We know how good the government is at doing this, so we need to provide venture capital to entrepreneurs, so we need to create another $35 billion program to do that. We're still like, I don't know, less than halfway through this, and we've already created 65 different programs, aid to states and schools. Another $350 billion to state, local and territorial governments to keep their frontline workers employed because states are being so responsible to now, we want to reward them by bailing them out and helping them out and giving them some additional money and this is not at all to bail out irresponsible states that have been running deficits for decades and everything. $350 billion, wow. So they're not going to force the states to use this for any particular reason. Additional assistance to the state, $350 billion is not enough guys. Additional assistance to the states has been, so they're looking to add $150 billion, no, I guess this is, forget that, scrap that $150 billion. Biden plan would also give $20 billion to hardest hit public transit agencies. There you go. We need buses, even though nobody's riding in the buses because COVID and stuff, we need $20 billion to the transit agencies to help avoid layoffs and cutting of routes because we don't want to cut routes that nobody is actually using. I forbid you do that and what will happen to the drivers and what will happen to the people employed. You have to keep them employed, so we're going to give them $20 billion to do that and then we're going to give another $170 billion to K-12 schools, colleges and universities to help them reopen and operate safely and to facilitate remote learning. Most schools already open, in many states schools already open, $170 billion to help schools reopen. How much of that, how much of that lands up in the coffers of the, teaches unions? How much of that lands up in the coffers of the administrators? How much of that lands up just wasted and disappearing like the 100 million that Zuckerberg once gave to the New Jersey school district as a contribution to improve education in New Jersey? And it just went like that and it just disappeared. Now this is on top of, by the way, just so you don't think Biden has been cheap here. This is on top of $82 billion that schools got in the December bill that the champion of capitalism, Donald Trump signed into law, right, $82 billion. All right. Now we get to actually, maybe in the context of what we're dealing with, maybe what government actually should spend money on. I hate to say this because some of you are going to call me a socialist, I know, right. What is that? Well, it's vaccines and testing. Now, I'm the first one to admit, I'm the first one to argue that government shouldn't spend anything on vaccines, let the private sector deal with it, let insurance companies pay for your vaccines and let Walmart and CVS and clinics and doctors and drug companies sell them to you and whatever, by whatever mechanism they deem fit, the last thing in the world we want is government doing it, but government is doing it. So if it's doing it, let's at least get it done fast. So this is the only money I approve of in the stimulus package. And indeed some of this money, if Trump had actually signed a bill with this money in, he was against this, he fought this, tooth and nail. If the Trump administration had done some of these things, maybe we wouldn't be in this unmitigated disaster with COVID that we are in. You know, I don't know if you know, but hospitals, when I was in Orange County, literally people in ICUs were intense outside. If you weren't critical, you were being sent home, even if you were 80 in your late 80s with COVID, you were being sent home because the hospital couldn't deal with it. Hospital couldn't deal with it. That's how swamped they were with patients, with COVID cases. This is not the flu. It is not some regular viral infection. This is, it's a, it's a viral infection that hits old people really, really, really hard. And we could have prevented all of this. Could have prevented all of this. Anyway, he plans to call for $20 billion in a national vaccination program, vaccination centers around the country, mobile units in how to reach areas. I don't know why only 20 billion, but that's what he's doing. I mean, it's much more important to spend $170 billion for schools, I guess. Invest $50 billion in testing. This is, this is what Trump should have done, should have invested in testing, providing funds to purchase rapid tests, expand lab capacity, and help schools implement regular testing to support reopening. And it would fund 100,000 public health workers, nearly tripling the community health network to do tracing. This is what should have been done from day one. That's what the plan is going to do. Now, is any of that going to stimulate economic activity? No. Handing out checks to people. If they're worried about their job, they're likely to put it in the bank and spend it slowly. That spending will have an inflationary impact on the economy, moderate, but it will have an inflationary impact. If they're feeling good, if the economy recovers, they'll pull their money out and they'll spend it quickly. That'll have a bigger inflationary consequence to the economy. In terms of price, there's price inflation here I'm talking about. The inflation of money printing is happening in the background. None of this money, money for schools, money for, I mean, this is the fallacy, the Keynesian fallacy, which is even, I mean, it's not even MMT. I mean, I hate to say this. I know my words are going to be taken out of context. I know that. But MMT doesn't even advocate for this because MMT thinks that you can spend all you want as long as the spending is going to what MMT views as productive activity that is increasing productive capacity so that the extra dollars are actually increasing the number of goods and therefore you don't get price inflation. Now, there are lots of problems with that. But that is much saner than this. This is old line Keynesian, NISM, where the problem in the economy is a lack of aggregate demand, which means people are buying enough stuff. So you give them money to encourage them to buy stuff. And if they buy stuff, then a businessman think that this is a good sign that this is a sign that the economy is going to do well in the future. So they start investing. They start hiring people. And that's how you get out of a recession. That is the idea of a stimulus. Again, stimulus means more consumption now. Businessmen think that this is an indication of consumption in the future. They invest and they hire people. I mean, one of the many problems with this is that the consumption now, businessmen look and say, oh, this is the government stimulating a consumption now. It's doing nothing to produce consumption in the future. So why should I hire anybody? Why should I expand capacity? Why should I produce more when consumption in the future is still questionable? This is why the stimulus in the Great Depression didn't work. It's why stimulus packages never work. It's why the stimulus packages that Japan has tried for the last 30 years constantly over and over and over and over again never work because businessmen are not stupid. Because even Keynes recognizes that what really drives economic growth, what really drives an economy, what drives economic success, is business investment and hiring of people, entrepreneurial activity. He just wants to fool the businessmen with a rush of consumption. But you can't do that. It doesn't work that way. That's another reason why right now all of Trump's stimulus, Trump has already, Trump has signed $4 trillion of stimulus into law. For those of you again who believe Trump is a capitalist, for those of you who believe Trump is pro-market, for those of you who believe Trump is a conservative in any sense of the word. $4 trillion, a stimulus over the last, what, seven, eight months? Nine months maybe. Trump has spent their money. Who drifted to the left exactly? That's Trump is a leftist. When it comes to economics, Trump has always been a leftist. So criticizing Trump is not a leftist strategy. That's, if you're criticizing for spending money, that's a capitalist critique of Trump. So it's stunning that $4 trillion have already been spent and the economy is not recovering. And the only time the economy recovers is when COVID cases go down and the economy opens up. That's what's needed to happen. That's the only thing that will help. That's what our politicians should be doing, moving towards freedom. Because a movement towards freedom is a movement towards economic growth, towards economic success, towards wealth creation. Stimuluses do the opposite. Whether it's a Trump stimulus, a Biden stimulus, an AOC stimulus, it doesn't matter. It's not stimulus. It's handouts. It's bureaucracy creation. It's waste. It's welfare. It's redistribution. It's central planning. It's all the things that we know are actually destructive to economic growth. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist growth. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. 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