https://twitter.com/KeezyBees/status/1262039125697261569
Narrator voice: Economists in 2020 did not, in fact, know what anything cost, and that was precisely why the planet was dying.
$1200 ought to be more than enough buy a couple of new cars, right?
original article here: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/9022/new-research-cares-act-checks-are-being-spent-quickly-on-essentials
The actual paper:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27097.pdf
And again
<<These one-time payments consist of $1,200 per adult and an additional $500 per child under the age of 17.>> (p8)
<<Given the size of the 2020 stimulus checks, we might have expected large impacts on categories like automobile spending, electronics, appliances, and home furnishings. Instead it seems that individuals are catching up with rent and bill payments as well as engaging in spending on food, personal care, and non-durables.>>(p15)
Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary:
"I think the entire package provides economic relief overall for about 10 weeks."
$1200 / 70 days = $17.14 per day
https://hillreporter.com/watch-steve-mnuchin-thinks-1200-will-last-families-up-to-10-weeks-62904
@natecull tbqh: wtf??
It's almost as if they didn't believe people really needed that money. <.<
@natecull they said might, nate
@natecull maybe if we weren't all buying expensive avocado toast flavored coffees a hundred and twenty bucks a week would go farther
I keep seeing this meme, what's the origin of it? And is the joke that $10 is too expensive or too cheap?
(it was a frozen banana, right? $10 for a small takeaway dessert item, retail, would be about right in New Zealand, maybe a little cheap. A coffee is $4.50 and all the restaurants say that's a loss leader.)
(Yes, our local restaurants are on the edge of bankruptcy and want us all to be spending much more than $20-$30 on lunch, and I'm, good luck with your prospects, mate)
@natecull the television show "Arrested Development" and it was more a comment on the general state of the wealthy being out of touch with what anything actually costs
but that's the problem, the "wildly out of touch" price is almost exactly correct, at least in NZ...
@it_wasnt_arson @keithzg @djsundog
I guess 20 years ago, in the USA, bananas *must have* been only a few cents each, for that joke to have been funny.
But today, in NZ... where I'm encountering the joke for the first time, shorn of context, on epidemiology Twitter of all places...
you can pay $1 for one raw banana in the supermarket. Suddenly the entire subtext of the joke changes.
bananas and memes
@natecull what it's saying is this $1200 amount is much bigger than what people got in 2001 and 2008 and back then people were spending it to upgrade their cars. This was not the case this time.
I guess also maybe the whole world didn't shut down and several tens of millions of people lose their jobs in 2001 and 2008?
(I don't actually know what the jobs impact was in the USA in 2001 and 2008... it didn't quite hit in NZ in the same way. But presumably the 2001 people buying new cars weren't the same ones who lost jobs?)
@natecull 2001 and 2008 were the most recent (global) economic crises, so it's worth comparing what Americans did with what Americans received and comparing that with how Americans this time. This recession is more severe, but millions of Americans lost their jobs in the GFC as well, and there was some uptick in car purchases.
they might have expected
expected
given the size
might have expected
$1200
the size
might have expected