While I get your point, I took the article to be more in the vein of saying that the downturn hit everyone, so your previous year's income was a horrible metric for determining who should get stimulus. There are plenty of industries where there are boom and bust years. Paying for stimulus checks with debt, and then telling people, who may have also fallen on unexpected hard times due to covid, that they made too much (and also contributed more in taxes) the previous year to get help... I mean the author does have a case.