It was not sold as a stimulus, it was to allow businesss to pay furloughed employees (in a bizarre ill-thought-out privately-run unemployment insurance scheme) to continue to pay ongoing expenses.
What didn't make sense, of course, is what those people were supposed to be buying, since the reason they were furloughed was because.... people weren't buying things, because of lockdowns and such. Hence, inflation when aggregate $ exceeded stuff worth buying.
> It was not sold as a stimulus, it was to allow businesss to pay furloughed employees (in a bizarre ill-thought-out privately-run unemployment insurance scheme) to continue to pay ongoing expenses.
Can you clarify what's your rationale for believing that a program designed to "allow businesss to pay furloughed employees (...) to continue to pay ongoing expenses" does not correspond to an economic stimulus program?
Source: I was furloughed April 2020 while my employer at the time received over $2m in PPP. Furloughed employees were explicitly told to collect UI.
Yet, at the same time, they were forcing parts of the economy to shut down. Nothing like hitting the gas and the brake at the same time.
I think the criticism is that the stimulus worked too well and we’re suffering inflation and whatnot now.