Give People Money Immediately
The mayhem wrought by the coronavirus is unique and complex. But there is at least one simple and necessary economic response: stimulus.
Financial markets are in meltdown mode as the coronavirus courses rapidly and all too undetectably throughout the world. But there is a simple thing the U.S. government can do right now, which would both slow the viral spread and limit the economic harm.
Give people and companies money.
Perhaps that intervention strikes you as a non sequitur. Dollar bills aren’t medicine, COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate by income, and—to be emphatically clear—the most important interventions to contain the virus itself are in the realm of public health, including expanding the availability of free and accurate testing kits, increasing our capacity to treat the ill, and isolating infected individuals.
[]
