We need to be careful that we, as a group, don’t make a political discussion out of this thread (regardless of country). I know your post wasn’t mean to divide people but some discussions tend to go that way.
I personally don’t think vouchers, handouts or government funding is a good idea.
Either way:
As for using vouchers,I don’t think the high street prices of flashlights would be incentivizing any purchases on my end. I would buy consumables, groceries, pay for car parts, petrol/gas or oil or something.
If you are used to China prices I don’t think you could buy LED products in retail stores. batteries could be an exception or EDC type products (bags, packs, tactical gear, …)
I think it’s a good idea. Economically speaking, giving someone money (vouchers) that they have to spend on the high street will work, and the government will get a lot of it back anyway.
The only local shops to me that would be of any use is vape shops for batteries. Other than that, I would use it for food shopping or fuel.
i think the USA sent out stimulus money to everyone with some qualifications, must have filed an income tax return last year and there was limits based upon income level.
Aren’t the people who are getting these vouchers going to end up paying it back through taxes? I mean I do like the idea of free money but I don’t think it’s really free.
Pumping money into the circuit in order to jumpstart the economy is not new. In fact it is one of the oldest remedies in the book. In NL small shops can apply for some financial support, but that is primary meant to cover part of the direct cost IN the shops.
By giving vouchers you initiate spending, which pays the shop owners cost, but also creates a demand for new stock. So you jumpstart the whole chain from manufacturing all the way up to consumption. Spending has to be done in the highstreet, were most of the cost-support in NL goes.
A voucher has to be spend, you can’t bring it to the bank to pay for the mortgage or cranck up your savings account. In theory. Because you can bring the money, earmarked for spending in the highstreet, to the bank of course.
Talk on the news and from politicians here about “jump-starting the economy” when the US is seeing completely unprecedented numbers of evictions is so disconnected from reality I can barely handle it.
Where do they think this magical buying power is coming from when people can’t afford rent or food?
There’s cash X. Then there’s Y, the cost of “administration” of the payouts. Then there’s Z, interest on X and Y. Etc.
We got our stimulation checks/cards a ways back. No real strings where to spend it or on what. More’n half of mine went to pay taxes so far. :confounded:
But yeah, food and fuel would be the two mainstays it could be used on.
The United States did this several months ago. I do understand, although have mixed feelings about the intention of using debt spending now to help stimulate a depressed economy and smooth the economic impact. However, I don’t understand why we did it in the US while almost everything was closed. I do expect Amazon was very happy to see it happen while brick and mortar stores in most states were legally prohibited from competing for the business.
Since I was not furloughed or laid off, I continued roughly with my normal spending and put the US stimulus rebate in savings. After all, I have to pay it back in future taxes…
Except it’s simply untrue that the government is funded by taxes. Any state with fiat currency puts that out into the economy, and what is reclaimed in taxes is done so to control inflation and that income has a lot of weight in determining budget, but does not fund the government.
I was fortunate enough to have work during the strictest periods of lockdown here and got a ton of takeout for lunch with the family member I was working with. Pretty much everywhere we went was very busy. I think grocery stores occasionally running low or completely out of some products had a big part to play in that.
The strange thing is that there have been some really deep sales at grocery stores on fresh food too, sometimes on things that rarely get decent price cuts. Whether that’s surplus needing to be moved quick, subsidies, or something else I couldn’t say.
