Some analysts have begun to ask whether sending out more stimulus checks is the best way to alleviate the financial strain that Americans are feeling as a result of inflation. Do skyrocketing costs in 2022 have anything to do with the billions of dollars that will be delivered to millions of Americans in 2020 and 2021?
Costs have continued to rise since the end of 2021 when the $5 trillion spent to combat the COVID-19 pandemic was estimated to have pushed inflation in the United States to over 3%. An 8.5% increase in consumer prices was reported by Yahoo in March, the largest increase since 1981.
Yang Believes That Stimulus Checks Aren’t To Be Blamed
Inflation being blamed on stimulus payments is, in the opinion of some, a myopic view.
Andrew Yang, an ex-candidate for the presidency and advocate for a universal basic income, has said that the stimulus monies released under the CARES Act package only account for roughly 17% of the total amount of money approved, and hence are not to blame for the recent price increases.
Question: “Where did the rest of the funds go?” A lot of it ended up in prisons and mental hospitals. In a recent interview, Yang said that the water was diverted to pipelines. Since most of the money has already been spent and inflation is still rising, “money in people’s hands for a handful of months last year” was, in my opinion, a very, very tiny effect.
Information gathered in the United States suggests that. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 11 million people were saved from poverty by the stimulus checks they received.
While 3.04 million individuals have signed a stimulus check petition demanding that U.S. adults get $2,000 and children receive $1,000, Congress has shown no evidence of interest in approving the second round of payments at this time. One of the most-signed campaigns on Change.org, it received 3 million signatures.
Initial pandemic payouts of approximately $1,200 per individual were distributed to Americans in March 2020, with another $600 distributed in December 2020. In March of 2021, the third installment of $1,400 was mailed out.