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Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban sent out a series of Tweets this weekend touting a “trickle up economic” plan. Cuban’s plan would send $1,000.00 every two weeks to 128,000,000 households in the United States to spur consumer demand. There are several problems with his plan.
Mark Cuban has been mentioned as a possible Democrat Presidential candidate, and given Joe Biden’s performances that combine the Matrix glitches with Max Headroom, the Dems desperately need someone to swoop in as a hero. Also, despite the fact that Cuban thinks President Donald Trump is an idiot, Trump appointed Cuban as an advisor on his task force on reopening the economy. So, just what are Cuban’s ideas on an economic way forward?
As mentioned above, Mark Cuban wants to give just about every American household $2,000.00 per month. And, his intentions are good. If businesses open back up and there are no customers walking through the door and throwing down a credit card, the businesses still fail. Trickle up economics with a catch. According to Forbes.com:
…Cuban suggested the idea a stimulus plan that would send 128 million households in America a $1,000 stimulus check every two weeks for two months. But the $500 billion check program would have a catch, the money would need to be spent by families within 10 days of receipt, so the funds would actually be used to help boost the demand for non-essential services and help stabilize the job market.
I see several problems here. The first is that the country is broke. Our national debt is $22 trillion. Our deficit is for FY 2020 is currently approaching $4 trillion. Some debt is necessary for growth. We passed Go on that 10 years ago. Continuing to print money will lead to greater debt and possibly inflation and higher interest rates.
Second, it seems to me that requiring families to spend the funds within ten days would require yet another bureaucracy to enforce compliance. And, what would be the penalties to families who didn’t comply? What about these economically stressed and their bills, rent, co-pays? I had never heard of Chris’s Sports Corner, but this guy understands basic economics better than Cuban:
Chris is 100% correct. This is the most irresponsible crap ever. People have basic needs that must be taken care of before wants can be filled. They won’t have food for their kids; they won’t have a home; they will have more stuff.
Naturally, that well-known tax cheat, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez approved. Again, from Forbes:
t didn’t take long for Cuban’s ideas to get some notice from his fellow high-profile twitterati, with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chiming in, tweeting: “Totally agree, @markcuban. It’s time for a Federal Jobs Guarantee.”
No, AOC, this is more like a Federal Universal Basic Income than a Federal Jobs Guarantee. I guess AOC’s economics degree never included a discussion of money versus work.
Even more frightening that adding to the debt and screwing over people in need, Mark Cuban want to create an army of enforcers for the Covid-19 pandemic. One more time from Forbes:
As an alternative, in the series of tweets Sunday afternoon Cuban proposed two ideas – first, a nationwide federal jobs program that would employ individuals to help with coronavirus tracking, tracing and testing, as well as “support for populations including long term care.”
That must be the federal jobs program AOC mentioned. Just what we need a pandemic fascist army. Would it be an army of shaming “Karens”? Would this army have the authority to detain citizens? Would we be required to handover our iphones and androids? Raise your hand if you are naive enough to think this army would be disbanded when a Covid-19 vaccine becomes available. Okay, Karen.
Mark Cuban has shown himself to be a fascist statist. Not that we didn’t suspect this all along. He wants to use this pandemic to make us all subservient to the government. Looks like we’ll have to fight this battle yet again.
Cuban’s ideas on armies and consumerism are dangerous.
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Andrew Lale says: I don’t even get it. What is ‘trickle up’ about this plan? You take money from productive Americans and their tax-paying children, grand-children and great-grand-children, and give it to people to buy phones and microwaves. Where does the money they’ve spent on those items then go? Up to where? To the large corporations? The government in taxation on the large corporations? Does ‘trickle up’ even mean anything?
GWB says: Well, duh, of course it does!
It means the opposite of the ‘right-wing’ idea of trickle-down economics!
Just don’t follow that through to its actual logical conclusion, or you might hate the idea more than you do now.
Mad Max says: If I buy ETFs with the money, is that considered “spending” it?
GWB says: to spur consumer demand. There are several problems with his plan
Yeah, the first is that you can’t drive demand by adding to the supply of money. It shows a lack of understanding of what “demand” means.
And, his intentions are good.
Hell is *points* that-a-way.
the money would need to be spent by families within 10 days of receipt
Ahhh, NOW I see how he turns it into “demand”. Funny thing about money, though – it’s fungible. That means I’ll use the new money on things I was going to buy anyway, then save the money I was going to spend.
possibly inflation
FIFY
require yet another bureaucracy to enforce compliance
Not really. Use prepaid debit cards. They put time limits on those all the time. After the expiration date, the funds simply return to the issuer. For once, a prog has an idea that doesn’t actually require more gov’t. Well, aside from the guys who have to pay for the debit card issuers to print and ship all those cards every other week. (Do those guys all get fired at the end of two months? Somehow I doubt it….)
It’s time for a Federal Jobs Guarantee.
Or, in its original German:
From each according to his ability, To each according to his need
I guess AOC’s economics degree never included a discussion of money versus work.
I’m guessing her degree didn’t involve much more than opening an adequate number of Corn Pop boxes over four years.
You missed the blockquote closing tag after the Forbes quote, BTW.
a nationwide federal jobs program
I’m ambivalent about that, in general, except that gov’t always makes things harder and more expensive than they have to be. As to tracers? Why can’t we just use all the census people who are supposed to be out and about right now, following up on the forms? They’re obviously not doing that job right now.
Of course, any mob of gov’t employees wanting to know where you’ve been and whom you’ve seen is automatically suspect. The best way to keep them in check is to regularly tar and feather a few, and maybe … a little harsher with their supervisors occasionally.
Johnny Lumber says: It’s not that AOC doesn’t know the difference between money and work it’s that she sees no value in work. She sees no difference between people getting money for working and getting money from the government. It is all the same to her. It’s why she thinks you can tax the hell out of the productive and they will just keep on producing wealth. Wealth just sorta appears from thin air. She doesn’t see the connection between work and wealth.
Robin H says: It’s simply amazing to me how one can become rich in the US and then totally forget how that happened. So many of these millionaires and billionaires just want to pass out money with no work, yet they all worked their butts off to get what they have. If it was okay for them why not anyone else? Are they afraid someone else will get more than them?
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