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Recently, a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus bill was approved by the U.S. President Joe Biden. It follows a financial stimulus that came last year as a result of economic hardships caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The bill was created as an effort to keep money circulating through the economy amid government shutdowns.
“Money is the blood of this country, and just like the blood in the human body, it must circulate,” said NS teacher Sterling Whipple. “What do we call it when the blood of a human stops circulating? We call that a heart attack, and the person dies.”
According to Whipple, the economy, like the human body, needs circulation in order to survive. If money stops circulating, the economy dies. However, as the government spends and sends out money beyond what it can afford and falls into debt, the initial problem, though pushed down the road, increases.
“We currently have twenty-eight trillion dollars of debt as a country, and you can see how quickly it is currently rising,” Whipple said. “Somebody is going to call in that debt someday. Somebody. And if we owe that money to China, to Russia, to hundreds of other countries or dozens of other countries…it is pushing the problem further down the road.”
In the U.S., the amount of money in circulation is constantly growing. As the amount of money is increased, the rate of inflation on the dollar is likely to increase. Increased inflation brought about by the stimulus money is something that seems, to whatever extent, likely to NS teacher Auralee Brooks.
“Worst case scenario, our country has no money, there’s no value at all in our dollar, and we’re taking wheelbarrows full of money to buy bread,” Brooks said. “I would hope that we don’t go to that extent, but to pay it back is going to take clear into my grandchildren’s lifetime.”
Sending out this amount of money to everyone is something that Brooks sees as irresponsible. She recognizes that some people need financial help, but a lot of people don’t. As the government sends out money, their funds have come, or will come, from taxes paid by the people.
“There’s no such thing as governmental money. Every dollar that the government ever spends on anything, whether its national security, home defense, welfare, building roads, anything—it’s all taxpayer’s money,” Whipple said.
In history, democracies have taken money from the rich in order to provide for the needs of the poor. Eventually, the government runs out of money to take. This is what NS teacher Tyler Bailey believes caused all of these democracies to fail.
“All democracies have failed,” said NS teacher Tyler Bailey. “ Governments start to take from the rich to give to everybody else. If you take all the money from the rich, now you’ve made everybody equal. The government starts to pay for everything for everybody; now the government is in charge of everything. You no longer have a democracy, you have socialism.”
According to Bailey, the mentality brought in by having the government take care of every need is more damaging than is the initial action of sending out the stimulus that is, in some cases, needed. Brooks sees something similar.
“We’re going to [become] a nation of people who just want everything handed to them,” Brooks said. “As long as it will get certain people voted in, they will keep giving out the handouts. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“It has its perks, but at the same time it also has a downside,” said NS student Tristin Martinez. “We’re getting fourteen hundred dollars, right? But we’re going to have to pay like four fifty eight I believe back in our taxes. I understand that the point of them sending it out to help people who can’t get a job right now, but where most things are open I don’t understand that part because most jobs are starting to hire again.”
