One estimate puts it at $170 billion extra flowing into retail investing.[1]
Also, it may be reasonable to use the savings rate as a rough proxy. That rate was higher than it has been for decades when the stimulus was active and has since dropped. [2]
I am willing to bet they didn't factor in the whole meme stock craze.
Zero of our stimulus went into buying said stocks, however I did make a bucket load from GME and AMC prior. Our stimulus went into further "stimulating" our savings account. The money I spent with Robinhood was entertainment money. It just happened to pay off big.
A more conservative estimate places stimulus "meme stock" trading at less than 0.1% of the stimulus.
I think the fact that people just discovered that government deciding to put the country under house arrest is the thing now and they can be out of the job and not allowed to leave home at any time now - and started to save more is kinda natural behavior in these circumstances.
How much of that was due to inflation?
People could just be trying to get rid of cash.
I had a bunch of excess cash due to falling behind on D.C.A.-ing, and I accelerated that (which was not a good idea in the short term, but that's what D.C.A.-ing is all about - wish I hadn't fallen behind on it over the years!) and bought a bunch of under-par bonds and utilities for the yield, sold a lot of now-expired SPY puts and stock calls too ;) More trading than I've done in my life, mostly because of inflation, not stimulus.
It’s possible, but I don’t think that was a major factor. It wasn’t in the linked article and inflation was much lower during the stimulus. When it was creeping up, initially people thought it was transient. I don’t think most people know what the inflation rate actually is; I asked someone yesterday and they said “close to 50%”.
In my industry the wave of stimulus definitely caused behavior changes, it was pretty distinct.
Obviously, a lot of people did need that money to make ends meet. But it's also obvious that some % of the population was able to treat it as money they were able to play around and have some fun with.
People should be able to do that. Is it just the rich who are allowed to make profit that way. Nobody is judging rich here what they do with their money. May be because people in hn are privileged.
I hope it didn't appear that I was saying otherwise - I was purely stating an observation.
I would feel that way about any kind of government payments, "aid" or otherwise. However, I think it's especially true for money marked as economic stimulus payments. That money is specifically meant to... stimulate the economy. It's meant to be spent.
Even rich people "playing" with money stimulates the economy, because they are spending the money.
Something tells me infosec's not going to give me the okay on that one.
In lieu of that, I think "sending a wave of money through the system by handing a check to every taxpayer will not temporarily change some peoples' behavior" is the hypothesis that would need some data to back it up, in my view.
If infosec won't give you the +1 on sharing, it's best you and they find some shared ground. I suspect app/othersec would actually agree here.
Sending a wave of money into a group of historically underemployed seems like it'd result in normal expenditures, modulo some slush.
Maybe it's the contemporaneous injection of many, many trabillions into 501c3s, individual funds, small businesses, and other groups who could show they had done a small amount of due diligence to get a gazillion bazillion dollars for no reason that might draw your interest here?
Edit: alternatively, feel free to abstain from conversations where your allegiances lie contrary to complete honesty. I suspect many HNers do this regularly, and you can, too.
Your misconceptions about what I said somehow outnumber the things I actually said.
Sending a wave of money into a group of
historically underemployed seems like
it'd result in normal expenditures, modulo
some slush.
Do you have hard data for that? (j/k)
Far more importantly, "sending a wave of money into a group of historically underemployed" is not what happened. Pretty much every taxpayer got a series of stimulus checks. It wasn't based on need; it was based on your claimed income for the previous year. Historically underemployed groups got checks, rich boys with time and money on their hands got checks. Everybody. (edit: not everybody, more like ~80%) Maybe this is the root of your misconceptions?
Maybe it's the contemporaneous injection [...]
What? That wasn't even remotely part of this discussion. At least not anything I've written. If it helps, I agree with you: a lot of the payments to businesses amounted to lining the pockets of the already-rich.
Edit: alternatively, feel free to abstain
from conversations where your allegiances
lie contrary to complete honesty
What? Literally the only thought I've expressed this entire time is yup, that wave of money given to consumers seems like it had an effect on consumer spending habits, and now that stimulus has worked its way through the system some of those habits will revert to their former states. Not the most controversial of opinions.
What is this missing honesty you're referring to? This is one of the weirder interactions I've ever had on HN. And that's really saying something.
>Your misconceptions about what I said somehow outnumber the things I actually said.
oops! let me rectify that!
> Do you have hard data for that? (j/k)
ach, i'd answer but you're just kidding. still, it might be worth looking into?
> is not what happened? Pretty much every taxpayer got a series of stimulus checks. It wasn't based on need
I didn't get one. I didn't get a second. In fact, nobody I know except for business owners and one person whose income was skewed for very VERY specific reasons got one. Maybe this is the source of our fundamental disconnect? Only my business owning friends got money, none of my non-business-owning friends got money. The money mostly went, in my experience, to those who were already well set up. Or to business owners, who largely got loans forgiven.
> Literally the only thought I've expressed this entire time is yup, that wave of money given to consumers seems like it had an effect on consumer spending habits
I mean, that's the thing I mostly disagree about, so sure- it can be small but it's all I'm keen on talking about?
They didn't, but I think most people would guess that is accurate. I know I do. I supported one of their open source infrastructure solutions(that they weren't paying for mind you) when SHTF.
If all we are doing is guessing, I would also guess that people being stuck at home with nothing to do but mess around with Robinhood played a big factor
