It appears that this insane stimulus package meets my worst fears. At the AFR:
The total size of the package is $17.6 billion which is designed to be spent over the next four to six months, delivering an economic boost equivalent to $22.9 billion or 1.2 per cent of GDP and stopping the June quarter from contracting and causing a recession.
In other words, it is all about getting people out spending so that the Coalition doesn’t have to wear the ignominy of a technical recession. The cash giveaways target the poor and infirm as cannon fodder in this war.
If that wasn’t irresponsible enough, there’s this:
…The package includes $6.7 billion to boost cash flow for small and medium business operators, so they can pay wages, put on extra staff, invest or prepare for the downturn.
Under the measure, businesses with turnovers up to $50 million will be eligible for tax-free payments of up to $25,000.
To ensure integrity, businesses which pay the Australian Tax Office income tax on their employees’ salary and wages either quarterly or monthly will receive a payment equal to 50 per cent of the amount withheld, up to a maximum of $25,000.
…The money will be available over the four months of March, April, May and June and the maximum a business will be entitled to across that period is $25,000.
Put on more staff? Are they joking? Leading into June the Australian Winter will skyrocket virus infections, much more so if Australians take the bait and get out to shop and work in greater numbers.
We needed stimulus to support quarantine not break it. The money should be explicitly earmarked for holiday pay. To keep people at home and out of harm’s way. And for the unemployed. Hopefully the more sensible bosses will use it that way.
This stimulus is the politics of a psychopathic government that has no care whatsoever for how many Australians die. They just want to dodge the recession.
Which delivers the final sick irony. If it works it will fail as the virus spreads more quickly, crashing the economy far deeper and longer than if we had tried to stop it rather than spread it.
