Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the CARES Act was America’s first experiment since the 1960s with welfare on a scale befitting a rich country. This would horrify conservatives. They complained about the loss of incentive to work. That pertained above all to the supplement to unemployment insurance benefits. The CARES Act stimulus checks, on the other hand, could easily have been cause for celebration in the conservative camp. Not only was their president’s name on the checks. This was not the welfare state of old. Handed out to everyone below a certain income level, this was “welfare without the welfare state”—cash support, free of any intrusive, prescriptive, bureaucratic, paternalistic state apparatus.33 It was the kind of welfare that Milton Friedman might have supported, a stepping-stone toward a universal basic income as advocated by figures like Democratic Party candidate Andrew Yang. There were all sorts of things you could do with your stimulus check. You were free to choose.