Congress’s Covid Income Redistribution. State income figures show the Cares Act helped blue states far more than red.

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 28, 2020 | WSJ Editorial Board

[karpov]

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this weekend that House Democrats plan to pass a new $2.4 trillion relief bill “that puts money in people’s pockets.” So it’s worth highlighting how the $2.2 trillion Cares Act that passed in March has disproportionately helped blue states that imposed stricter coronavirus lockdowns and have been slower to recover economically.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday published its second-quarter state personal income report, and the data show how lockdowns affected earnings and government income transfers. Personal incomes last quarter grew a whopping 34.8% as transfer receipts (854%) more than offset lower earnings (minus-27.5%).

But what a difference a lockdown makes. Earnings dropped most in states like New York (-36.8%), New Jersey (-31.5%), California (-30.8%) and Connecticut (-29%) with stricter and longer closures. States like Utah (-14%), Arizona (-18.1%), Texas (-21.6%) and Florida (-22.3%) that let more industries operate and others gradually reopen had smaller declines.

Construction was forced to shut down almost entirely and contributed significantly to earnings reductions in New York (3.1 percentage points), Washington (2.48) and New Jersey (1.62). States that allowed residential and commercial construction this spring like Arizona (0.25), Florida (0.62) and Georgia (0.80) experienced much smaller earnings declines.

Most states paused nonessential health care during the early days of the pandemic, but some states maintained restrictions longer and broader than necessary to respond to or prepare for an infection surge. Hence health-care earnings fell much more in New York (-3.79), New Jersey (-3.73) and California (-2.28) than in Florida (-1.57), Arizona (-1.58) and Texas (-1.86).

Notably, state and local government accounted for less than 10% of the earnings declines in Democratic states that crushed their economies and are now begging Congress for relief. But they already benefited enormously from the gusher of federal transfer payments this spring

[karpov]

ungated

[1Old Pro]

Stop the giveaways, OPEN THE ECONOMY.

[4Runner]

Yeah that’s just what we need, more inflationary money printing by the feds. A package of three tomatoes now costs almost four dollars at WalMart, a small container of table grapes six dollars. Apples two and a half dollars a pound. Yay. More free money.

[Blueflag]

Well a likely reason for that is that the BLUE states enacted the most draconian AND long-lasting lock-down measures which destroyed more businesses, causing more people to be unemployed, and thus qualify for the checks.

Here in Ga we maintained a relatively healthy economy, even in the retail/food sectors, and low-wage jobs were NOT destroyed here. So our population gets fewer dollars.

The Dims know full well what they did here to try to create more adherents to the Benevolent State.

[Brian Griffin]

I’m in west central Florida.

The government isn’t holding the economy back because of Covid.