President Trump’s call for a $5,000 “dividend” payment to all adult U.S. citizens is being widely criticized as fiscally unsound, grossly irresponsible, a cynical vote-buying scheme, and another political promise that will never come to fruition.
Trump’s plan, as he presented it in just a couple of throwaway sentences at the Republican Midterm National Convention in Dallas last week, is indeed all those things. It amounts to a Keynesian-style attempt to stimulate the economy temporarily by making people feel richer than they are, to be followed by the usual consequences of such fiscal monkeyshines: violent inflation and a subsequent grinding recession.
An unprecedented economic boom or dramatic revenue surge cannot be assumed in advance.
Trump, however, is a habitual dealmaker. What if congressional leaders were to respond to
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