Pandemic relief checks function mainly as retroactive social insurance rather than stimulus, because people receiving them during a pandemic save or pay down debt instead of spending.

Drawn from what Noah Smith said, then moved away from

What this subject means

fiscal policy The spending-and-taxing half of macro, as against the central-bank half: multipliers, stabilisers, stimulus.

What Noah Smith actually said

Holders over time

Do you hold this korrent?Do you also believe this?

In tension with

Handing out cheques during Covid and accepting the inflation was less damaging than price controls and rationing would have been.

Smith argued in February 2021 that pandemic relief cheques were retroactive social insurance rather than stimulus, because people receiving money during a pandemic save it or pay down debt. He TURNED on it in July 2022 — "very wrong about what would happen to consumption" — and now holds that cash benefits contributed at least somewhat to the inflation. Cochrane makes the stronger version of what Smith conceded: the inflation was the price of the cheques, and it was still cheaper than price controls would have been. The claims exclude each other; the man who made the first one has moved.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.