So free food stamps and medical care for everyone — we'll all be rich!

No one expects economists or administrative gravy train recipients to be economically literate, but it’d nice if reporters or their editors were. Ah well, they probably graduated from the same institutions of higher learning that the first two groups did, so it’d be foolish to expect more. Example, this article from Hearst:

Federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP could result in job loss in Connecticut, economists warn

Hospitals in Connecticut are expected to spend more on care for the uninsured and get less funding, and economists predict the loss of thousands of jobs in Connecticut in the coming year, as a direct and indirect result of federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill placed restrictions and requirements for eligibility in order to receive food assistance benefits under the SNAP program and health-care benefits through state-run health-care exchanges. 

Those changes, due to begin taking effect in 2026 with some rolling out as late as 2028, are expected to result in less money available for health care and an increase in uncompensated care, health-care costs borne by hospitals when patients can’t pay. 

“When you take away SNAP, it means that a household is going to have a harder time covering their bills,” University of Connecticut economist Fred Carstensen said. “There will be layoffs across the medical sector, and when people are laid off, they stop spending on anything discretionary and they cut back very significantly. They won't eat out anymore. You'll see fewer purchases in restaurants, the ripple effects, what economists call multipliers.”

Ah, the great Keynesian multiplier effect: take a dollar from one person who was planning to spend it on, say, a happy meal, a computer, or hiring a gardener to mow his lawn, and give it to another person to spend on, say, a happy meal, a computer, or hiring a gardener to mow his lawn, and because the government has taken it from one and given it to another, that second person’s spending will generate 150% more economic activity than if the first person had been allowed to spend as he chose. Fabulous! Even better, if the government has already taken every dollar that first person has so that there’s nothing to “redistribute”, then it can just fire up the printing press and pass out imaginary dollars for everyone to spend their way to riches.

How about just printing money, instead of diverting it from the pockets of those who earned it in the first place to “others” (voters). Well, as of January 31st, 2023, Congress had printed and distributed $4.5 trillion or so-called “COVID relief” money; by these experts’ reasoning, and the reasoning of other notables like Nobel Prize winners like Paul, “for every dollar spent, we get back $1.50, Krugman”, our economy should be booming, inflation should be non-existent, there should be no “affordability crisis”, God should be in his heaven and all right in the world. For a counterview, you could check out, say, The Government Spending Multiplier: Less Bang for the Buck. Or you can just go visit the supermarket.