As Australia winds up JobSeeker and JobKeeper, the US is injecting trillions of dollars into its economy. How do the two stimulus packages compare?

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

America — vaccinated and stimulated — is strutting into 2021. The medical fraternity is pumping vaccine into the American people, and Joe Biden has given the US economy a real shot in the arm with a whopping US$1.9 trillion in stimulus funding. 

(Trillions are a problem, as we have noted in these pages before! But they are upon us and hence a problem we must begin to tackle.)

Meanwhile Australia — unvaccinated and increasingly unstimulated — limps toward winter. Victoria’s fearless leader has broken his back. Who takes up the fight if a COVID variant invades again? There will come a lot of cooler months where viral transmission is likely before Australia is properly vaccinated. And in these months we will also have to deal with the end of the JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs. Can we cope without these fiscal stimuli?

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