No, a 4th Stimulus Check is Not "Just Around the Corner"

Back in 2020, I wrote a piece called "The Men Who Sold the False Hope of Stimulus Checks" that chronicled an online trend of "finance gurus" reporting about news on the potential release of a second round of stimulus checks. This was after the Trump administration gave out $1200 checks, and people eagerly awaited a second one (there would be three total). An entire cottage industry emerged that tried to tap into people's desperation and, in the process, often directed followers to "get-rich-quick" courses and services. As I wrote in that initial article:

“The men who preached stimulus updates…could have said that a second stimulus check was months away. They maybe could have even scrutinized the specific political leaders who held up negotiations and told their followers to bother them. Instead, they instructed cash-strapped viewers to buy stock and to sign up for get-rich classes they couldn’t afford, and we should never forget it.”

Now, years later, it's safe to say that a fourth round of stimulus checks on the federal level will not happen in the foreseeable future (note: some states and cities are distributing funds to particular groups). However, some people are still putting forth the idea that a chunk of money is just around the corner.

And so let's once again return to the good, the bad, and the downright despicable of this persistent element of the attention economy.

This is a weird grift

Something that needs to be underscored from the start is that, politically, a fourth stimulus check is a non-starter right now. No one on the Hill is seriously entertaining this idea. As the blog TEC Talks states bluntly (and correctly) in their video 4th Stimulus Check The TRUTH | Talk vs Reality: "It's not even close to happening. I do not hear any politicians talking about a stimulus check."

The House of Representatives, which the Republican Party controls, will not award the Biden administration an easy victory by handing out $1400 checks to every American. They are not incentivized to give them that economic win. If a severe economic downturn occurs before the election, they will blame the Democrats for it and then move to pass legislation once the election cycle is over. We have at least a year of inactivity on this issue.

Yet telling people this more sobering reality is not the type of content that gets clicks. Instead, many of these content creators postulate about the "near" certainty of stimulus checks and then dance around the issue for their video's entire duration.

Take, for example, Blind to Billionaire, who, in their video, $1,400 4th Stimulus Check with the 2023 Recession, argues that a more than mild recession is likely, and if that happens, a stimulus check is quite possible. He says: "Basically, we're writing [a recession] in the books here. It's coming. How big is it going to be? Well, that's still to be determined. We won't know until we're in it, and then we'll start to see Congress frantically panicking all around…[and passing] packages."

However, since recessions are an inevitable aspect of capitalism (a great system we got here), his statement is almost as helpful as saying one day it will rain. Of course, we will hit a recession one day — that doesn't mean stimulus checks granted to individual Americans are an inevitability.

Worse, Blind to Billionaire takes an almost conspiratorial tone with how he talks about this issue, saying the Feds don't want to cause a panic, and so "they" are keeping the truth from "us." In that same video, he asserts: "The Federal Reserve knows better. They know that if they were to come out and say, 'Oh yeah, we're going to see a pretty bad recession in the second half of 2023, they would cause panic and chaos in the markets." He is basically suggesting that all timid comments from the Federal Reserve indicate a massive downturn is coming.

Similar speculations are made by the Youtuber Josh Anderson, who, about a month ago, argued that there is a "pretty big chance for a fourth Federal stimulus check to go out maybe later this year or perhaps in early 2024." He's referencing the same announcement from the Federal Reserve about a mild recession, and again, given the political hurdles we have already described, this language is misleading. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would rather lick the wigs of every drag queen in the state of Florida than give Democrats the tiniest inkling of a political victory.

Then there are the users who are more transparent in their grift. How To Guys, for example, started as a Tech channel, producing videos about Windows's Operating System and Home Assistance Installation tutorials. Yet stimulus content has become their channel's entire personality, and based on the nearly incomprehensible descriptions underneath every video, they are pretty blatantly doing this content to try to gain the algorithm.

It seems they are cultivating an audience on people's desperation because that's where the market is. Again there are dozens of these channels (see also Meet Bailey David, TrueLife Investing, and more). Most of them are regurgitating the same updates, often widely speculating, to an audience of desperate people. They have titles and hooks that provide the false hope that "maybe soon" a stimulus check is coming. Any conversation not grounded in the fact this stimulus will not happen soon is lying to its audience.

And, of course, this anxiety all these creators are tapping into is used not only to channel attention but, for some, to secure specific financial benefits. Creators like Josh Anderson often direct their followers to signup for stock applications such as WeBull and MooMoo. Blind to Billionaire regularly get sponsors for their videos. Many of the others we have talked about consistently give away gift cards to their audiences (a common online growth strategy), undoubtedly in the hope that they, too, will be big enough to receive similar sponsorship deals one day.

It seems ethically dubious to use the attention of people desperate for a $1,000 check, which all things considered is not a terrible amount of money in a US context, and to build an audience off of that — let alone influence that mostly poor audience to buy stocks. All sponsorships bring with them some ethical dilemmas (an issue we will not be touching today in this article), but this area of content seems particularly fraught.

Conclusion

Listen, it's hard to be a content creator, and many of the most successful are capitalizing on some questionable practices (see The World of Online Publishing Makes Liars of Us All). However, when your entire business model is about providing false hope of relief, I question your ethics.

Conversely, we have excellent content creators giving good financial and political advice. I briefly mentioned TEC Talks, which has been quite clear about another round of federal stimulus checks not being on the horizon. I am also a massive fan of The Financial Diet. People can clearly do this work well enough, but we should be critical of when others are doing a poor job, and most of the people mentioned in this article are doing a lousy job.

Again, Federal stimulus is not anywhere likely until after the 2024 election, and even in a genuinely terrible economy, the stimulus doesn't require a flat check being sent to every American. It could come in the form of business grants or loans, or tax credits for people with low incomes. We should not assume that an economic downturn, even a bad one, will make our leaders so magnanimous — they usually must be made to be.

Ultimately, be careful who gives you advice on the Internet and pay attention to their motivations (yes, even mine). Some creators want you hooked regardless of the consequences, even if that means serving up a steady supply of false hope and regret.