Honest question, here - I don't have much of a theoretical or practical economic. how distinct is your proposition from actually, explicitly, printing money?
Printing money lessens the value of the dollar and makes lower class dollars worth less. Mostly because they are paying interest and many don't or can't invest in the market which sees offsetting gains when the value of currency goes down.
Short answer: when you print money, borrowers and non investors lose money, while lenders and investors gain more. It creates more imbalance.
Printing money does not get to consumers to spend, the 90% we are talking about, not the upper class which already knows how to make money when more money is being printed.
Our economy is heavily consumer focused, there aren't enough wealthy people to spend needed amounts to account for the whole populace/economy. Wealth by nature is hoarding/saving and only investing for returns.
If you look at it like a distributed system, giving money to lower class to improve the economy is to bittorrent/distributed decentralization where giving money to banks and the wealthy only is more like a centralized single point of failure that leaves many out.
When you do a stimulus for the lower 90% you will have guaranteed spend and increased buying from all areas of the economy, when you do a stimulus for banks and wealthy you only fund endpoints (wealth centers/investment/loans) throughout that have too much demand on each endpoint. The lower will spend at any time, even in down turns, the wealthy only spend in booms or extreme busts due to the nature of investing. If we looked at stimulus more like a distributed system, we might be better off.
Side note: The Iraq war cost for instance 1.7 trillion and will go up to 6 trillion:
The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said [1]
There is 1.2 trillion in student debt. What was a better purchase? Iraq war or paying off student loans here that will turn into a huge lower end stimulus? It isn't just an offset either, the country has 1.2 trillion in student loan debt and upwards of 6 trillion in Iraq only war debt. So really we have 7-8 trillion in debt out there between just those two things, because we aren't making good choices.
Short answer: when you print money, borrowers and non investors lose money, while lenders and investors gain more. It creates more imbalance.
It is more complicated than that. If you print money, borrowers (e.g. 30 year mortgage) can win, because they get to pay back their debt with cheaper dollars. If you have credit card debt, you are probably in trouble. People who have saved, and invested (e.g. bonds) can lose, because their investments are devalued.
