> I think a large percent of the savings had to do w/ the generous unemployment benefits and stimulus payments.

These weren't generous. They barely covered half of rent in the cheapest Midwest towns.

I know programmers on HN could just work remote and code their way through the whole pandemic without an issue -- but for the majority of regular folks, COVID represented an overall wealth cut of some amount (even despite some folks getting some minor extra unemployment). Even for folks who didn't lose their jobs at all, prices went up for literally everything, wages have been frozen for years prior, and (since they didn't lose their job) most of the support programs never helped them.

> If you look at the person savings rate in the US, you'll see two huge spikes around the time of the transfer payments

Yes, financially stressed people tend to cut all optional expenses as fast as possible. Have you never been laid off or fired before? A spike in savings rate doesn't mean people got wealthier. For regular working-class folks, a spike in savings is what you see when you expect your paycheck may vanish with zero notice, it usually indicates that people got poorer and panicked.

> Strange it wasn't mentioned as a possible cause.

Because there's an approximately 0% chance it's the cause. This "everyone is lazy now because the government helped them slightly once" excuse is a conservative talking point, not a real thing that actually happens.

> The reason that its important is that a lot of articles talk about "supply" or "worker" shortages as though its some naturally occurring innocuous condition, and not a result of policy

Well, there's also almost a million extra dead people from COVID, not all of whom are retired seniors, some of whom presumably held some kind of job. There's also a lot of people who were forced to live for the past two years on severely reduced or unpredictable income, now realizing they don't have to take a shit deal from their employers.

As far as I've seen, there's no "worker shortage" anywhere in the US. There is a "companies that won't treat employees like dogshit" shortage. That's been building for decades now, and having a bunch of people forced out of work anyway has taken some of the fear away, since many folks have now been unemployed anyway and can better handle that worst case scenario.

> But it ignores the introduction of 12 trillion dollars into the system (or around 30% of the current money supply). Its unprecedented and it's the reason you've seen financial assets rally to well past pre-pandemic levels.

The vast, vast majority of that money went straight into wealthy peoples hands (via things like PPP giveaways for businesses only). Actual regular humans got only a tiny portion of that cash. That's also why asset prices are sky high, workers generally can't afford to buy assets at all, wealthy people buy assets, to hoard their money. Assets are high because wealthy people got a huge injection of cash they've never needed, and are trying to retain it ASAP.

It's certainly not because an unemployed concert hall worker got an extra $200/month unemployment for a few months or because a working nurse got $200/month (3 stimulus payments divided by 18 months) or whatever. That kind of cash can't even buy a used car anymore, much less any kind of meaningful asset.