A lot of people said they were “shocked.” But why, exactly? Did they believe that Joe Biden had rendered gravity optional? This is what you get when you pay people not to work. It’s what you get when you send check after check after check to people who, were they permitted to, would be perfectly capable of regaining employment. It’s what you get when you allow the teachers’ unions to shut down the schools ad nauseam, and put working parents in a long-term bind. There is nothing magical about 2021, or about Joe Biden, or about this set of legislators and appointees and special interests. The same rules apply to them that applied to their predecessors. You can’t spend what you don’t have. You can’t tax and spend your way to prosperity. And human beings cannot be programmed out of responding to clear incentives. Call your plans whatever you want — Build Back Better, Modern Monetary Theory, Fairness, the Left-Handed Teacup Initiative — it doesn’t matter. Reality doesn’t care about branding. The pigheadedness is stunning. The Treasury is spending twice what it’s taking in, we have a national debt that has eclipsed annual GDP for the first time since World War II, and, despite the abundance of recovered jobs, we are having a real problem getting people into them. So, of course, the Democratic-led government in Washington has decided to send out a new round of stimulus checks and to extend the subsidies that have encouraged workers to sit at home — a witches’ brew of stupidity that, taken together, amounts to the American people piling on yet more debt for the privilege of stopping an economic recovery.