In all likelihood, US president Joe Biden will sign $1.9tn of fiscal relief into law this week, and himself into the annals. The American Rescue Plan is almost as historic as the pandemic it seeks to mitigate.

Consider, first of all, its raw scale. Barack Obama spent far less on the stimulus he passed during the financial crash of 2008-09. And that intervention was a one-off. The Biden bill is just the latest in a series of splurges over the past 12 months by the federal government. In buoyant financial markets, in an economy that has declined less than most, the effect is felt. The US has lessons to impart, though it also has fewer borrowing constraints than most nations.

If the bill’s price tag is eye-catching, the contents are tellingly Democratic. Much of the money goes to the unemployed and families with children. There is also much more in the way of subsidies for healthcare. To be clear, the relief efforts under Donald Trump were hardly Scrooge-like: the jobless were among the vulnerable groups helped, including via executive order when Congress stalled last summer. That redistributive bias has been taken much further by his successor. The change of president is having material consequences, not just ethical ones.