An excellent article, with perhaps the best quote:

To generalize, the spending-and-employment trend has gone like this: Wealthy people didn’t go on vacations in 2020. So their spending fell, and their savings went up. And the employees who would have served them on that vacation lost their jobs, only kept above water by enhanced unemployment benefits.

I did not go through all of the article, but so far it looks like a great explanation of Sales Tax vs. Value Added Tax (VAT)

EDIT

Well, it looks like the author might have some incorrect points, as stated in this HN comment