That is exactly how it worked (works) here in Austria, a functioning social democracy very unlike my USA birth country.

I am fortunate that the work my Austrian company does can mostly be done remotely. We had experience with the 2008 meltdown, and kept a buffer of cash for emergencies. So we (my firm) bought home office equipment for everyone. The government (about a year later) helped me out by subsidizing a good chunk of that money.

For people who couldn't work remotely, the Austrian government paid them to stay home. Here's a nice twist. The more you earned, the lower the percentage you got paid from the government. Functioning societies understand that if you only earn € 1500 /month, you need all that money to live. If you make € 5000/ month, you'll do fine if you only get 60 or 80% of your take home pay to stay home.

Keep in mind that Austria doesn't have its own currrency anymore, so doing this for its citizens was (is) more expensive than for the US, with its own fiat currency. And yet Austria still did it.