What do you all think about the stimulus package? You know, the piece of legislation that just passed that represents one of the biggest spending sprees in our history. The one that is way over 1000 pages in length and that nobody read all the way through before it was signed into law. That one.
Obviously something should be done. I found it funny that when the math was broken down, the tax cuts that most people will recieve amount to about $13/week back to them in their paychecks. I guess that will stimulate the fast food industry, since everyone can afford an extra meal at McDonald's each week.
As for San Antonio where I currently reside, there are some major bucks coming our way:
* the Riverwalk will be extended all the way to the south end of the city
* Highway 281 will be expanded up north
* the school districts will get pretty big batches of cash (not that throwing more money at schools correlates with educational improvement)
Those projects will put people to work in town, which is the point of it all. One person's pork project is another person's new employment opportunity. That is one reason I have not gotten so up in arms over the "pork" in the package. Again, isn't that the point? Come up with massive projects all over the country that will require hiring lots of people to work on them and also allow the business to trickle through other industries? Who cares if one of them is a big light rail project. You've got to pay companies for supplies and hire workers to build the thing.
I know that some of my readers are greater economic minds than I am, so I am curious as to your thoughts.
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3 comments:
I agree with what Dez says, it's nice to see investment in America's infrastructure. I personally like Riverwalks with over-priced Mexican food and phony blue water. All for it. LIght rail? Sure. Jobs. Glorious temporary jobs.
But, there are a lot of short term gains that you and I will have to pay for later.
I think I read that chrysler, which has a net worth of $3 billion, is asking for $30 billion in aid. Should they get it? Deserve it? Capitalism is cyclical and darwinian, no? Chrysler makes a lousy product and wants the taxpayers to support them doing it.
People who produce little of substance seem to have been a large part of the driving force of our economy and now there is a collapse of this house of straw, i.e. the mortgage fiasco.
That had to happen. Smarter people than I say it could have been prevented or fixed, but it wasn't and there was a reason it wasn't. There are natural laws of economics, like entropy in physics, that say we could have this or should have that, but in a world of millions of smart knowledgeable, even well-intentioned, people nobody did. That's not just bad luck. That was natural forces at work.
Chrysler, should have gone out of business by now, many times over, but politicians don't want to see another shameless Michael Moore movie about Flint Michigan in which we have to watch a lady club a rabbit to death that she was cuddling moments before, and cook it to save on food money after she lost her job pasting pin-stripping on Ford Festivas. They know where the blame and rabbit blood would land.
{deep breath}...
Some fixing needs to be done. Lord knows I don't want to see massive layoffs, and all of middle class America clubbing their pets to death left and right, but I read this morning that it's going to cost $250,000 per job gained. is that a reasonable figure? We're not talking about jobs as PhD Aids researchers here.
I want people helped. I want American blue-collar rabbits back on the assembly line with good benefits and no head injuries, but the right way. I'm not sure what that is. I'm not even sure how right I am about what I'm saying, as my knowledge in this subject is spotty at best. I do think however, that this plan will cost a bloody fortune, we'll pay for it and pay for it and pay for it, and it won't be a sound foundation of long-term economic healthy economic growth. I really hope I'm wrong.
And then there's the misguided junk stuck in. Have you read about the funding for medical records? Naturally I'd be thrilled at such a thing, but not on this bill. Separately, and designed by people who are specifically experienced and tasked for health-care related issues. Not the case here. This, by the way is, how Obama plans to pay for his {ahem} ambitious health plan "...by improving medical technology." It's on his website if you look hard enough. Unsound. Unsound. Unsound.
So, we can all look forward to democrat-style sky high taxes to pay for a possibly temporarily breathtakingly inefficient stimulus plan.
I'm investing long term in a company that makes tiny hard hats with ear holes.
Please correct me if you know my facts are off. It's just stuff I've read in various places. I don't even know how much of it believe
John, you always were an enemy to the rabbit underclass. You great bloated plutocratic Elmer Fudd, you....
I think the issue of saving the American automakers and the issue of pumping money into the economy can and should be disentangled. Obama has at least promised to attach serious conditions to money given to US Carmakers; if they can't prove they're going to make significant changes in the way they do business, they get nothing. I hope that's how it works out. For now I'm willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. God knows the US cars completely suck, and the last thing anyone supports is giving them more of our money.
But the stimulus itself seems to me an ok idea. I say this knowing essentially NOTHING about it. But, hey, I felt like posting. Anyone who bought a house in the last few months is being given something like 8K in tax credits (YES!) and California, one of the worst run and most consistently bankrupt states around, is getting a major infusion of cash. That means that the UCLA medical system will be able to give its workers a COLA (we hope), and that means that the Lake household can buy the 12.99$ bottles of wine once in a while, instead of brewing our own bathtub shine out of ragweed and synthetic cotton. Spread it out, I say! As long as some of that filthy lucre falls into my pockets, I'll keep mum about the actual costs of Keynesian pump priming (if that is indeed what this is. Who knows?)
All I know, John, is this: rabbits need to work. They need to work.
ANCIANT, your Pro-stimulus, anti-rabbit agenda has been clear for some time.
I'd love nothing more than to see warrens of rabbits on the assembly line riveting PT cruisers like crazy, because, Lord knows, we can't seem to get enough of those. I'm just saying that the tax and spend, club and eat democrats are Keynsianly priming a pump with with the blood of our nations future furriest woodland creatures. Don't deny it. Oh sure, there's tax cuts in that thing. Now. But when I'm paying 50% taxes in 10 years to pay for Ray's stupid black-lacquered satin-interior light rail that he's riding all the way to the bank to cash his huge educator's paycheck before stopping off at the haberdasher to have his top hat re-blocked and his monocle polished, i'll know who to thank, I will!
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