Economic Stimulus

With the election and inauguration of Barack Obama finally over, we can put all the campaign speeches, attack ads, campaign promises, debates, and general hoopla of this ordeal of a Presidential campaign behind us. I think it is a worthy side note that this campaign has grossly outdone all other campaigns before it in all possible criteria including the time spent campaigning, money spent, etc. It seems pretty obvious that this is not in the best interest of the United States to have Presidential campaigns run most of two years when the elections themselves are only ran every four. However, that is neither here nor there and with our new man at the helm of this ship we all live in and depend on, one quickly taking on water so to speak, it has been made clear that changes are on the way.

In his first one hundred days as commander-in-chief, Obama has made it clear one of his goals is an economic stimulus package. A lofty one tat that. 825 Billion dollars is the closest estimate of this behemoth spending bill on track to be signed, sealed, and delivered by Presidents Day. You might be asking yourselves, "Wait. How can the United States spend $850,000,000,000.00 right now? If you are, you might be one of the 1% of Americans who haven't yet been hoodwinked into believing that the federal government is the only thing that can save us from this mess we're in. The correct thing to do is basically the answer for every problem which involves the government in any way. CUT TAXES.

Let's think about this. If you provide an "Economic Stimulus" check to every taxpayer in the country, you would in theory be causing spending to go through the roof once they're all delievered and in the economic climate we're in, one of bankrupted businesses and stagnant spending, this is good right? Well, not so fast. Maybe we should ask the best economists about this. If you dig into the idea of a federal stimulus check you'll see that modern, Chicago Economists generally agree that doing this has an unwanted consequence, and it in effect exposes a flaw in the thinking of left-leaning socialist-loving democrats in this country. It is, that people who make the most money in this country are the ones who create all the jobs. Jobs are, after all, one of the most important factors in determining the strength of our economy. If rich people are the ones creating jobs then we must assume they use their money to create jobs, they do this through investment. They invest when interest rates are low, and when they don't have a foreseeable jump in their expenses in the near future. We can all agree that you might be discouraged from buying a new car if some big expense like, say your house payment will double next month. That's how it works with an economic stimulus package. The rich know they are going to be paying for this stimulus in the form of higher taxes, therefore they don't spend the extra money they're getting (they're smart) and they might even save more than they normally would, since they know their share of paying back the stimulus will be more then their share, (progressive tax structure).

Now, if we want rich people to save more, and in general maybe this country should think about saving more, then this stimulus package will work. However, with rising unemployment, steady inflation, and growing distrust of the country's financial future, this is probably not the time to emphasize saving.

Not to mention the fact that this country is BROKE. We have no money. Read it again. The federal government of the United States has NO MONEY. If it wants to spend money, it has to print money. Does anybody think this is a good idea right now? We are trillions of dollars in debt already, and we want to go out and spend 850 billion to "stimulate" the economy?

The good news is that I have the answer. Shrink the size of the federal government, get out of Iraq as soon as we possibly can while still maintaining the integrity of our national security, and cutting taxes. If you cut taxes and also give taxpayers reason to believe their taxes won't soon increase, then they actually will spend and invest it in long term ventures that might actually create more wealth and jobs.