How to jump start the economy

Uhm, no.

I know this was written with ‘tongue firmly placed in cheek’, but I have seen this posted seriously in other places. So, to be extremely simplistic about it, which is all my brain can aspire anyway, is that giving away all the money to me, for instance (I can dream, too), would be a relief package rather than a stimulus package.

Clinton already explained to us how the flooding of the marketplace with too much cash is actually what started the whole real estate mortgage mess. There was a lot of money available for investment and so loans were made easy and prices of real estate (and other goods) were inflated to take up more of that cash and raise interest revenues on those investments.

Stimulus is to make sure that the largest amount of the monies expended will show some future ‘return’ to the government coffers in terms of repayment and tax income from re-energized businesses. Business investment can’t be accomplished in terms of short term sales of goods. What winds up on our pockets will mainly be salaries for labor and materials that contribute to shoring up the infrastructure (e.g. roads, cleaner energy etc.).

Our labor is the investment being made when it is put to useful tasks that don’t just enrich CEOs and foreign governments. The investment made in us as people, is more in terms of health care becoming accessible, hiking food stamp allowances and other entitlement programs for those left so far behind already. funding education and vocational programs etc.

Sorry. It would have been fun. Instead, I won $7 in the instant lottery game I bought the other day. I’d better check to make sure it didn’t push me into that highest tax bracket of quarter millionaires. Rumor has it that there won’t be tax breaks for them. I meant ‘us’. *G*

Barb

well, i’d fund my film festival. the reel food film festival. the purpose of which is to educate all of us about how our food choices effect not only our own health but the health of the planet, as well.

i have some funding in place. but that $250,000? that would absolutely get it off the ground and into the elementary and junior high schools around the country who are my target audience.

so i really would be putting it right back. into education, into the arts and into the environment. do you think obama might just consider it, anyway?

I’d start by stimulating the housing industry: hire a bulldozer – take down my once “quaint” now just annoying old house and build a new, energy-efficient, fun to live in smaller house. Then I’d go from there, perhaps just by reducing the amount of time I had to work for a paycheck or the amount of time I have to wait for retirement.

I posed this argument to a friend of mine today, and he said, “Wait a minute, I don’t think that math is accurate.” Turns out that $780 billion divided by 300 million people is $2,600 per person. Not quite as awesome when you put it that way.